I’m still on my song title thing. I will get over it—promise. I also have lots to tell you, my non-existent readers, (well no one leaves comments, so are you computer generated by the hosting company to keep me writing, or do you exist?) about our next stop—Middletown Psychiatric Center. I actually did write about it, earlier in the week, but then thought better about posting it. I need to rewrite it. Until then, and because I have very little free time and I’m desperate to get my last gallery from the trip finished—I offer you this—Middletown confusion.

This is how hard it is to find places. Be thankful you’re not an Australian and confronted with these road signs whilst in my beloved USA. It’s tough.

Since my last post about Wheatsworth Mill I have actually been good and done some research. And I’m sorry to say I still can’t tell you a whole lot. I have uncovered the mill has a colorful work history (like me), and I know it served a variety of purposes throughout its life, (unlike me, I’m just a boring human, still trying to work out my purpose).

At present, I believe it was built in 1808 (which makes it 201 years old—older than me, old huh?), while the Gingerbread Castle was built in 1928-30. I like to verify anything I find on the web, so don’t take these dates as gospel. If and when I get around to a New Jersey book it seems as though I will have to visit a local historical society or make multiple phone calls (which is always an adventure in itself) to get the real facts.

I try/like to, whether I succeed or not remains to be seen, make my blog entries light hearted. I was all upset about the Rosewood wheelchair graveyard, so that one wasn’t too much fun. But since then I’ve tried to look at the funny side of my adventures—and trust me they are mostly funny. However, every now and then I get thinking about what I really think—try and work that statement out—you’ll get a Nobel Prize if you do. And so what do I really think about Wheatsworth Mill?

I think once upon a time we cared about what we built. In 1808 we weren’t tying to be environmentally aware, god knows that mill probably polluted the river beyond repair, but we/someone cared about the aesthetics of industrial buildings and the environment in which people worked. Think of the industrial buildings we’ve built during and since the industrial revolution—ugly, ugly, ugly—there’s no other word for them—windowless, brick monoliths of despair. I think there is a positive change occurring and we will revert back to blending with the environment rather than creating a stand off with it.

I get all excited about some of the architecture of the places we find, along with a multitude of other things. My exploring partner gets all excited about complete sentences (she’s a little crazy, but then who am I to talk). In her defense she also loves the architecture, but if she finds a complete sentence written on something like a packing carton then it’s hard to contain her. I have to admit, I laugh—but she’s a writer and a writing professor, so I get it. And I’m a staunch proponent of each to his/her own. And besides she puts up with me ooohing and ahhhing over the most ridiculous things—like a chair with a book lying open on its seat.

And the chair with a book consumed a lot of my camera’s memory card.

I was at the theatre the other night and in the dying minutes of the last act, the main character, who collected many, many things, during the Nazi occupation—I’m not going to do play review here—spoke of the things she had collected. Her words echoed my thoughts—how I feel/think about what I see in the abandonments I visit. She lovingly cradled miniatures, resembling the furniture and objects that were a part of her museum and she explained how they weren’t just things or objects. She passionately told us how people, real people, sat in her collected chairs, they slept in the beds, they played records on the phonographs, they gathered at the tables, everything in her museum resonated with the essence of these people. People give inanimate objects life. If you don’t believe me clutch a loved one’s possession after they’ve died and you’ll understand the concept.

The chair at Wheatsworth Mill, which I took too many photos of— the chair with the book lying open upon its seat with the title page exposed and which I didn’t touch out of respect— resonated with someone’s essence. The book was entitled Three Loves. I hope she finished it. I hope she found one love.

Just as an aside, before I get into the Wheatsworth Mill/Castle story, I realized when I wrote the title of this entry, it’s a song title, well it is if I add an ‘s’ to castle. Same as the first entry about the NY trip if you add ‘on the road’ to six days. This wasn’t intentional, and I thought it was kinda funny when I realized what I’d done (I’m easily amused). Some people love playing with numbers, for me it’s words, and as far as trivia goes, just give me a few lyrics and I’ll tell you the song. Ohh if only my brain was as good at doing constructive money-making things. But alas it is not, so back to my other non-money-making passion, photographing abandoned places.

First stop on the way to NY was a mill in NJ.

As we rounded the bend, of a quiet, snow-ploughed country road, which crossed a narrow bridge, our target loomed impressively. I was my usual excited self. Clutching Natalie, the GPS thingy, (I decided the GPS needed a name, she worked really hard during my thesis, so the little black box became Natalie Navigator) I announced “ohh, wow, look at that, that’s gotta be it.” Of course it was — how could a humongous oversized abandoned castle, covered with several extraordinarily large “no trespassing” signs, posted by the town — be anything else? To add to my excitement it was one hundred times more visually interesting than it looked on Google satellite. I was thrilled.

I have to spend some time finding out who actually designed and built this mill. At the time of writing this I can’t tell you one historically useful thing. All I know is, it's well over a hundred years old. But what I can tell you is I would very much like to take whatever it was he/she was on when they designed this structure because this place is fantasy stuff.  And I wouldn’t mind being in on the fantasy.

