LensAngle Photography

I really like this photo and chose it as the first photo for the blog because it is one of the first projects that Royce and I did together. Not all photos posted will have such a fun story – but here’s the scoop behind this very important piece of Salado History!

When Royce and I were in college at The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, in Belton, Tx, I was commissioned to create the above wall. A local artist had been hired to do the work, but he didn’t have time so he hired me instead. Why? He saw me doodling on a piece of paper while standing around bored out of my mind at my then “day job” running the register at a local coffee shop! Ha! He said I had nice spacing with my lettering and asked if I’d be interested.

I have the obnoxious habit of saying YES to more things than I’m actually capable of.

So, after the artist showed me where I was to scavenge for wood, cut the wood down on the table saw, heat the branding irons over the coal fired stove, and stamp the wood…I realized that the job was going to be too hard for me to do alone – and I begged Royce to help me with it. Since he got to hang out with me at a workshop in the middle of nowhere and I ran around in little skimpy shirts and short shorts and I was – obviously hot and sweaty – he enjoyed the work very much. It was August, in Texas, and we had no air conditioning in that workshop – just that hot Texas “breeze” we all enjoy so much! This was good since he was the one who actually did all the branding when it quickly became obvious that I had no ability to evenly space any of the letters!! *Which, by the way, we had to create using only a few shapes – we didn’t actually have a full alphabet. Just a few shapes on branding rods…

Royce had a lot of fun learning how to use a blacksmith’s kiln and branding irons and I had a great time heating those irons for him and passing them back and forth.

“The Wall” itself profiles the name of the town, Salado, which was to be placed in the center of the wall. Then the remainder of the wall was to be covered with the names of towns within a certain radius of Salado. I can’t remember how far out that radius was. The person who came up with the plan actually had a list of names for us to “brand” into the wood. And then after the names were completed, someone else did the installation. We were only involved in creating the wooden name plates, so to speak. The big joke is that we actually misspelled Salado AND it is definitely NOT in the center of the wall. Ha!