Rex Trulove
This is McGowan’s grocery store. You can just barely see the tail end of our red Pontiac Grand Prix over in the right, about at mid-frame. The cement slab that can be seen is the top of a very large dry well, to handle water runoff. There is no drainage system in town, so dry wells are the way to go unless businesses want water standing in their parking lots.
Around the dry well is the pavement. It was chip-sealed and after it had settled, tack was used heavily on any cracks. Tack is a combination of creosote, tar, and oils. It stinks at first and it is toxic until it dries. The dried tack can be seen in this image, too, as the dark lines that go roughly from left to right.
I walked to the end of the parking lot, directly behind where this picture was taken and was leaning against the pylons that serve as the back wall of the lot when I noticed something peculiar. There was a plant that defied the odds and was surviving, near the base of the pylon.
