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WICKER’S TIRE
Remnant #19, Tom Wicker’s Tire-El Paso, Texas / July 2007
This giant tire is in front of Wicker Tire Company at 701 San Antonio St. in El Paso, Texas. It has been there since the late 1960’s and has become an El Paso landmark. The tire was originally on an earth moving vehicle that worked on the Panama Canal. It was brought to El Paso in the late 1960’s, where it has rested at the corner of Paisano Drive and San Antonio Street. Before Interstate 10 came to El Paso, Paisano Drive was U.S. Alt Route 80, the truck diversion route around El Paso, part of U.S. Route 80 that was the main southern route starting in Savannah, Georgia, and ending in San Diego, California. When Interstate 10, was completed, most cross country traffic was diverted from Paisano Drive, but, the Wicker tire has endured and enriched the landscape for several generations of El Pasoans and other passerby. Highway Art, a commercial mainstay of travel in the United States in the 1930’s through the 60’s, has become true art and and this one endures as a true El Paso landmark. Tom Wicker, son of the founder of Wicker Tire Company, maintains the Giant Tire, repainting it approximately every three years, “Or sooner if it’s graffiti-ed,” says Mr. Wicker .
Additional Notes on US Highway 80
GHOST
Ghost, Exit Zero, Anthony, Texas, May 18, 2023
Text and Photograph by Bruce Berman
This is the first photograph I’ve taken in a long time that actually means anything to me.
I’ve been a photographer for fifty-five years. So that’s kind of a sad statement, eh?
I’ve been teaching photography at New Mexico State University for the past seventeen years. It takes its toll.
All the energy I ever put into my own work and the work of the work that allowed me to live off of it gradually but inevitably goes into inspiring others to do what I used to do.
Anyone that teaches can tell you there are some great students that make it all worth it. They’ll probably also tell you there are a plethora of others that didn’t treasure the gift you gave. It’s part of “the biz.” You roll with it.
I do think there comes a time, a rubicon, where your own creative desires become endangered. It’s not just the endless repetition about the mechanics, and the history and the nuances of doing photography, it’s also the endless drivel of academia, the business of being in a university, the committees that mean nothing to me personally, seemingly a bubble of detachment from reality, the occasional obscenity of human behavior, acting so massively vicious because, the stakes are so low. Politics are vicious and low. The feeling of irrelevance can be very high.
The Great Border Storm of 2011: El Paso – Juarez
The Great Border Storm of 2011, El Paso-Juarez
by Bruce Berman ©2011
EL PASO –It was an amazing storm. Hard to believe it happened. Zero temperatures (in El Paso!!!!). Ice. Snow. Irregular electricity. No internet. Intermittent Gas (for some people). Highways closed. Jobs (including mine. I haven’t been to NMSU since last Tuesday! Bummer! I like it) canceled. Everything closed. Voluntary curfew (requested). Went on for three to five days (depending on which part of this freaky happening we’re talking about, and, when it was all over, yesterday, it wasn’t over because there were major outages of water (I’m going to get that shower eventually…like today!).
Now I think it’ll be El Paso again and we’ll be in shorts T Shirts and swamp coolers, squishy asphalt, hoods up and steaming radiators and complaining about the heat in no time at all.
Like I said, it was like a dream and hard to believe it ever happened.
Remnants del ‘Hood
Remnants del ‘hood, El Paso – March 14, 2010
There ain’t much left.
Mostly the pickins’.
This was the Grand Highway, the Spanish Trail, the beginning of the end of the long journey from East to West or vice-versa, the tip of the arrow into the dart board that was Downtown El Paso.
Interstate came and went around, population moved to new turf, businesses followed, but the old Highway 80 lingered, going from Consumer to Warehouse and beyond. A modern day Babitt, Ohio.
Lomas del Poleo For Now
Tres niños before The Grid, June 2009
Lomas del Poleo/Juarez, Chihuahua/Mexico
June 20, 2009
Lomas del Poleo. The battle goes on. More people leave. People fight to stay. A mean strip of ten lane highway has snaked its way through Lomas del Poleo (see previous posts or Google it). The Developers got what they needed and left what they didn’t, more or less. They don’t even blink as they plow ahead. This highway is going to happen, no matter what. The development will follow, is gonna happen, no matter what. Nothing stops the grinder. The Grid viene: Diamond Shamrock, The Chicken Colonel, Pemex, trucks full of electronic crap, three bedrooms, two baths, probably a Wal Mart (whoa..let’s not get too crazy!), the same vexing and stinking Grid that we hate and that people fight to have (Iran, Cuba, Libya, you, too, can have it!). There goes the texture, and, in the case of Lomas del Poleo, the isolation and faux rural vibe, the farm at the edge of the city, the special dream that has been Lomas: get out of the city, raise some chickens, leave us alone. A quiet hope on the edge of always possible chaos that is Juarez.
