Bolivar Tennessee Post Office

ADDRESS: 118 E. Market St., Bolivar, Tennessee, 38008
ARTIST: Carl Nyquist
TITLE: Picking Cotton
MEDIUM: Oil on canvas (mural)
STATUS: The Bolivar post offices is still an active, operating facility, and the mural can be vise by interested members of the public. It resides in the lobby on the wall above the postmaster’s door.
YEAR: 1941

So let me tell you a story. Would you like to know how dedicated and particular I am when it comes to photographing these old buildings? Well, here let me explain.

We arrived in Nashville early Tuesday morning. I completely forgot to charge my camera batteries the night before I left. It was a beautiful sunny day and I wanted to take advantage of the nice sunny weather. Problem is if I go back to the hotel and charge the batteries I’ll lose several hours of time. Since I only had 3 plus days I really wanted to maximize my time here. So what did I do? I drove the few hours to Bolivar anyway. When I got there I was standing waiting for the right moment, when no one was in front of the building. When no cars were parked all that stuff I’ve been talking about. And what happens, next you ask.

Of course just as the right moment appears I go to turn on my camera to get that un-obstructed shot of the building and what happens? yeah you guessed it, the battery in my camera died. After all that waiting and after standing in the road being stared at my the locals. After all the diligent maneuvering around cars and pedestrian, my battery dies.

But wait, I’m prepared you say to yourself. Yes, I was prepared, my backup was to use my phone camera. Not really my preferred method as I really like higher quality photos but it would have to do for today. So that it, that’s what I ended up doing. I pulled out my the handy phone camera and shot my pictures with that. The story doesn’t end there, I wanted higher resolution photos of this great building and mural that I returned to the Bolivar the following day with charged batteries so that I could get some higher resolution photos with my real/better camera. And that my folks is what you can expect from a Post Office Freak.

Thanks,

David W. Gates Jr.