The Presley place, 2
This is the Presley place. Maybe you remember it from before?
I work in a town that’s about 35 miles away from where I live. There are two ways to go – the state highway, or a farm road. Until the speed limit on the state highway was raised to 75 mph, I always took the farm road. (I like to drive fast. But I don’t like to get tickets. So, for now, the state highway is a lot more appealing.) When I first started this commute, four years ago, there was an intersection that had an abandoned house on one corner and a lived-in house on the other corner. That first winter, when it was still dark on my drive, I could see the glow from a TV in the windows of the house that still had residents. The house wasn’t kept up very well – there was a sofa in the yard for months, and various broken down cars were parked around. One day, a saw a home health worker walking up to the house.
I watched both places closely, noting signs of decline.
But even with all that, I never saw this coming: one day, the trees had been pushed over. By the next afternoon, there wasn’t anything but a pile of rubble to indicate any had ever lived there. And then: the other house was torn down, too. At that place, the building parts were pushed into the basement and set on fire. I could smell the smoke for several days.
But back to the Presley place. It’s not in any immediate danger of falling down, or being pushed over. As far as I know.
It’s long-term outlook, though, is grim. But at least it’s not alone: it can watch the house across the way meet the same fate.
Northwest Lubbock County, Texas
photographed 4.26.2013
Posted on September 19, 2013, in architecture, Photography and tagged 365 photo project, abandoned buildings, architecture, black and white photography, lubbock, lubbock texas, melinda green harvey, one day one image, photo a day, photography, texas. Bookmark the permalink. 19 Comments.
One Day | One Image 
Reblogged this on The Legion of Door Whores.
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Its kind of a macabre process, watching the decline of these buildings. Don’t you ever wish you could just stabilise some small part, like reattaching the screen door so it won’t just rip off in a big wind?
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Sometimes I do think about trying to fix a little part of what’s broken. A lot of the time, though, I will pick up something from the ground – a bit of broken glass, or a piece of door hardware – and put it in my pocket for a while.
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What an interesting looking door! The chair is inside I presume?
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I wish I could say (without lying about it, I mean) that I was actually sitting on the chair when I took the picture! Since there wasn’t actually a chair outside, all we can do is assume there was one indoors. The next time I’m out that way, I’ll check and see if the chair has made its escape into the yard. I’ll let you know….
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It almost looks as though there is a tree growing inside…
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It does, doesn’t it? Funny things, reflections.
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I like the idea that a tree might be growing in there. Like someone is home, in a way.
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I can report that when I went inside the building, there was a dead mouse on the floor. And, sadly, no trees.
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Elvis would be so sad. 😦
Question: do you live in the cinder block capital of the world? Seems there are a lot of block buildings out your way. I actually like them, so, more please.
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I guess I DO post a lot of cinderblock buildings, don’t I? I don’t think we are actually the cinderblock capital of the world, but we are in third place Lubbock County, which is nearly the same thing.
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The building actually is still in use. The reflection you caught took me into the wonderful past that the glass has seen. On weekends throughout my life, the lawn chairs (that are inside) were brought out and groups of men (all my kin) would sit and smoke and talk while passing around the hand-cranked ice cream freezer. Each having a time of cranking until tired. We children would take time about sitting on the freezer (on old towels, so the salt didn’t ruin our clothing) to hold it still as the cranking got harder. Each of us only able to sit awhile until our bottoms froze.
And of course, these wonderful days included shooting guns out toward the old tree and looking at the special K-Bar Marine knife of which my great uncle made a new handle out of a Japanese Zero windshield.
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Thanks for sharing your memories (and for correcting my post) (and for noting the location of chairs, which is a odd, but important, detail to some of us!).
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What nice afternoon thoughts on a beautiful Friday.
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Have a great weekend, my friend!
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Not only do I thoroughly enjoy looking at your photos and using my imagination, I also love your descriptions and users comments just add to the mix, great stuff.
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Thanks. I am lucky to have a good group of followers who are very chatty – the comments are often the best prt of the post!
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There is a philosophical – existential question here: I come from Europe where houses built centuries ago ( made of stone and brick, not chalkboard and wood panels…), those house are maintained and renovated without losing their original charm and meaning.
My question : Is destruction-and-remaking really progress? isn’t the past what we use to build the present and the future, a progression? you are doing a great job of documenting the passing of certain ways of American living. I hope you keep these collections together for the future. We go to Greece and Rome to see traces of our past. Collections from you will do the same for future generations. You almost have a mission.
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Vera,
You make a lot of good points about keeping buildings versus letting them fall into disrepair, and I don’t have an explanation for why it’s different here.
I never really though of what I was doing as having any sort of historical significance, although I realize that it is very likely that the photos I’ve taken of some of these old places may be about the only documentation there is. Just today, I was shooting in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, going back to some of the old gas stations and so forth that I’ve shot many times before. Two of the buildings had notices posted, ordering the owners to demolish the structures. That made me think that maybe the pictures I took today will end up,being the very last ones taken of these places.
Melinda
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