The mystery on my street…

As you might already know, I just love the spooky, unsettling aura that an abandoned property can convey. Something about the broken windows staring down into the street and climbing vines slowly eating away at the wooden siding evokes a sense of mystery and even horror. Who lived in this house? Are they still alive and if so, why did they leave…or did they?

Just a block from my apartment, there is a recently abandoned home that is so overgrown with plants and in such a state of neglect, you’d think it’s been blighted for decades. This home offered shelter for lost souls only five years ago when the levees failed. Spray-painted letters still blare to anyone who needs to know there’s a “hot shower & beds” and “pets okay” and my favorite, “Hotel Isle of Dry.” The painter also reports that “Joe’s mom is alive & well” and the author is at the “2nd District Station” which is on Magazine Street and Napoleon Avenue.

I only lived in this neighborhood a year before the mess and I didn’t know a lot of my neighbors back then. I suppose I could ask my next-door neighbor Raoul, but I kind of like not knowing.

In fact, this is the only abandoned property I’ve seen that incites in me the desire to renovate. I want to tear down the drooping wooding fence, clean the rusty iron railing and clear out all the vines.  I would love nothing more than to fix the broken windows and toss the strange debris that has accumulated in the yard.  I want to live here.

Then I will solve its mysteries for myself.