Dave Wright Writes

  Dilapidated Home by Dave Wright [Fall 1975] A bold-faced NO TRESPASSING sign hung from an aluminum gate that barricaded the driveway to the farmstead. A tangled mass of barbed wire fell away from each side of the gate. To the right, crooked fence posts wandered into an overgrown wood. Prickly ash, buckthorn and ironwood poked through an assortment of rusting machinery—a dismantled manure spreader with two flat tires, a rusting combine buried to its axel, and a faded Minneapolis Moline tractor with a torn seat. To the left of the gate, the jagged fence line fell into a road ditch, its woven wire obscured by thistle and cocklebur. The setting sun cast long shadows across the lot from the barn, once regal red—now a weathered grey skeleton. A gust of wind caught the lower half of a barn door. Its single hinge screeched as it closed halfway. A roofless silo, overgrown with Virginia creeper stood vacant next to the barn. The porous slats of a corn crib rose above the far side of the c