a balance beam weighing apparatus
Acrylic on vinyl composite 22 1/2 x 19 in. (2000)

Somewhere, where nature is in full reclamation of a farm field, there is a weighing station, complete with ramp, shack and balance beam weigh scale. The manufacturer, Fairbanks Morse, is still a going concern I believe, though this one seems to have outlasted its operator if not its purpose.

From what I understand, the scale was set up to weigh small vehicles, such as pickup trucks, empty to start, and then full of cedar boughs to finish.

Whether true or not is a matter for history. I suspect there are many abandoned scales such as this one, housed in tiny, operator-only shacks; un-winterized, perfunctory to the slabs of plywood as sheathing. The windows long ago gave in to the human fascination for unprotected glass, and uneven movements of the structure in the hot-then-cold torment of the seasons. The platform is long rotted through, its iron structure now exposed to rust and rain, gently returning to the rock from whence it came.

Part of the fascination is its placement in an overgrowing field. The other that after all these years, the counter weights still slide along their aluminum bars. For no other reason than they just do ...