Vanishing Giants
Page 4

Selyem's passion for grain-elevator preservation led to another passion. Because of an article written about his newly formed society, he met Barbara.

In 1996, she was working for a sales company in central Missouri that deals in grain-elevator buckets. Barbara noticed an industry article about the society and called Bruce, requesting a presentation for the Grain Elevator and Processing Society, of which she was a member.

Phone conversations at work led to weekend and evening calls, then to a Montana visit on New Year's Eve, 1997. "As soon as I got here, I knew Bruce was the right person for me," she recalls.

They were married the following July - in the elevator Bruce had taken his first picture of that dark and stormy evening 14 years earlier. They honeymooned in Saskatchewan, traveling the countryside taking elevator photos. "I'd always traveled and stayed in nice hotels, so it was kind of an adjustment," Barbara recalls.

"We camped out," Bruce explains with a huge grin. "She often tells me I sure know how to show a girl a good time."


Top: Once buzzing with business, these elevators no longer tower on the vast expanse of prairies near Buffalo, Alta.

Above: Grain elevators such as these in Torrington, Wyo., serve as historic rural landmarks in numerous North American towns.

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