Petroglyphs
I remember studying the 1940 film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath in high school. The opening sequence features Henry Fonda’s character walking down a deserted black-and-white highway punctuated with nothing but telephone lines, a four-way stop, and an ancient corner mart with a truck parked outside. Having just been released from jail, Fonda’s Tom Joad talks his way into catching a ride from the lonely trucker and hitchhikes his way back to the family farm near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, unsure of what he will find there after years of incarceration. In spite of the scene’s unprepossessing imagery, there is one shape that is yet glaringly present: a cross. The lonely procession of telephone poles form crosses that shoulder miles of wires, throwing themselves at the actor’s feet in the form of intersecting shadows; the four-way stop echoes the same shape, even the corner mart is aptly named “Cross Roads.” It wasn’t until I passed the real world exit to Sallisaw on I-40 on my four day dr