Borderwieck Road, and other points

old ramshackle house

The old house is a survivor. Easily built in the late 19th or early 20th century, she is tenaciously  hanging on to the last gasp. Recently, for reasons unbeknown to us, she was spared the terrible blade of the bulldozer which cleared the land on which she sits. Someone wanted her left standing. Since they aren’t building many dog-trot houses these days, leaving her be is a good thing. You can see more pictures of this old home on the Photo of the Week page at Corndancer dot com where the story started. Click here to go there, a very cool thing to do.

The home place is strategically placed nearly on the top of a hill, otherwise known as the “military crest” on Borderwieck Road near Amity, Arkansas. Just a few yards from the house is a log barn, probably built years before the house.

Quite a bit of the log walls of the barn are intact, but weakening on a daily basis.

Like the house, the barn was constructed on the dog trot principle − two living, storage, or livestock sections separated by a breezeway. In some of the more primitive cases, the original home was a barn and family living quarters. It appears that the final use for this structure was to store used buckets. There are hundreds of buckets of all stripes stashed in the structure.

Earlier in the day, while tooling through Bismark, Arkansas, I came across the Quonset hut type building. It seems to be in use, what for I cannot tell.

Quonset huts, similar to this one were manufactured by the thousands in World Ware II. The requirement was for a simple, strong building which could be cheaply built and required few special skills to erect. The quonset hut met all of those requirements with flying colors.

Speaking of unusual buildings, this one stands for all the world to see on the southwest side of Fordyce, Arkansas. Originally it was to be a place for quick oil changes and the like. That did not work out and several other businesses gave it a whirl in the building. The last one was a trucking service headquarters. None of the subsequent tenants after the oil venture saw fit to change the colorful exterior decor.

What used to be Wayne's Oil Exchange. The sign was great. Business wasn't.

Virtually every practitioner of the visual and communication arts would find favor doing what they do best in Hollywood. At least for a while. This past weekend, my fondest hopes were realized in Hollywood. Arkansas. No zip code. But a nice place.

If you have to visit Hollywood, this one may be preferable. Me.

But wait, there’s more.

See all of the Corndancer and Weekly Grist photos in higher quality in our gallery. Click here to go there

Thanks for dropping by,

Joe Dempsey,
Weekly Grist for the Eyes and Mind
http://www.joedempseycommunications.com/
http://www.joedempseyphoto.com/
http://www.corndancer.com/joephoto/photohome.html

Advertisement