Roadside gathering place

  • Click on image to enlarge

    Photo: William Arnett, 1998
  • Click on image to enlarge

    Photo: William Arnett, 1998
  • Click on image to enlarge

    Photo: William Arnett, 1998
Description

"I put this place as a place people can come and sit if they want to. Now I do my talking right aside the road. I never have no regular services.
     "I made that place to talk from, that pulpit-looking thing, out of this old bicycle cart. I got this Pepsi cooler chained to the top, and I just put on the other stuff, the rags, rubber the bucket and chains, and the bottle, and the drain pipe. The bottle is for antifreeze. The rags come from clothes I used to carry on the bicycle to the wash. The bucket is to put my different instruments in. Wheels come off a farm machine, something like a stump-cutter machine, which rolls easy, designed to carry seven hundred pounds.
     "Over in the bushes there, that's the old altar thing I put out here first. It's big hayrack wheels turned up, which I fixed the other stuff to. It got gasoline cans, some iron rods, a truck rim. and a hubcap, and a reflector light, and some other stuff.
     "Now, back in the back there I got a special place fixed up with these chairs and that red stool. I picked that stool up off an old junkyard: had it in here about thirty years, maybe longer. That thing standing next to the chair come from the same junkyard. The rod come from a shopping cart, the bucket is my own old bucket. That piece of iron on the tree is off a hayrack seat. I found me that half part of some ice tongs and painted it white and screwed it in. The chain connects that to the stool." —Asberry Davis