The first house we went to that morning was east of Hwy 71 way out on a B road. As we pulled into the driveway, we were confronted by two brand new closed gates. The house was visible from the gates, and, what we could see of it, it was in pretty bad condition.
Just as we were walking back toward the gate to leave, a truck drove by. Generally, we try to take cover when somebody goes by to avoid uncomfortable confrontations, but we were caught right out there in the open. The truck went driving on past, so we breathed a sigh of relief. But, as fate would have it, the guy came back, just as we were in the act of clambering over the gate. Uho...
A scraggly older guy with a bushy white beard and coke bottle glasses jumped out of the truck. His, "What are you doing?" seemed to shoot out like a machine gun. Gulp. "Well, we just enjoy going to old places and taking pictures." Once we answered gently and he found out that our mission was innocent, he cooled right down, but he was all set to chew us out if we were there for unlawful purposes.
He ended up chatting with us for a bit about the history of the house. He said that it never had running water or electricity, but Ben saw light switches. :) Also, a pile of rubble that's across the road was a house that was demolished by a tornado years ago.
In the end, he told us that it "woulda been a lot easier if you guys had come and asked if you could look around." Easy to say, but lots harder to do!
Doddering Dignity
Last traces of elegance
Just one glimpse through the yawning front door showed decay at its worst.
I think this house needs more than a jack. :)
Door handles are so photogenic. They're one of my favorite things to photograph.
A grinder?
We aren't sure, but this looked like some kind of cistern under what would have been the floor of this room.
To think that those very coat hooks held a family's coats half a century ago is amazing!
None of us wanted to venture down into the basement. It looked pretty dangerous!
The foundation was just crumbling away. It was as if you could just touched it and whole house would tumble down.
This oven was suspended precariously on the decayed floor over the basement.
Can you find Ben?
Mattress springs on what's left of the second story.
The boys crawled up a fallen tree to get into the second story.
Sorry, I don't remember what this was.
The weeds were, no kidding, about ten feet tall!
Parked out back were a couple old cars.
This is my favorite picture from this house! I love all the contrasts and the decay it portrays.
Ben found this tractor buried in weeds. He was so excited when he discovered that it was a Farmall Regular H-20, one of the very first tractors Farmall produced.
You can just barely see the Farmall logo.
Rather than using the conventional way of the door, KK crawled out the windshield. As you can see, his caboose got stuck. Whoops. :)
The view was beautiful from up there!
Once our friend left, we nipped out of there as fast as we could! Stay tuned for the next Forgotten Iowa house...
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