"Parked There For A Year...And Then, It Was Gone!"

It was there for a year off LA 25 and three days after my last sketch, it was  gone!

This sketch is about four, maybe five months old. The car, under a bunch of trees just to the right of the driveway for over a year and on the well traveled Louisiana highway 25 south from Folsom, seemed to be just begging to be bought... or, at the very least, sketched. I must have passed the rusted and leaf covered 1949/50 Plymouth a hundred times and each time I sped by the junkard, it bugged me. I was just dying to sketch the auto and finally decided one day, to do just that. I checked the review mirror to see if any cars where bearing down on me and then, quickly pulled over and parked on the soft shoulder across from the driveway where the car laid.

I drew this auto three different times, twice from across the highway about thirty or forty yards away, but this rendering was done much closer and on the apparent owner's property. As luck would have it, someone drove up in a beat up white Toyota pickup. I guess the man wasn't so concerned about me as a buyer as he was about my car being parked on the property as I was using it as a drawing table to sketch from. He stopped in front of the gate and asked me if he could help me with anything. I responded.

"No man, I said, "I just wanted to make a sketch of this old car. I keep driving by it and..."

He interrupted my explanation with this droll reply, "You standing in poison ivy, man!"

"Oh wow! Sorry, thanks,"I said as he drove off pass the gates and deep into the heavily wooded property.

I stared a moment and, while the dust settled from his departure, all kinds of scenarios popped into my head. When I came back to reality, of sorts, I looked down and sure enough...

He was right!

Copyright 2014-2015/Ben Bensen III