It's Unofficially Summer!

Happy Memorial Day from the Backside Gang:



(Photo by David Burke, Portland, CT, late '90s)

Junkyard Blues

From Dave Brigham:

Today is the Indy 500. I'm not a racing fan, but I did take a spin around the famed Indianapolis track in a bus back in 1988. We don't have any stock car photos or anything related to the big event here at the Backside. But I did stumble across this video of various junkyard shots, accompanied by a really nice backwoods country music soundtrack by Jerry Reed.

Call it an ironic tribute to the Indy 500, but it's a tribute nonetheless.

The Salton Sea

From Joe Viger:

California's largest lake is surrounded by desert in the Imperial Valley. The Salton Sea is also one of the largest inland seas in the world, covering about 375 square miles, and one of the lowest points on earth at 227 feet below sea level.

It was formed by accident from 1905 to 1907 when the Colorado River burst at its seams and flooded the low-lying plain. The Sea has virtually no outlflow and is fed by rivers that wind through the farming communities of the valley. The result was in the 1970's the water developed a remarkably high saline content, approaching 4.4%. The only fish that can thrive in that environment are tilapia. Dried salt covers the shoreline and everything near. Floods are common.

Red Hill, CA

The Salton Sea has been a story of boom to bust that directly parallels the story of the environment here. Just 40 miles south of Palm Springs, it became known as the Salton Rivera and was a playground for celebrities. Jerry Lewis and the Marx brothers were regulars in the 1950's and '60's. Yacht clubs, beaches and vacation homes were developed. Sonny Bono learned to waterski here and National Wildlife Refuge properties on the lake bear his name.

Today, things are a little different. The communities around the Salton Sea are littered with abandoned buildings. Some have been flooded and all show the amazing effects of water, salt, neglect and time.

The Salton Sea is truly one of the strangest places I have ever been. The water is a color difficult to compare to anything else. The salt-fringed shore gives things an otherworldly look. People continue to live there. It is common to see a well-kept trailer with a car and a dune buggy in the drive circled in chain link fence and all the neighboring properties are abandoned, torn apart and covered in graffiti.

There is hope to redevelop the area. Recently an abandoned yacht club was converted to a museum and community center. Plans costing millions and millions and millions have been presented to try to remediate the water problems of the Sea. We'll have to wait and see if boom to bust turns back to a new golden age for the French Rivera of California.

Bombay Beach, CA

Bombay Beach, CA

Bombay Beach, CA

Salton Sea Beach, CA

Salton Sea Beach, CA

Salton Sea Beach, CA

Salton Sea Beach, CA

Salton Sea Beach, CA

Salton Sea Beach, CA

Salton Sea Beach, CA

Read more here and here. The trailer below is narrated by John Waters and offers some insight into what locals think about the Salton Sea.

Weare Is the Owner?

From Heidi Waugaman-Page:

I took these pictures during an excursion to Weare, NH. These images are of an old garage and house across the street that have had no activity since I moved to Deering eight years ago. I always love stopping by and just looking in the windows at all the cars that someone apparently loved a long time ago. Now the place is falling apart more each year and it’s a shame that the autos are, too.

Backside TV

From Dave Brigham:

A few years ago, I watched several episodes of The History Channel's "Cities of the Underworld." Over the course of three seasons, the show's hosts, Eric Geller for half of season one, and Don Wildman (can that possibly be his real name?) for the remainder of the run, visited Hitler's underground lair, Paris's catacombs of death, secret Soviet bases, Egypt's Tomb of the Lost Mummies, Alcatraz Down Under and numerous other subterranean places.

Wildman's hosting style was a bit melodramatic, but the locations he visited were fascinating. Tonight, Wildman debuts a new show, "Off Limits," on Travel Channel (9:00 ET). In the show, Wildman visits U.S. locations including: Los Angeles, where he "penetrates a former Nazi military compound, uncovers clandestine oil rigs in seemingly normal neighborhoods, and kayaks down the LA River," according to the show's web site; San Francisco, in which he "checks into the abandoned Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, once occupied by Scientology creator and patient L. Ron Hubbard;" and Seattle, which he views from the outer rim of the Space Needle.

Check out a sneak peek here.

