A few days ago I posted some photos from a property outside Nashville that had been abandoned for more than a decade, & finding it broke my heart. If you haven't read that or seen the pictures,
go see them now.
For those of you that have seen them, here are a few more...
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| Do you know how hard it was to not rescue this poor door that day?! |
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| The hardware on this old trunk is basically turning to dust from being left outside all these years. |
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| I love this piece. Even falling apart, it still makes me want to go 'save' it from getting worse than it currently is. |
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| Why?!?! The things I could've done with this mantle if I'd gotten to it years ago... |
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| The house is literally falling apart piece by piece. |
*sigh* I hate when things are just left out to rot when they could've been saved & loved by somebody.
Do you have any photos like this? Do you know of places that need to be saved? Tell me about them! I like to learn about this kind of thing.
The hobby that Ray and I have started is visiting abandoned places.
ReplyDeleteHe has more pictures of stuff than I do. He also lives in an area that has more abandoned places than I do.
If you really wanna go on an abandoned treasure hunt, go up to the north border of North Dakota and Canada. There are LOADS up near the Canadian border.
I doubt you'd wanna travel that far though :/
Anyway, look around. If there's a "ghost towns of ND" and MN site, then there oughta be one for Tennessee, right?
In fact, I just found it :)
http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/tn/tn.html
And w Ray's advice, "The best stuff is always hidden behind trees."
Go for it!
Brigette :)
Brigette, you are always a wealth of info, you know that?
DeleteAnd yes, the best stuff is always *always* hidden behind trees!
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ReplyDeleteA lot of this was just wanton vandalism, a bunch of assholes drunk and stoned out of their minds using the place as a partying spot.
ReplyDeleteAnd then the elements do the rest, reminding you that there's a lot of truth to the notion that a house is just a wooden box that sits out in the rain and rots.
It's all so very sad most of all. Somebody bought, took care of and presumably cherished this place for years, maybe generations, accumulated possessions that were prized and even passed down. And when there was nobody left to take care of it, when indifferent relatives moved away and couldn't be bothered maintain or protect it, then it died and was thoughtlessly destroyed.
Like you, I've ended up stopping and exploring these derelicts when time and circumstances permit. (And when I'm certain some toothless redneck/meth-head with a shotgun and beat-up pickup won't show up to tell me that it's "private property.") And you walk through slowly, trying to get a feel for the place, a sense of who lived there and what they were like, looking for the ghosts.
Sometimes you even find treasure, overlooked by time and indifference. Like a box of 100 year old postcards that nobody thought were important. Or maybe millstones or old archaic machinery parts. Or even a heavy-as-hell soapstone wash basin.
But still, these places can leave you with an empty feeling, a kinda "Well, what's the use?" inner-emotional dead zone. And at that point you can't help thinking that the best course of action would be to limit your possessions just to whatever can fit in a few suitcases and a laptop.
Just a thought.
VicB3