Refilling the Hole

Three-story Peanut Dryer, Aubrey TX. I got to crawl around and photograph it before they put up the wire. What do you replace an addiction with? How do you refill the hole? Chess took many hours of my typical week. It was my go-to the moment boredom took hold, and boredom often did that. (Like many parents of children with ADHD, I learned that I was the parent who contributed that trait.) I have enough hobbies to fill my time; the problem is they mostly happen in a chair. An exception: Today I'll join a friend in a small town about an hour east that's caught between its past and becoming the next suburb. We're going to photograph an old cotton gin. That's some good old-man-fun. The reason there are peanut dryers in some small towns and cotton gins in others? Cotton depletes the soil, and peanuts put the nutrients back. A complimentary economy. Take your peanuts to Aubrey, your cotton to Celina. Now the peanut dryer in Aubrey is the rusty idol at an annual peanut festival, kept behind…