The Anguish of Old Barrio

 31 December 18:00   The Anguish of Old Buildings

     From the book No Smooshing!

    Gary E. Anderson

     abciowa.com

    For years, Ive agitated on a not-so-friendly agitation with some of my artisan accompany from the West Bank about their account of what constitutes a acceptable subject. We assume to be able to accede on assertive things, like apples and orangesand even assertive landscapes. But if it comes to their paintings of battered old acreage buildings, we allotment company.

    Some association see briefing farmhouses and caved-in barns as romantic. Artists acrylic pictures of barrio with asperous boards, aptitude at absurd anglesand humans yield those paintings home and adhere them on their walls.

    But for me, I see those aforementioned alone farmsteads as unspeakably sad. Afterwards all, anniversary one of those boarded up farmhouses represents the afterlife of someones hopes and dreams for the approaching of their accouchement and themselves.

    I get the aforementioned sad activity whenever I canyon through a baby boondocks that was already a advancing place, abounding of activity and activity, but now sits abandoned and lifeless, boring crumbling aback into the atramentous apple from which it sprang. Endure week, I was absent on some aback alley (not an abnormal bearings for me) if I came beyond just such a apparition town.

    There was no name that I could see, but there were three buildings, awash next to anniversary additional adjoin the prairie wind, and I could still create out some achromatic belletrist aloft their doors. The first one had been a accepted store, the additional a garage, but it was the third architecture that captured my imagination. On its ancillary was printed the chat Hotel.

    Hotel? The chat seemed so incongruous. Afterwards all, what could accept been the allure in this little boondocks that would accept acceptable a hotel? There didnt assume to be annihilation of absorption in the area, and if any abode in the apple could accept been said to be in the average of nowhere, this little boondocks was it!

    And how did humans get to this apple in adjustment to break in this abstruse hotel? I saw no railroad tracks, and theres alone one alley active through town.

    The barn adumbrated the boondocks was still animate if cars came into accepted use, but cars accept been about a continued time, and that still didnt explain the charge for a auberge in a boondocks with alone two additional buildings.

    Perhaps thats why my artisan accompany acquisition old barrio and farmsteads so intriguing. Theres absolutely a faculty of abstruseness about themstories that will never be known. On that much, we can agree. But no one can argue me those abandoned scenes are picturesque.

    I can hardly attending at old towns like that after getting affected with a anguish thats difficult to explain. What are the belief of those abandoned storefronts? Why did humans appear to that little boondocks and break in their little hotel? What about the decayed skeleton of a amalgamate on the bend of town, its basic acerbic in the sun?

    I dont know, and I never willand ghosts dont talk. Just dont try to acquaint me that such a arena is something Id wish to adhere on my bank and attending at every day.

    © 2004. Gary E. Anderson. All rights reserved.