I like the tar swipes which define the install apron around this one. Like so many covers in Texas... it sports the typical square nubs as the central pattern.

There is a large foundry just accross the border from El Paso in Juarez, Mexico. I have to believe this cover most likely came from there. I wouldn't know this except that once... back in one of my previous incarnations... I worked for a company called Furniture Medic. While I worked there, I negotiated a national account deal with a company called Falcon Products. This required that I travel to a little town in eastern Tennessee named Newport. There I found a national company, based out of St. Louis, manufacturing interior fixtures for resturants. McDonalds, Burger King, Long John Silvers, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Chi-Chi's, El Chicos, etc., etc.

As I toured their facility... I saw them powder coating raw cast iron bases for the tables they sold to resturant chains nationwide. I asked them where they got the castings. They told me the cast bases came from a foundry in Juarez, where they were recycled from scrapped engine blocks. I remember telling them that I had been to Juarez many times.

I closed the deal.

Years later, I actually saw this foundry from the interstate... just across the border from El Paso and I fondly remembered my trip to Newport.

Even more time elapsed... and once again, even more years later, I found myself back in El Paso... where I braved being slammed by a fast moving Buick to take this shot.

It's all connected...

In my mind... it all makes sense... it's all connected. In my weird little mind... Newport, Tennessee and Juarez, Mexico will always be connected, along with this mundane shot of a nameless manhole cover somewhere along Lee Trevino Blvd. between Montana and I-40.