If Walls Could Talk

Winter is a great time for showing us things we might ordinarily not see at all.  I have no idea how many times I’ve passed this house, but I’m sure it’s dozens.  Finally the other day I noticed it.  I had to laugh though because it’s about 50 feet from the edge of a pretty busy road.  I’ve even gone past it in winter and not seen it.  Funny.

Even though the light was less than ideal, I just had to stop.  It’s a funny mix of things, this little house.  It looks as if it were originally built as one big room and had some additions tacked on.  The windows have different latches and there is a mix of shake and clapboard siding.

Next door there is an occupied house whose resident had snow-blown a path over to this ramshackle pile and I don’t know if it was my imagination, but I felt watched the whole time I shot.  I fully expected someone to come talk to me (like when I shot the abandoned Texaco station in 2009) and question what I was doing (duh…can’t you see I’m baking pies???), but no one did.

I am always respectful though.  I don’t attempt to get inside unless it’s very easy to do so and with this little cabin, it wasn’t.  Just above this doorknob is a padlock.  Severely rusted and probably no longer really useful, but I respected its intent.  Too bad it was in a patch of sunlight and too harshly lit to make for a good image.  Same with the interior, which had some lovely plaster work and moldings.  In softer light it would have worked, but as it was I didn’t get any usable images.  I do like this shot of the underpinnings though.

It looks like the heat source was one stove originally, expanding to two of them with the addition to the left.  Also it looks like it was never wired for electricity.  Sometime recently, but not very recently, it was used as a storage shed for someone who did a lot of crafts (buckets of pine cones, starting to disintegrate) and maybe had a roadside nursery (lots of plastic plant pots – hundreds of them, stacked inside and a garden hose).

I wish places like this could talk.  For example, I’d love to know what was leaning against the far right wall by the chimney.  It looked like the frame of a wagon or sleigh, but without the chassis it was hard to tell.  Ah, life’s little mysteries.