abandoned buildings

Abandoned

mikemjensen Useless Observations Tags: Leave a comment

Hey Kids,

Driving through the countryside, I see abandoned houses slowly melting back into forgotten history.

I wonder how they got to be like that.cbe372c403d1a5c4c0c465f54c0b960a

What happens to a home to make it no longer a home? How does a person walk out the door and never return. Did he or she know they would be the last resident?

I wonder if memories remain. Is there anybody who still remembers living in the house? Does the house still remember the people that lived within it?

I can’t recover the history, but by noting the buildings as I see them, I feel I somehow pay my respects.

And somehow that makes the abandoned home a little less abandoned.

 

Day 190

Present Changes

mikemjensen Life's Truths Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Hey Kids,

I’ve wondered how a building becomes abandoned. I see them all the time. Houses off of the highway, greyed wood, windows missing, sometimes a door, sometimes not. They were someone’s home once. A family lived there. And now no one does. What happened?contest2891_banner

I know that buildings don’t last forever, yet I can’t imagine my house ever not being there. Will it wear out? It has to. Everything does. But how? Will there be a time that I’ll just leave it? Seems too impossible to imagine, and yet any drive into the country shows evidence of its possibility. What about those pictures from the Detroit area?

I look at the hospital at the University of Utah. If you look at it today, it looks nothing like it did when I started there 20+ years ago. I watched the transformations, several of them, and yet find it hard to see the current configuration not ever being what it is today.

I guess it’s hard to expect the present status ever changing. It’s hard to remember the past even if you were there.

Things are going to change and sometimes drastically. It just happens. Don’t let your comfort and understanding of today think it won’t.

 

Day 115