I started out intending to do a mini photo-essay on an abandoned school in an all but abandoned town, Beebeetown, Iowa.
The US Midwest is sprinkled very heavily with what I call "Little Home Towns", you know, those places where people are from, which are very nice places to live, but which are not particularly those places you would want to visit. :)
These will have a highway exit, "Food and Lodging", and as you approach on the local road you'll see that all of the churches welcome you, as do the local service clubs, and the local athletic team boosters. Go Panthers!
It's hard to tell if Beebeetown ever really fit this mold.
There's not that much information out there about Beebeetown!
I googled it, and got mostly those machine-generated generic pages intended to spew interminable ads toward those in search of information. "Find timeshares in Beebeetown ..." yeah, right!
It's almost as if Beebeetown doesn't exist, or never existed!
I came upon Beebeetown while out one Sunday trying to capture some of the colors of autumn, which are incredibly brilliant, as I'm sure you know.
No, I didn't try to enter the building. I'm not that adventurous. Yes, there are countless pages on the Web about "Urban Spelunking", exploring abandoned and falling-apart buildings. This isn't one of them! :)
What we have here, gang, is a ghost town being born! No, not like those where they have the honky-tonk piano in the saloon with the swinging doors, and the staged gunfights and the gift shop, what we have here is a town that once was, still continues to be, to an extent, but may be no more shortly.
Uncle Mike's, nee Ed's Place, is, or rather was a "Beer Joint", and was once the social center of the town. According to one who is from the area, they even held concerts out back when it was Ed's Place.
Dead Stuckey's, perchance? Whatever it is, or rather was, it is, or was at the Beebeetown exit of Route 80.
Oh well ...
Maybe I should just stick to shooting the colors of autumn, huh?
