Paris, Texas

I’ve been interested in visiting Paris, Texas for some time, although the biggest reason I was drawn to the place really doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Paris, Texas is one of my favorite films. But the town of Paris is not shown in the film and is only mentioned tangentially by Harry Dean Stanton’s character. The film’s director, Wim Wenders, did include many images of Paris in the expanded edition of his Written in the West photo book (now out of print) but ended up filming elsewhere.

Despite this (or because of it), I went a little out of my way to get these photographs on a quite cold Saturday morning in February.

Going South

In January, I found myself suddenly out of a job, let go from a role I had filled for more than five years. It was two days after my birthday and Nebraska was in the middle of a very cold snap with over a foot of snow on the ground. I asked the HR rep - “Why couldn’t you do this when the weather was nicer?”

I was angry at first, much like when a relationship that appears to be going reasonably well is ended abruptly. It’s hard not to be hurt. But as time passed, I felt like I was given an opportunity to try something new, to find a new situation that might suit my talents and personality much better.

With this all swirling around me, I decided to head south for a week in February before getting back to the reality of a job search. I have had the basic outline of this trip worked out for many years but was always a bit intimidated by the idea of visiting what amounts to a foreign country in my mind. In the end, the road trip wasn’t all that different than what I’m used to. More people and sprawl than the Great Plains or West, for sure, but no one called me out as a “Yankee” or told me to get lost. In fact, people were incredibly friendly in my experience.

The trip included three states I had never been to before - Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama - along with East Texas. I visited William Christenberry’s Hale County in Alabama, Paris, Texas (that doesn’t even appear in the movie with the town’s name), and saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in my life.

Here are a few images from the first two days of the trip.

Grand View Vista near Mena, Arkansas

Fort Smith, Arkansas

Wright’s Chapel Cemetery, Sevier County, Arkansas

Joplin, Missouri

Waldron, Arkansas