In the late 1990’s I began writing the following history of the founding of a Gulf Coast saloon, located in a fictional, 20th century, oil rich township named Pearly Gates, Texas – a history from which I have taken the name of my current series The Search for Ruth Mission:

Anticipating the End Times, in the late 1920’s a Pentecostal congregation with deeper pockets than faith set up camp on the infamous Promised Shore, a stones throw from Pearly Gates, Texas, intending to raise a sanctuary there to salvage, feed, and house the droves of ne’er-do-wells who had been drawn to the lure of the nearby Hell’s-a-Poppin’ oil patch and yet had failed to find employment there.

Soon after arriving, the Pentecostals planted the foundation of their church, like a gilded lily, amidst the illicit gambling dens, saloons, and whore houses that occupied the grounds around it, and, on its inaugural day, they announced the purity of their intentions by unveiling a neon sign over its entrance, blinking out the words “The Search For Truth Mission”, over and over.

While the business of saving souls was brisk at first, within weeks, an epidemic of food poisoning, originating from the shelter’s kitchen, sent riffraff and Pentecostals alike packing, and, soon enough, the local sheriff would shut the place down completely. After which, for years, a succession of cheapskate businesses would operate from the premises, faring no better there than the Pentecostals had. 

Until, that is, Portent Hopewell, a local fortune teller next purchased the property, opening a juke joint at the location on the cheap, selling her version of loud music, loose women, and cold beer, while also, among other things, predicting futures.

Since in her initial planning she hadn’t settled on a name or accounted for signage in her budget, she decided with tongue in cheek to call her enterprise by the same name as the Pentecostals had called theirs, employing the original neon sign over the entrance that the previous businesses had never bothered to replace. 

That said, on grand opening day, when she turned the sign’s switch, only the words “The Search For ruth Mission” had lighted as the “T” in truth failed to ignite. Determined not to spend more on improvements or repairs, she left this malfunction be. And, over time, regular patrons, along with Portent herself, simply chose to call the place “The Search For Ruth Mission”.

Portent was known to be a magnet for tortured souls: a complement to her talent for prognostication and the summoning of curses. To schedule a fortune telling appointment, she would ask for a personal photograph as down payment: one from which she would then divine the future consequences of each of her clients’ lives, making advisements and solving potential problems along the way – following which, depending on the nature of her divinations, she would either celebrate or commiserate with participants over a complimentary beverage of their choice at the Search for Ruth Mission’s bar. It was through these many and sundry, closely held exchanges that Portent became one of Pearly Gates most powerful and influential citizens, coming into possession over time of more incriminating gossip and confidential information than had been otherwise available to anyone else in town.

Given the resulting successes of her various financial dealings, and her larger than life persona, it isn’t surprising that the practice of photography would become a popular local pastime in Pearly Gates. Everyone in town, it seemed, began to record and collect the happenings of their everyday lives with a broad range of cameras and expertise wherever they went, for years, through depressions, wars, distant travels, and the vicissitudes of family affairs, while wondering what Portent might have to say about their own, coinciding, attempts to commune with the dead or place curses on those who had at one time or another done them wrong. 

In response, Portent ever on the lookout for investment opportunities would found The Pearly Gates Camera Club and provide a dedicated space at The Search for Ruth Mission for regular meetings and for the purchasing of photography equipment, film, and darkroom supplies. 

It was out of this milieu that the Pearly Gates Archive came into being, local practitioners regularly contributing their work at club gatherings to Portent’s ever expanding collection. 

Over time, popular opinion embraced the belief that the images she was collecting were transmogrifying after her patrons had given them to her, making accommodation to more closely align with the machinations of an unyielding future, not unlike puzzle pieces, which Portent would then place into some exacting jigsaw order of things, in order to reveal nothing more or less than those specific fortellings which her supplicants were always most in need of immediately knowing.