Altamont, MO 64620

{ a photo essay - November 19, 2006 }

Altamont is nowhere. I drive through Altamont every day. It is the midpoint of my 14 miles to and from the office. Everyday my speed limit dives and lingers just above 35 miles per hour for about that many yards, and then the highway curves back out to its regular 60, stretching away between fenced farmland and pastures, as if Altamont were just a blink.

Altamont is surrounded by nowhere. I drive through the village every day, but no matter which direction, I never get out of the nowhere; the place where I sleep and the place where I work are similarly old, quiet, and dusty.

Altamont is hedged up with nowhere. On its furrowed outskirts there are tumbling barns, lonely little ponds full of ducks, and weed-choked railway tracks. The rusted carcass of a blue and yellow Volkswagen beetle marks the very eastern edge of the town, right under the green sign announcing Altamont, pop. 218. A large grimy kiosk declares the price of gasoline $2.11 per gallon. I drive past this stuff every day. Every 300 miles or so I stop and spend eighteen dollars or so to feed my little blue Honda.

Yesterday, just as the sun was going down, I stopped in Altamont for more than just cheap gasoline. I parked along a vacant field, threw the end of my scarf over my shoulder, put my hands in my pockets, and started walking.

All of the dogs in Altamont started barking the moment I set foot on their quiet gravel streets. I smelled like a stranger. I didn’t belong there. Nobody else took any notice of me. The late November chill kept them all indoors.

Sidewalks exist here as broken memories, cement so weathered and overgrown it looks less like manmade stuff than like simple slabs of rock. So many houses looked abandoned: peeling paint, dangling screen doors, empty porch swings, toppled bird baths. Abandoned but so insufferably quaint. I would give anything for a porch swing. Or a porch, for that matter.

But there were signs of life. Neat stacks of split wood against the shed. A ubiquitous smell of burnt supper. Raked leaves. Smoke from a little black pipe chimney. A light on in the lobby of the post office. The growling of all those dogs.

At the 2000 census the population of Altamont was 218. I can’t imagine it’s gone up any since six years ago; the only other human being I saw on my walk through town was a teenage kid with a basketball. He peered at me in the chilly dusk, holding his ball. When I returned to my car I looked back to see him watching me with good-natured suspicion in his face. I smelled like a stranger. I didn’t belong there.

Altamont is nowhere. There is an abandoned school bus in the middle one lot; someone must be using it for a bunkhouse, I think. I drive past this stuff every day and I will drive through the village at least eight more times before I fly away from all this insufferable nowhere. All I will have left are these fuzzy photographs. Altamont and its population of 218 will still be here. The gas station, conveniently located at the midpoint of 14 miles between here and there, will probably always have good business.

Walking back to my car, ignoring the barking dogs, I scrolled through the photographs I’d taken on my phone. The sunset didn’t make for such brilliant lighting. Ah well. Whose story am I telling here? I didn’t knock on any of those dangling screen doors to ask them how they liked living in nowhere. Basketball kid did not introduce himself. I don’t know a single soul in that town. What business do I have taking photographs?

Two hundred and eighteen people are not very many. But they are more than me. I drive through that town every day. I drive clear through it to an office where I sit alone at a cluttered desk. And at the end of the day I return to a dark house. Fourteen miles there and back. Where is this, this place I’m in? How did I get here?

Altamont is nowhere, surrounded by nowhere, hedged up with nowhere. It sits there, cradled in the southwestern elbow of two narrow country highways, and it quietly shows me my very own pattern of loneliness. I drive through Altamont every day. Even when I stop for cheap gasoline I never speak to a soul. What business do I have taking photographs? No business. Just a handful of harmless excuses. I’m looking for a way through all this nowhere.

Altamont is anything but nowhere. It is a little droplet of very intimate somewhere, albeit saturated with dust. You can see the somewhere even if you're not a part of it—in between the boarded up shop fronts and dog-eared No Trespassing signs, the cleanly hand-painted lettering in the cracked windows—the somewhere is in the way those rusted car parts shift positions every day under the old awning of that repair shop. It’s there with the black and white horse who shares her pen with a sheepdog, and in the calm pinkish sunset glinting in the narrow stained-glass windows of a modest white church house. The abandoned old tool sheds say somewhere. Somebody. The neat stacks of firewood and overprotective dogs say somewhere. The smell of burnt supper says somebody. I don't know who they are. Basketball kid did not introduce himself. But they have porch swings and sunsets to watch while they sit on them. Where else do they need?