Our first stop was going to be these bayous. It was a few days after Christmas, we had just finished the horse museum and were planning to target about a dozen architects in the southern Louisiana oil country. Until well after New Years there would be no sales, and so we needed something to do.
I knew these photos were somewhere. When we're mobile, we shoot. When we're parked, we should be organizing but we don't. I've been looking for a reason to organize all these folders. In so many ways its completely overwhelming.
We knew this guy Ammon from San Diego, Cheryl had met him at an End the Fed rally where he was just getting out of the coast guard. He said he wanted to go to dive school, work in the oil patch for a couple years then open a dive shop in the bahamas, and learn mandarin.
I've heard the whole start a commune dream, but this was pretty different. I was intrigued.
Years later, done dive school in Seattle, he managed to land a job with the biggest dive company in the gulf of mexico. He had piled everything he needed for six months into his ford pickup, drove across the country with a resume and a couple letters from the coast guard, and went to the head office. Looked the receptionist in the eye and said, "I want a job here and I can start right now."
Two years later he was still diving when we ran into him in San Diego, I guess fall of 2014. He had a couple weeks on shore, was spending it with his mom, and kinda needed something to do. He was wanting to build something called a tiny house, but had never built anything ever. I just landed a job building a screen porch, and asked if he wanted to help do demolition for a couple days. He did want to help, and for a week he was great hands.
When we landed in southern Louisiana, he was offshore somewhere in the gulf, so we wandered his hood.