No Diving

From Dave Brigham:

After spending $200 million to build a state-of-the-art high school for kids on the north side of the city, my adopted hometown of Newton, MA, needed to knock down the school's 37-year-old predecessor. Yes, the old Newton North High School was built in 1973 and already it's (almost) history. And, yes, the new building cost more than any other high school ever in the long and distinguished history of Massachusetts.

My wife (NNHS Class of '85) regularly goes past the high school on her morning runs. She clued me in recently that, after a long delay due in part to the need to remove asbestos, the old school was coming down. So I drove by and snapped a few quick picks of the old pool, which in its heyday was located inside the school.



Now, instead of being filled with alluring blue water, it's been defiled by rain water and old bricks that used to protect swimmers and their fans.



I wish I could have gotten closer. Didn't have my zoom lens, unfortunately.

Store 13

From Joe Viger:

Shades drawn and warped. Paint peeled and cracked. A private drive secured by Honeywell. A brick foundation on bad luck at Store 13 is a one way ticket to the Backside of America. No chew today.


Bartlett, NH

UPDATE: Delivery Time

Thanks to Backside fan "JBT," we learned a little more about the old milk truck that Mick Melvin posted about earlier this week (see May 3, 2011, "Delivery Time.")

JBT commented: "They sell AC Petersen Farm's Ice Cream in the Ice Cream parlor there. Evidently the owners saw this old truck rusting away at the old ACP Farm in Bloomfield so they bought it to display it in the lot of the mini golf venue."

Thanks JBT!

Delivery Time

From Mick Melvin:



My wife suggested I go take some pictures of an old milk truck she spied in Farmington, CT. We took the trip down Route 4 to Farmington Miniature Golf and Ice Cream Parlor. I played miniature golf with my wife and niece about two years earlier and didn't even notice the truck. I don't know how I could have missed the bright orange truck parked outside of the parlor, but I did miss it. The truck is evidently decorated during various holidays. When we first saw it, it had a lighted shamrock sign attached to the side.



I'm glad she suggested going to this spot. I was instantly transported to an earlier time. I actually remember milk being delivered to my house in Pennsylvania from the Becthel's Dairy. I still remember anticipating delivery day. I loved going out to the porch and retrieving the glass bottles from the box when it was my turn.



The orange A.C. Petersen milk truck is definitely more colorful than the plain white Becthel's milk truck, but I'm sure if I ever see a Becthel's truck, I will have the same nostalgic feeling. I have no idea how long this orange truck has been parked in front of the ice cream parlor, but I do know that as long as it's parked there, it will bring many of us back to what seemed to be a simpler time.

Raison d'Etre

From Dave Brigham:

In Joe Viger’s excellent post from earlier this week (see 4-24-11, “Five Gallons at a Time”), he mentions that a friend who is a fan of The Backside of America recently asked him, “But do you ever feel like it’s a bunch of rich folks gawking at the poor, decrepit parts of society?” Rightfully so, Joe said it’s a reasonable question, considering that some of what we post here falls under the rubric of “ruin porn.”

While Joe concedes in his post that, “there is someone’s tragedy inherent in the ruination of these buildings and objects that somehow we find so pleasurable,” he also correctly points out that much of what we do here “transcends ruin porn.”

Seeing as how we’ve just passed the 100-post mark, this seems like a good time to talk about the reasons I launched this blog.

First and foremost is a desire to document the history in our midst. Every dilapidated building was once new, each abandoned and rusting car in the woods has a story of how it got there. For every stretch of railroad track overgrown with weeds there are thousands of rail cars that once carried freight or passengers to important destinations. Amusement parks left to rot once brought smiles to the faces of children and adults alike. Stores that fell victim to changing economic times and new shopping behaviors, once provided steady paychecks. Drive-in theaters whose screens are slowly falling victim to vegetation creep once brought in carloads of teenagers to watch double features such as “Last House on the Left” and “Slumber Party Massacre.”

I’ve lived in New England nearly my entire life. Vacant buildings don’t stay that way for long. Space is at a premium, so developers swoop in on abandoned or long-neglected properties and knock them down to build something shiny and new. By taking pictures of such properties before their destruction or renovation, we preserve a piece of the past, telling the public, “Hey, there used to be a factory on that spot, and immigrant workers from last century made watches there, and it was world famous.”

Archeology is another major interest of mine. Through this scientific pursuit, we learn about cultures and peoples by what they left behind: foundations of buildings, cooking and hunting tools, pottery, bits of clothing, and, perhaps most tellingly and voluminously, garbage.