I have explored several mills, and many, many industrial buildings and I can assure you they don’t look like this. This place was really a castle. A very, very, big castle – turrets, beautiful balconies, intricate details, it was strangely surreal. What added to the surreal feeling of the mill was the oddly situated (right next door, no more than a hundred feet away) and also abandoned, bizarre, mini amusement park sort-of–attraction.  Apparently it’s officially known as the Gingerbread Castle (maybe the big castle had a baby castle) —maybe the whole town was on something— who knows— but Humpty Dumpty kept a watchful eye on our activities— what more can I say. I will leave it up to your imaginations, mine is overactive at any time. I have, however, never, ever, in all my explorations had the benefit of Humpty’s watchful eye. Thanks Humpty.

We parked directly opposite the mill in a car park for some other type of historic attraction thing. I think it was an iron works. Again I have to do my research. Sometimes it’s really helpful to just sit and stare at the target and ponder. So we pondered. Ohh, and ate lunch because we were starving.

The mill was surrounded by a very high wire fence, and BIG no trespassing signs. The fence wasn’t in my plans, nor were the signs so I was a little surprised, I mean for god’s sake we were in the middle of nowhere so who would be stupid enough to go into a falling down, fire ravaged, building. I couldn’t understand why they needed a fence or such BIG signs. As you’ve probably guessed the signs disturbed me. It’s not like I haven’t seen a lot of "no trespassing" signs — but just to remind you these were BIG.

But we made it in! And now I’m out of blog word space so I’m going to have to break my rule and say “to be continued…..”

This post has been on my list because I was silly enough to write, "to be continued" when I started it (I will never do that again, my memory just isn’t what it used to be). I’ve also been sidetracked with other, more immediate, exploring like my/our walkabout to NY state (should I say we/our when Americans’ don’t go walkabout, it is an aussieism? ohh well I will be eternally confused by grammar and the words we/our) and I haven't thought about anything else but the photos I shot there since.

I'm not going to write anything more about our escape from Henryton’s clutches. There is no need for me to add anything to what my exploring partner has written here:

http://volition501.blogspot.com/2009/01/henryton-ii.html

Her account is perfectly accurate and wonderfully written and gets me out of a blog entry I don’t want to have to think about. I really just want to chat about NJ and NY.

I’m thrilled Colin (my hero) has turned up. He posted a reply earlier. And I know I have a tendency to be flippant and it often gets misinterpreted, but I am honestly so grateful to him. It was a couple of days before xmas when we got a little stuck (an understatement) and the thought of leaving my car behind was very scary (I hadn’t finished xmas shopping). I really didn’t want to go the bolt cutter route, but would have, and I would like to thank the friends who were on the way with them. Colin saved us from that, and as I’ve said I am forever grateful. I’m a very polite explorer and I have no desire to change my ways — I’ve never broken a thing, and I hope I will never have to.

So, enough! I’ve escaped a Henryton entry/explanation, although it now seems I've given one anyway. So now I will go back to thinking about what to tell you about our 6-day abandonment odyssey. What fun!

Five locations, a movie, a college campus and lessons learned. Lesson number one: we cannot physically, mentally or any other “ly” do more than four locations per trip. Lesson number 2: I must not insist we do two locations on one day, regardless of how many assurances I give that I will leave location one at a reasonable hour, I will not. Lesson number 3: See lesson number one — do not do location five just because “we’re there” — the middle-aged human body can only do so much and too much results in a bear-with-a-sore-head attitude that lasts days after the return.

Today, however, I’m back to normal. This morning is the first morning I haven’t woken up with a splitting headache due to my shoulder and neck being all out of whack from location five. If only I knew when to stop. But life is full of if only’s and I would do the entire trip again in a heartbeat. I just pity anyone who tries to have a conversation with me for 48 hours after my return.

When we initially planned this trip we decided on nine locations, we slimmed it down to six because of time restraints, I have no idea what we were thinking. We were dead on our feet after four. The weather forced us to take New Year’s Eve off, we had originally planned to shoot during the day then spend the evening in New York City, but the snow and temperature’s, which I don’t even want to think about in Celsius, helped us make the decision to stay in Poughkeepsie one more night and do location five before heading home.

I have to admit my decision to stay was heavily influenced by the very spacious and very comfortable hotel room we had inadvertently wound up in. I was in hotel heaven. Flat screen TV, couch, recliner, desk, wireless Internet, massive room. In general I hate hotel rooms but this one was a very cool home-away-from-home. It made staying that one extra day an easy decision to make, for me, anyway, my fellow explorer was ready to call it a day and head home. I know she only stayed because of my obsession with shooting a Kirkbride hospital. I am grateful for her tenacity, for her not whining and for not grumbling at me. I would grumble at me.

So, we successfully conquered, a mill, two hospitals, a resort and a school —arrest and somewhat injury free. Each is worthy of a separate blog entry. Their histories, their architecture and the feelings they invoked are as individual as they are. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have photographed them. I can say with some certainty some won’t be around much longer and with their inevitable demise another part of our past will be erased.