Tight
A narrow chamber
A small fade wants a face that starts left of the window and barely uses it. Extra curve here kisses the right bank.
Red River · Spring Street · fade windows
Raise a gate only as wide as the fade you can actually start.
Fade Gate is a lock office. We chalk where the ball starts, where it is allowed to curve, and where the window slams if humidity off the Red adds extra bend. A catalog fade with no start line is just a rumor in the chamber.
Open
A wide chamber
A working fade wants room. A face that starts at the target here never enters the gate at all.
Costume
A painted lock
A shot shape copied from a river-town poster that never met this start line. Fine as enamel. Not a window.
Why a lock
Start line is the sill. Curve is the water you let through. The gate only measures.
Beau Landry chalks start the way a lock tender chalks a water line. Odile March then stamps a window that can live with that start, or she refuses a costume fade cut for someone else's humidity.
Players walk in wanting "a little cut." Shreveport bermuda does not sell little cuts. It sells whether a start line left of the window actually arrives, and whether Red River moisture turns a polite curve into a bank kiss.
Heard on Spring
Notes from people who left a painted lock on the log
Odile chalked my start and it was already at the right bank. The fade I loved had nowhere to go. We closed the window and moved the sill. Broadmoor stopped leaking into the trees.
They asked me to pick a moisture: river-up mornings or dry afternoon. I wanted both. Beau handed the log back until I chose. I chose dry. The extra curve vanished, which was the whole argument.