I was amazed during an Amtrak trip last week to New York City at just how much garbage there is along the route. Pawtucket, RI, in particular struck me as a place literally lined with dumps, junkyards, run-down houses and endless streams of trash dumped over the sides of small hills and cascading down toward the tracks. Noticed it just north of New York City, too – tires, appliances, clothing, food packaging, newspapers, you name it, the stuff was tossed over fences by uncaring people.

I wonder what will become of this stuff. Will anyone every clean it up? Or has it become so much a part of the landscape that people don’t notice anymore? Archeologists and anthropologists of the future will have a field day, that’s for sure.

I found myself repeatedly during the three-and-a-half hour train trip wishing I could get off the train, and walk the tracks with my camera to document it all.

And not just the garbage. There are so many decrepit industrial and housing complexes along the route in Bridgeport, CT, for instance, that I just became numb. Yes, there is a rubbernecking attitude inherent in what we do. Having been raised in a comfortable middle-class town in Connecticut, and currently living in a similar place outside Boston, I can’t relate to life in failing mill towns and run-down industrial has-beens.

But I don’t document these places, and ask contributors to this site to do the same, because of some prurient interest. I do so in hopes of showing (as we have done on occasion) how low a place can get before it gets rescued. For instance, last August, Dave Hill posted pictures of abandoned buildings that were once part of Fort Andrews on Peddocks Island in Boston Harbor (see August 27, 2010, "Shuttered Island"). Then, this past February, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation announced plans to rehab roughly half the buildings on the island, with an eye toward turning the facilities into a public campground, and possibly in the future, a place for corporate retreats, a bed and breakfast and festivals (see February 24, 2011, "Shuttered Island: Update").

Last October, we updated the status of the infamous Butt-Ugly building in Hartford, Connecticut (see October 28, 2010, "UPDATE: Butt-Ugly Building"). The city purchased the building and began soliciting developers at that time. This is always what we hope for here: document a place that looks beyond help, and that fascinates us in its decay, but that ultimately gets rescued or, when need be, gets removed and the area gets revitalized.

Another factor I take into consideration is anthropology. I’m a shy guy, always have been, always will be, and feel most comfortable among friends and family. Still, I am fascinated by various subcultures, from bikers, hobos and carnies, to private school kids, European royalty and supermodels. While I’m not confident enough (yet) in my photography to approach people, rather than buildings, I would love to document folks from these walks of life. Joe Viger has to date posted the only picture with actual living, breathing human beings here, in an early post titled “Backside People”. Consider this notice to all current and future Backside contributors that I’d really like to see more of this type of work at the blog.

I also like to explore the borders of society, where often things get shoved from public view. Where the train tracks meet the gated community; where a dilapidated factory sits between nicely fixed-up houses; where machine shops butt up against rivers; where rusting cars meet wildlife, that’s where I like to tread. I don’t get to do that as much as I’d like, and often times such areas are hard (or illegal) to access.

Certainly behind many of the places we’ve documented here, there is tragedy: lost jobs, crushed dreams, environmental damage, perhaps even illness and death. Trash-filled school buses used as shelter by homeless people; graffiti-covered, abandoned military facilities hidden behind chain-link fences; one-time thriving race tracks gone to seed.

None of us would deny that. But we capture these images because they are unusual, or graphic or beautiful or thought-provoking. Why did people stop going to watch the nags? Which skateboarder first had the idea to start doing ollies, boardslides and boneless moves in a drained pool next to a shuttered motel on Cape Cod? When did that coal breaker go silent, and how many people lost their jobs?

When I see a former watch factory complex in Waltham that a friend told me was supposed to be turned into condos, I envision the people who worked there 100 years ago. I see a thriving business that employed dozens or even hundreds of people, many of them likely immigrants. I think, “Those immigrants were probably Italian or Polish or German, and probably lived lives similar to the Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants who now live near the old plant, and who work hard every day doing landscaping or restaurant work, trying to make it in a new country and afraid of being hassled or deported, just like immigrants down through time.”

