An ordinary railing takes on a new life when its shadow crawls crookedly up concrete steps. Suddenly the ordinariness of small-town life is called into question. Of this "typical" summer afternoon. You look twice at everything within the frame: The steps, just look how crooked they are! The railing, who bent it like this? when? The knocked-over ground lamps. The buildings (church property) seem capable of offering townsfolk only a superficial kind of normalcy now, something to rebel from. The dark crooked line seems irresistibly appealing, as if it came first and everything else built up around it, rather than vice versa.