Mystery

I was riding my little fold-up bicycle (the one I keep in the trunk of my truck) on the Amherst end of the bike path a few days ago, and decided to investigate a dirt path leading off toward the swamp which lies on one side of the paved path at that end. The dirt was soft and muddy in spots, and with the small wheels on that bike, pedaling was pretty difficult. But I persisted for a ways, and at one point came upon a clearing.

Apparently, there was once some sort of manmade structure there… but all that remained of it was a concrete pad and bits and pieces of rusty metal --something that might have once been an oven... 

... and a few small-diameter pipes.

I looked at the site later on Google Maps, to see if I could get any clues to what it might have been. But it was still a mystery. It seemed an odd place for a house, and also appeared to be too far away from the railroad tracks which run behind the swamp to have been some kind of rail station. It had to have been something… but what?  -- PL

Addendum 02-26-12: Thinking about it some more, I realized that the bike path itself used to be a railroad track... and that might put this mysterious ruin within a reasonable distance to be some kind of station. I should probably ask around and see if anyone knows what it was.

Pre-ruin?

A few days ago I was on the University of Massachusetts campus, stealthily making my way to my wife's office so that I could leave her a bouquet of tulips, her favorite flowers, for Valentine's Day. Having accomplished this task, I decided to take an alternate route back to where I had parked my truck.

I came across a building which I had never noticed before. I don't know if it had a name (like all the other buildings on campus), but it could very well be that most people at UMass have forgotten what that name was, given the dilapidated state of the structure.

With "No Trespassing" signs on every side of the building, broken windows and what appeared to be boarded-up doors, I would venture to say that this building is no longer used for anything. 

And given UMass' propensity for new construction, it would not surprise me if I took this route again in a couple of years and found this building gone.

Is this a ruin? Maybe not yet. Maybe this is a "pre-ruin". -- PL

"No Parking" sign in Amherst, MA

Is this a ruin?

I suppose it could be defined as such.

Look at what the sun, rain, snow, and wind has done to this sign over the years. How many years? Decades? I can't say… I don't know when it was installed in a parking lot in Amherst. 

Whiling away some minutes before an appointment last month, I noticed this sign while stretching my legs on a perambulation of the parking lot. The post to which it was attached was well on its way to being swallowed up by the riotous growth of various entangling plants. I would not be surprised if -- without any gardeners cutting back the growth -- within a year or two the sign would be completely obscured.

The letters and border on the sign appeared to have once been a bright red. Now, they were faded to the delicate pink of certain old roses. Most of the actual paint had peeled away, leaving the voids where paint once had been to take up the warning task of the sign.

Absence becoming presence. -- PL