Of course, not everything on the backside of America is ugly or rusty or falling apart or dangerous. I have always intended for this blog to also document the beautiful elements that are off the beaten track, the hidden gems such as diners tucked into quiet neighborhoods on Cape Cod (see July 28, 2010, "Two Hearts Beat As One"), solitary fireplaces standing sentry along walking paths in Connecticut (see June 17, 2010, "Smoke Signals From the Past") or anachronistic, but operational, phone booths (see April 6, 2010, "Drop a Dime?" and April 11, 2011, "The Dough Boy & the Phone Booth").

OK, that’s way too many words without pictures, I know. With spring upon us, I’m gonna get back out there and start snapping.

Five Gallons at a Time

From Joe Viger:

A friend recently told me that they loved The Backside of America blog and then asked, "But do you ever feel like it's a bunch of rich folks gawking at the poor, decrepit parts of society?" It's a reasonable question. A lot of the posts here on the Backside are what is sometimes described as "Ruin Porn." We find fascination, interest and beauty in the old and abandoned. And, if you stop and think about it, there is someone's tragedy inherent in the ruination of these buildings and objects that somehow we find so pleasurable.

Just about a year and one month ago Dave put up the inagural post of our quaint little blog. Dig into the archives and give it a read because it is a great post (or you can just click this: Take Me to the River -- ed.) Dave described a canoe trip with his Dad that brought him down a river, viewing familiar scenes from the backside instead of his normal vantage point on the main street. He wrote, ” I saw the town from a whole new angle. Nothing was familiar, and nothing was as attractive from the back as it was from the front."

This was essentially Dave's pitch to me to contribute to the blog and the idea has always stuck with me. It transcends ruin porn. It's about how often there is a story underneath the popular thing or the degrading building. Get off Main Street and take a look around. In America, things aren't always what they seem. It's beautiful and interesting and sometimes sad. But I like to think The Backside of America is also a tribute. An acknowledgement of past or unnoticed ideas, buildings, institutions, businesses and, most importantly to me, people. They all look different from the Backside and we don't always bother to truly see.

And with that... I recently had a Backside experience.



A while back I checked the heating oil tank in my basement and, with the weather warming, was pleased to have half a tank. Two weeks later I was on empty. Typical. Annoyed that there must be something wrong with my oil tank's gauge but thankful that my burner was still running and heat and hot water was flowing, I dove onto the phone to get oil. Unfortunately, with a spring snow storm and the weekend upon us, nobody was delivering. It would be a few days.

The last oil company I called was a local, small outfit and the kind woman on the phone said she would talk to her boss. When she came back on the line, she told me they would in fact deliver but it would be an extra $250 for an emergency delivery. "Why don't you just put some kerosene or diesel in your tank until you can get a delivery?" She said. "I work here and even I just did that. But use kerosene, it burns cleaner". I vaguely remembered that you could substitute kerosene for heating oil, but had never done it and didn't know anyone who did. You always just call the oil company and buy a couple hundred gallons.

I've built my own house, but in general I'm not a mecahnical guy and I was somehow dubious of substituting anything for heating oil. But, I dug around in the garage and found a five-gallon steel jerry can and off into the snowstorm I went. We were due for a foot of snow, I was late for work and I wanted to get this over with. On my second trip back to the store for another five gallon refill, I noticed someone was filling a container of kerosene as I drove in.

While I waited, I went into the store, where I go with some regularity. Inside I found the usual clerk, a tiny woman from Kentucky with a big, friendly personality and plenty of drawl in her voice. She said "Back again!?" as I walked in the door. I told her about my broken oil tank gauge and asked her to ring up another $18 worth of kerosene. She laughed telling me she pretty much heats her house all year that way, "five gallons at a tiiiiiiime". I laughed back and she told me that the "fella out there right now" comes in all the time to get kerosene for his house, too.

The pump slowed down as the kerosene filled my jug and it seemed like it took forever to tick off the last few cents. $17.96... 97... 98... 99... $18.00. Looking at those numbers and wondering why a woman who works for an oil company would use five or 10 gallons of kerosene in her oil burner, I realized how lucky I am. Kerosene is about cash flow. For me that day, I didn't want to get hit with a big emergency fee. But for the salt of the earth cashier, this was every week. $20 for some K1 vs. $500 for delivery of a full tank of oil. For some people, this just doesn't work and never will. I'm an atheist, but God bless the folks who heat their homes five gallons at a time. They're hard working people trying to make it and if you don't have to do this all winter remember how lucky you are.