this way to ???

 

For my birthday, my friend gave me a book entitled "Going Going Gone" about vanishing cultural icons.  She said it suited me because that's what I photograph.  I'm drawn to old signs, dilapidated buildings and cemeteries.  This sign and a concrete slab stand at the crossroads of US 84 and 60.  There is a motel just north of the corner.  To see what the Crossroads Motel sign supposedly looked like in 2010, click here.  Honestly, after all the trips through Texico, I don't remember the sign.  However, according to an online realty ad, this is about the time you could have bought the Crossroads Motel for $65,000.  Now the sign points aimlessly nowhere.

 

I also learned a new word.  "Texico" is a portmanteau of Texas and New Mexico  so named because the town is on the border of the two states.  Only an imaginary line and a railroad track separates Texico from its Texas twin Farwell.  Follow the directional arrow on the cemetery sign to the Texico Cemetery where a barbed wire fence separates the tombstones from the grazing cattle.

 

Texico, New Mexico

1.2.2014