I was getting ready to take a photography class that required the use of only one lens, a 50mm. That's not my preferred lens, so I thought that maybe I needed to practice a little bit with it before heading off for a class.

And that's how the photo of this...thing, I guess we'll call it...came about.

Lubbock County, Texas
photographed 8.22.2021

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
The thing about living in Lubbock is that if you go somewhere and meet some random people, you can talk to them for just a few minutes and figure out that you've got a heretofore unknown connection with them. Just last night, I met a man named Wicker, and it turns out that he owns this thing. And the thing has a name! It's a part of an abandoned cotton gin called a burr tower. In its previous life, it held the cotton burrs that were removed from the cotton during the ginning process. Also, though, Wicker says he also calls it the "alien spider."