This interesting PI series is devoted to the dead towns of our state. The first town in the series is Lester. The best image the photographer, Jordan Stead, gathered from this ghost town is of a decaying telegraph pole. What makes this image is that the pole looks much like and as old as the cross used to execute the human animal many still believe died for our sins. As a whole, however, the ruins of a small town are not as impressive as the ruins of a major city. Lester far from Detroit.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...