They all fall down
Yes, eventually they will all be gone: these old farmhouses are doomed. Sometimes you can tell where a house used to be – the elms or cedars may be still alive or not yet so dead that they’ve fallen over.
Other times, though, the house will disappear without a trace. That happened to two houses on my drive to work (if I take the route that goes on a farm road). When I started this job two years ago, there were a pair of houses at a crossroads; one house was already vacant, and I watched the broken window glass shredding the curtains.
The other one had inhabitants. Sometimes in the winter I could see a blue glow inside, like the people who lived there were watching television. One day, a car from a home health agency passed me on the road; it was going very fast. Then I saw it parked at the house, on the hard-packed dirt yard at an angle like they’d parked in a hurry. It was only a few months after that when the house started to take on the look of a vacant place – an unlatched screen door banging in the wind, broken stuff piling up in front, no more home health cars parked there. And no television-glow from inside.
One of the houses got pushed over by a yellow bulldozer, and the pieces hauled away. In a matter of two days, it was like it had never even been there at all. The other one, the home-health house, was eventually vacant and then got pushed down and burned. The smoldering pieces were shoved into a hole which smoked for a few days. Then it all got covered over with dirt.
Now that I’ve written all this down, it’s starting to seem like maybe I have an obsession with these old places. And maybe I do. I could certainly obsess over worse things.
But anyway, one of these days, my travels will take me on this particular road, and later, when I get up to the main highway, maybe I’ll remember that I didn’t see this old place a few miles back, leaning into the wind.
Crosby County, Texas
photographed 8.3.2018
Posted on August 10, 2018, in Photography and tagged 365 photo project, abandoned buildings, black and white photography, crosby county, crosby county texas, learning to see, Leica, melinda green harvey, monochrome, one day one image, photo a day, photography, postaday, road trip, texas, thoughtful seeing, travel photography. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
All telling of places where a story ended…..
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And I didn’t even write about (or get a usable photograph of) the bed of irises in front of this house. Those are some tenacious plants, to be still hanging on like that.
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They must be!
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Good photo; it looks so sad. I like your narrative a lot, Melinda.
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Thank you, Linda. I guess my brain had been working on it behind my back, because when I sat down to write the post all that stuff was just RIGHT THERE.
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They do, don’t they. And some notice.
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Over the years I’ve been doing this blog, a lot of the things I’ve photographed have fallen down – on their own or with help. It’s a little depressing.
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I really appreciate your commentary here, the great shot and the fact that someone is interested in places of old ..
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Thank you, Julie. This aspect of my photography started out as shooting what was readily available, and has carried into a bit of an obsession with me.
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