The "Abandoned Parking Lot"

 

(Oren and Ryker surveying the abandoned lot; 10 March 2023 6:18 pm)

     What is the charm of places from long ago? Why do the spaces where things once were, or events once happened, continue to draw us? I don't know, I'm sure there are some pretty good scientific guesses out there but I'm certainly not going to claim any one to be true. I'll just say what one of these places was for my family and I. 

      The lot here is actually a lot bigger and has way more concrete than this picture lets on. It used to be a hospital annex building that was surrounded by a concrete parking lot and one of those pull in/drop off front entrances that most hospitals have these days. I'm not sure why it closed down and was subsequently demolished but the main hospital it served is still located across the street. the shrubby area in the background is where the building used to be, on top of some sort of massive crawl space without a real solid foundation. Basically its a city block of concrete with a square-ish hole in the middle where there is now a western Texas desert type micro ecosystem of rocky soil and shrub plants that has long been cared for. Even the concrete shows of it's age and decay with it's many crack, bumps, humps and chipped corners.

     This, for my family, was a kind of a safe place and somewhere we wanted to go when the outside world was nice. The lot was only a few hundred meters from the front door of our house and little to no cars ever drove through the lot. Our own driveway was too steep for any real play on scooters so I often took the boys here to scooter around on their plastic Radio Flyer 3-wheel scooter's that my mom had bought them. Even without the scooters this lot was a destination of choice for my boys who were more than happy to play "balance" on the parking bump stops and collect coins, bottle caps or whatever little trash they could sneak back to the house. For me it was somewhat of an escape. I could stretch before/after a run here. I practiced low speed motorcycle maneuvers there occasionally. It had a beautiful sunrise some mornings that I enjoyed in the (mostly) quiet mornings every now and then.

     In this picture my boys are looking out into the not so vast expanse of wild. They are wearing some really beat up sandals if you zoom in that endured an unknown number of miles on the hot Texas pavement. It is kind of a tradition for us to get the boys new sandals at the onset of warmer weather from Sketchers; by the time they are ready for new pairs they often look just like the ones in this picture: well worn and dirty! Although this picture was taken in March, and despite the fact they are both wearing pants, I'm sure it was still at least 75 F outside. (Pretty cool for Texas!) 

     There, off to the right of the big blurry oak tree, is another smaller oak tree. A post oak tree to be exact! A very common tree to the area that doesn't grow to be gigantic like other species of oaks and takes quite awhile to grow to any size of note. Anyways... there is a shrubby post oak tree in the lot that has a GeoCache nestled in the crook of it's main branches. I think it was an old pill bottle with a wet piece of paper in it when I first found it, which I replaced entirely at one point. Not a very exciting GeoCache but it was very accessible so it had more than a few visitors. 

     The only events that ever happened in the lot was the occasional farmers market that an older couple ran every weekend or so. I forget, but they did have a regular schedule where they would sit and sell what they had. I'm not sure I ever saw more than one or two people there at a time but they must have made at least enough money to keep coming back for the 3 years I lived down the street. I'm not sure we ever bought anything from them, but we would wave when walked by. 

     When I wander about, with the family or not, one of the main things I do is look for wildlife. Mostly looking for reptiles or amphibians because that it what our family is most interested in. Always trying to score a catch, a picture and at the very least a sighting of an animal to tell my family about. Sadly, the lot was not exactly a great place for wildlife. I never saw any snakes, and I don't recall seeing any lizards or frogs. There were birds, of course, but not any animals we would have considered interesting. 

     On two of four sides the lot is bordered by wood fences (and one very fancy metal one) from houses on the street we lived on. We didn't live on the lot side of the street so we had to walk around the street to get there; what a dream it would have been to have a house with a back gate to an abandoned lot! We had a few usual dogs that would greet or bark at us, mostly the latter, and the occasional cat. There was a series of fences that had very overgrown bushes/vines that produced beautiful leaves and flowers during the year. The air was sweet and cool next to them in the summer/spring and I took a good photo of them once. I loved to see the plants literally spilling over the fence and onto the concrete by a few feet...

     As of last week, the lot remains unused. The for sale/lease sign that used to be there is gone. I used to dream that one day maybe a church would be planted there and we could become members there if we retired back in our old neighborhood. Still a dream.