“I’VE BEEN CALLED FRANK SINATRA.  PEOPLE THINK I LOOK LIKE HIM.  
When Marilyn and I lived in California, I worked at a Shell station in Culver City.  I saw the guy who played Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. I pumped gas for the Indian who always got killed.  I met James Dean and Sal Mineo.

I’ve been clinically dead four times.  I was struck by lightning when I was three.  I was at a water pump when the lightning hit me.  I was out for days.  The next time, my brother pushed me in a swimming pool and I was under for twenty minutes.  The third time, I was driving my ‘48 Plymouth with a ‘52 engine in it, and my left front tire blew out, and I made three complete flips, and I never got a scratch on me.  The last time, a guy pulled me into the water at the power plant.  When they pulled me out, I didn’t have no water in my lungs.

I know how I’m going to die — in fire.  There’s not going to be anything left by then.  Man’s going to destroy everything.

I don’t think man ever landed on the moon.  It was all done on a Hollywood set.  Why would they leave the spaceship and the American flag if it wasn’t rigged?

My theory is that woman came from outer space and man came from the ocean.  Women were brought here in a spaceship.

If I wear a watch, it’ll burn up because of all the electricity in my body.”

ABOUT THE OXFORD PROJECT
In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every single resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676). He converted an abandoned storefront on Main Street into a makeshift studio and posted fliers inviting people to stop by. At first they trickled in slowly, but in the end, nearly all of Oxford stood before Feldstein’s lens.

Twenty years later, Feldstein decided to do it again. He invited writer Stephen G. Bloom to join him, and together they went in search of the Oxford residents Feldstein originally shot in 1984. Some had moved. Most had stayed. Others had passed away. All were marked by the passage of time.

This time, they didn’t just pose, they talked—about their lives over the past two decades—about children lost and loves finally found; about living with illness and the wounds of war; about small town values and the promise of an afterlife; about making ends meet and wishing for more; about dreams unfulfilled and simple daily pleasures.