Since I’m supposed to be off today, I only worked half a day. So, with a few hours to kill, I decided to take a drive down old Hempstead Highway. I noticed the highway has a lot of rundown buildings that looked like they were left over from the 70s and 80s and thought I’d check them out:

At the Car Wash

Car Ash

The Machine

Waiting room looks like it’s waiting for customers

The BBQ Place

Interesting abandoned structure

Menu is intact; trays sit just inside of the window

The Barber’s Strip

Barbershop on the corner. Note the intact Barber pole

Inside the Barber Shop. Note the filled spray-bottle

Whatever this used to be, it’s now a fern garden

At the End of the Road

Hempstead Highway ends just after Beltway 8. At the end of the road the highway becomes particularly junky. However, the wisteria vines add just a hint of color to an otherwise dreary scene. To me, it looked like nature was feebly trying to rebel against the litter:

Yesterday I saw something I’ve not seen in years:

You know, I even have one of those silver-head 101 KLOL t-shirts in the back of my closet. After Clearchanel bought it, didn’t they turn 101 into a Tajano station?

I spotted this old house today. I pass by it all the time, but I’ve just never seen it before today:

This old house is located just inside the loop on the West side close to I-10. The place even has a 1980-era car parked in the drive.

Did you know that there’s a ghost town just a few hundred feet from downtown Houston? Well, neither did I. Carolyn and I were out riding bikes today and we road near downtown and came across an area of old (as in, turn of the last century) abandoned buildings. Some of the structures were obviously built in the 20s and 30s, but several were well over 100 year old.

I later found out that what we were seeing was what remains of Freedman’s Town. Freedman’s Town, (AKA, the Fourth Ward) was Houston’s Harlem in the 1920s. The town was settled by freed slaves in the 1800s and was very prosperous until the town fell into disarray as the “Houston Harlem” socialites got older. By the 1970s, Freedman’s Town had become a ghetto. In the 1990s, a gentrification effort was undertaken and most of the original Freedman’s Town structures were bulldozed… but a few buildings remain and here they are:

I think this old schoolhouse is amazing! I hope that it doesn’t wind up bulldozed. So many of the structures seem to be awaiting the demolition team. I’m sure as soon as they are gone, developers will waste no time building more of the partial board monstrosities that have sprung up all across what was once Freedman’s Town.

As I said in my last blog, I can feel the anticipation building as I move closer to next month and dealing with the 3 separate grants + moving + programmatic setup(s). I decided that I would get out of Houston and go camping for a couple of days. You know, I think it’s been more than 20 years since I’ve been camping : /

On my way to the campgrounds, I ran across some creepy places… so you know I had to stop and take pictures!

First, I found a cool abandoned motor lodge:

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And, I had to peek inside…

I was amazed to find that one closet was full of 1960s/70s era clothes:

Here’s the Motel sign. I wish I could make out the name,

Then I found an abandoned house. This one looked too rickety to risk going in though:

So, here’s some pics of the campground:

Here’s me at the campfire:

Warming up my feet:

Oh yah, almost I forgot. I ran across what seemed to be an old family graveyard while I was out. So, you know I had to check that out:

I liked this name: Hudson Oliphint.

I love when I run across folksy epitaphs: “No pains, no griets, no anxious fear, can reach our loved one sleeping here.”

So, it was really, really nice to run way for a couple of days. My first day kinda sucked because the people next to me were incapable of shutting the hell up! They brought a baby (who wouldn’t shut up crying), a dog (that wouldn’t shut up barking), 3 teens (who played music and wouldn’t shut up) and to top it off, their parents were kinda pathetic. The father would ask the kids to do something and when they wouldn’t, the mother would screech and scream at them – at which point they would screech and scream and the mother and the mother would loudly bemoan the fact that she didn’t have 3 abortions and then the teens would go back to what they were (loudly) doing. They didn’t shut up until 11.

When it got dark, I took my telescope and drove down to the edge of the water to do some stargazing. The sky was kinda hazy, so I wasn’t able to get a good look at Jupiter. However, since the moon wasn’t full, I was able to take a really close look at the surface of the moon (I didn’t have a moon filter). I could sit looking at the moon for hours and hours!

Anyway, my neighbors packed up Monday and I was left with nothing but peace and quite. Ah… it was so nice! I hiked for several miles and basically did a lot of communing with nature. My tent roof is mesh without the rain covering, so I was able to lay in my bed and gaze up at the trees and stars. It was all so beautiful, I started to weep. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to spend this much time with nature; I feel as if my batteries were recharged!

I had to take off earlier than I wanted to since I had a 3 PM appointment with the Havens Center representative at the Path of Tea. I had lunch from the Field of Greens and before my appointment, Rudy What’s-His-Name (I think he’s a coach of something in Houston) came in for a business meeting. I thought I’d get a pic cus’ I thought that it would be funny to have the big bad coach of a pro sports team getting a pic (even if it is a horrid post-camping photo) with a tranny

Carolyn called me around 4 to see if I wanted to do a trip down to Galveston for the evening. The first thing we did was to stop at the ruins of the pirate, Jean Lafitte’s home. As seems to be our karma, Carolyn and I found ourselves exploring yet another creepy place. The ruins are surrounded by a large fence with barbed wire at the top and a huge padlocked gate. Interestingly, the gate was open when we got there and in we went!

Afterwards, we headed for the beach:

I came across 3 ghost towns today. I also got way too close to a brown bear for a pic (which wasn’t a bright thing to do). All in all the trip has been enjoyable even if the hotel that I made a reservation at “lost” it and I’m subsequently staying in a motel that reminds me of several psycho-killer movies.

So, here are some of the pics:

This is what was left of an original building in Copperopolis, CA and is just off of Obyrnes Ferry Rd.

Next is the town, Camp Chinese, CA. After looking around on the internet, I found out that this city is the location of the first Tong War on American soil. The Tongs seem to be the Chinese mafia (like the Japanese Yakuza). Here is Main Street in Camp Chinese:

Here is the picture of the bear:

And a few pics of nature:

The following is – without a doubt – the best ghost town I’ve ever seen…

Here is the church:

Here is the inside of some of the houses:

Inside of the bar:

Inside the school:

Here’s a few shots of the town (Bodie) itself:

The last family to live in the town seems to have abandoned the place in the early 70s. Also, from what I could find, it is said that the last inhabitants had a habit of staging little vignettes in the abandoned homes so that they wouldn’t feel so alone. The high altitude ghost town is remarkably preserved and the eccentricity of last inhabitants makes it seem as if the town was in the middle of life as usual and was suddenly ruptured away leaving a Twilight Zone-like town suspended in time.