matt slaby: Dad Turns 64

I started blogging with the intention of pairing images with writing --something that is, for me, an exercise that takes a lot of time and thought before I really feel like the final piece is suitable to be plunked out into the ether. Over the last month I've been toying with a follow-up gun piece, something about gunslingers and the wild west, the arc of history that seems to shave the rough edges from those long-dead and awkward-living men into the modern incarnations that play on the silver screen. History, it turns out, is a lot like an old man who refuses to wear his hearing aids. He only hears part of the truth, picking and choosing aspects of the story that are convenient, discarding the bits that are unhelpful to his line of thinking.

But that's another story for another time.

Speaking of old men who don't wear their hearing aids, my dad turns 64 on the 22nd. My mom threw a surprise party for him in their new warehouse, a building that my dad spent over a year building himself. And by himself, I mean exactly that: himself. They've grown their construction business over the last decade, filling in the costly gaps by footing the labor themselves. Their new warehouse is no exception and pretty much par for the course as far as my dad goes. He built the house I grew up in --twice. Once before the tornado. Then again after, landing spots in the local and national news, sounding much more upbeat than he looked, framed in the wreckage of his smashed work. He built the barn with the lumber salvaged from the first house. The scrap that was too small to use cut into firewood and burned in their stove for more than twenty years now.

Anyhow, with the next installment of the gun project stuck somewhere in that limbo between first and final draft, I'll post some pictures from the big surprise 64th. That's what you're expecting from a photographer anyway, right?