Star No More
Star No More, Marfa, Texas – March 2009
The West, the American Highway (and the American fascination with it), Funk, ain’t what it used to be.
Fine with me!
Tender mercy
LBI #7 Pano.series-Carlsbad, New Mexico/December2008
Been working on the Land Before the Interstate (LBI) series for a long time. Every chance I get to go there I grab. Time machine. No Interstate. No giant concrete suppository running right through your heart. The kinds of places Duvall would crash down in in Tender Mercies.
Dreamland USA (se fue)
Remnant #37, Less gas/Alameda Street, El Paso, Texas – May 12, 2008
“Gas for less.”
Less gas.
This is not a glitch, it is the changing of a culture.
Usually when a culture changes -sorry Barack- it is the result of a calamity: Depression, war, pandemic, natural disaster. Were it not so, but “change,” is not engineered. Eventually, it is managed.
Play: Before The Fence
Before the fence, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, El Paso-Juarez – 1989
Notes from my Journal
Immigration. Swim, drive, and crawl. People do what they need to do and making them do any of the aforementioned things, put lives at risk.
The river is more than a highway of migration, though.
In the summers, when it’s hot, the river is a giant pool.
People play.
The river is polluted with chemicals from upstream pesticides from the farms, loaded with garbage and debris, has really tricky currents that, every summer, takes lives.
But people live in that river. That river is life for many in Juarez.
If the Jefes could see past their own little tight plans, this would be THE development that would be right for El Paso/Juarez: Play in the river.
Too simple, though, huh?
This girl is clinging to the El Paso side bank. ILLEGAL! La Migra comes and chases her away and she joyously splashes back to the Juarez side where her friends and family jeer and gesture at the Border patrolman. Everyone is having a good time. The Migra laughs, waves, knows he’s part of this great immigration farce, climbs back into his Suburban and drives off and the girl –and her friends- come back, swim to the U.S. side, pose for pictures, live the evening.
The sun sets. I go home. I played in the river, too.
One of the border Patrol’s favorite PR releases is about how their agents saved people from drowning. There’s one or two or three every year.
They never mention people caught playing. Before the fence.
Waiting in Juarez, 2007
Waiting in Juarez, 2007
Waiting.
It’s hard to remember the last time I was waiting for something and not pressured to be thinking about the next stop, the next appointment.
Leisure?
Barely remember that…
Slow time? Time seems to be on steroids, going faster and faster.
So I came across this guy and time seemed stopped. He was waiting for the grieving and the return of the dead to his vehicle.
Mexico Sorts It Out: Obrador Gets The Boot
Boot/Shoe, El Paso, Texas, Highway 60/182 (Alameda Street), 2006
Text and Photography by Bruce Berman
Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has called for a ballot-by-ballot review of Sunday’s presidential vote. He says the stability of the country is at stake. Mexico’s Federal Electoral Institute Wednesday began reviewing the totals from polling stations to determine whether Obrador’s rival, Felipe Calderon, really won the election Sunday. A preliminary count showed him ahead by only one percentage point. Both candidates declared victory Sunday night.
REMEMBERING LUIS
Luis Jimenez, Hondo, New Mexico, 2001
Born: July 30, 1940, El Paso, TX / Died: June 13, 2006, Hondo, NM
The first time I met Luis, back in the seventies, he came into my apartment and seemed to fill the room. It was like no room was big enough for him.
He was that big of a g
Not physically, although he was that powerful.
Not spiritually, although he did have that aura of somebody who really sees the bigger picture.
He was just big. All of it. Life. Love. Art. Humor. Seriousness. Ambition. Regular guyness.
When I first met him, and I suspect this is what most people felt upon first encounter, I felt like my life was just a lot more complete than it had been a moment before.
If you wanted to be good at something, in my case it was to be a photographer- you knew he’d be encouraging for your dream.
He was a brother. A big brother. And like a lot of big brothers, he was larger than anyone could possibly be.
And, man, was he smart.
He said what mattered. He lived He cut the crap.
He made impossibly complex Art and made it look like you could buy it from a south side El Paso Body Shop. And the Art mattered. It was about something. It was about him and our culture and his culture and the idiocy of our system and about the flora and the fauna and intuition and magic and love and joy.