An Abandoned House On MLK

My wife and I examined this structure early in our relationship-- I think we were still getting to know each other and I was introducing her to my photography hobby. I took no photos of the house at that time even though it looked pretty rough because somebody obviously lived there. We thought it might be an artist or artists because of a large welded steel sculpture near the house. There was actually a pretty nice SUV parked at the house at that time. But now it is clearly abandoned, the large steel artwork is gone, and I felt free to take pics.

It did not look much better than this even when it was occupied! Today it looks like a haunted house. Then it looked like a haunted house.

 Note the satellite dish-- I think some people would be happy to live in a latrine if they had enough TV channels.

 Looks like they might have shot some hoops too. 

This was a nice house many years ago, and probably belonged to a cotton farmer. What happened? We always wondered: what happened?

 This is a "crop-zoom" example. 

Art? Not. Then again...

Abandoned outbuildings, weed grown, crying out for restoration and use, like the good old days.

Whenever the good old days were, for this poor old farmhouse, they are gone for good. There is nothing ahead but more ruin and more desolation. Children might have played in these spaces, once.  Again, what happened? What happened to the people who lived here when all of this was new?
Next time, I retrace more of our modest voyages of exploration...

East 98th Street

As often as we drove through here, some things were never photographed. I tried to correct that omission.

I have no idea what this structure is for, if anything anymore. On the opposite corner, early in our marriage, we found an abandoned bar/nightclub. We photographed it, then. Later, it suffered a fire and was partly destroyed and we photographed it again. It was known as Carl's Corner, by the way. We found it again when it was undergoing demolition and more photos were taken. All of those photos are on this blog. Just look through older posts. It was during that time of demolition that we found a limestone slab crudely engraved: "Fort Griffen". Now, my wife, during her second marriage, had visited Fort Griffen in East Texas-- there was a museum there and the fort was mostly restored. We took the stone slab home with us and contacted the curator at Fort Griffin. In a few weeks he arrived with his wife and son to collect the slab and try to solve the mystery of how it got here. I took them to the site of Carl's Corner and we did some exploration. As far as I know the mystery has not been solved.

Traveling north on MLK I got off on a really bad dirt road that led to a dead end. Huge holes and deep ruts. It gave my car a workout! I photographed more boonie-type structures.

This is pretty typical of what you find out in the county, outside the city limits, especially on the east side of town.

East On 98th, North on MLK

This is part of the process of retracing steps and even examining new things in new ways. For one thing, I used a camera with enough megapixels to make zoom cropping feasible. Even better, it had an optical zoom, so cropping after the optical zoom really brought things in up close. First stop was a place that used to be a nightclub, then it was abandoned for a long time and then a church used it, and now it is abandoned again. When I first started the wildflower garden I was so desperate to get things to grow I drove out here with my wife to find the heartiest wildflowers I could find-- stuff growing in asphalt and cracks in concrete and piles of pebbles.  We found some hardy stuff and I dug it up and planted it in good garden soil. Everything died in less than 24 hours. My wife was amused. She might have been pleased, too, because I'd probably dug up and re-planted weeds. Later, I got other things to grow. I do NOT have a green thumb.

It was cloudy and there had been some rain the night before. What a miracle.

See the details? I like details.

 We are out in the boonies.

This is the east side of the building.

 Hardy weeds. If I transplanted them into good soil they would be toast. Go figure.

All kinds of things had been dumped out there. Next, we examine the intersection of 98th and MLK.