1. White Way Cafe: Enid, Oklahoma

August, 1990

The White Way Café always reminded me of an old person.  Its dry, wrinkled surface made me think of an old woman's skin, and the stained, weathered awning brought to mind the dusty apron Grandma always wore in the kitchen while making fried chicken or doughnuts.
 

The first time I saw the White Way Café, I knew I had to photograph it.  The small, stucco cube, which hid amongst the other buildings of downtown Enid, easily went unnoticed unless one happened to stumble upon it, as I did.  Some places have an inner life; they breathe, pulse, and speak.  The White Way Café was such a place.  It gently pulled me in with a maternal comfort that spoke to me in a magical, earthy way that drew me back to my roots.  At seventeen, I had no formal training in photography, yet I knew I would one day return to the White Way Café and embrace it through my camera.

During the summer of 1990, I returned to Oklahoma from St. Louis where I was studying photography.  I had come to visit friends and family, and to say goodbye to Grandma who was in a nursing home dying of Alzheimer's disease.  Distraught because Grandma no longer knew me, I felt a profound loss and an overwhelming sense of helplessness.  Growing up, I always had better things to do than sit down with my grandparents and listen to their stories of events that happened before I was born.  I simply couldn't relate to them.  But at that moment, while saying goodbye to Grandma, I wanted more than anything for her to tell me a story of how things used to be.  When I left the nursing home, I purged my spirit by photographing the White Way Café.

Diseased from apathy and neglect, the café was later torn down in 1992.  All that now remains of the White Way Café is the perimeter of its concrete foundation, a barren site resembling a desolate grave.  When I had learned of the building's imminent demise, I returned to it and found it boarded up and the signs torn off.  Distraught by the sight before me, I thanked the silver gods for leading me to the White Way Café that perfect August afternoon in 1990 when I preserved its image in gelatin and silver.

Each time I return to Enid, I make it a point to stop and visit the site of the old White Way Café.  Seeing the sand and weeds that now cover the ground where the café once stood, a vague yet familiar deep and hollow ache inevitably settles in my soul.  Not long ago, I finally remembered where else I had felt that ache.  I stood at the perimeter of what was once the White Way Cafe and said a prayer for Grandma.