I am enchanted with Iowa's small towns because they still have a strong connection to our rural past. Each town served as the place where farmers would come to sell their corn, get together with other farmers for a cup of coffee in the local cafe, watch their kids in the Friday night basketball game, and go to church on Sundays.

Now many of these towns are dying, with boarded-up businesses and abandoned schools. It can be sad but, as a photographer who loves old textures and faded colors, the remnants can be wonderfully evocative--though sometimes I feel like a cultural vulture.

This door detail was from a tiny stucco gas station that once provided fuel along a blue highway winding through the Iowa hills. The gas station has long been abandoned, of course, but I can picture in my mind a farmer rolling up in his '46 Chevy pickup before heading back to the farm.

Lee Rentz