Old House

This empty, abandoned house used to stand on the corner of Vineland and Kittridge. It had a surprisingly large piece of land around it, maybe as a throwback to earlier era of the neighborhood. Someone once told me that the area used to be all orange groves in the old days. The property was all fenced around, but there was a convenient hole on the fence. I was eyeing the place for weeks, and when I saw the For Sale sign put up I decided to get a move on. One afternoon I climbed through the fence to take some pictures. The house was smallish and rather quaint. There was a boarded up gazebo in the back, and another building, tool shed or garage maybe. Behind it I found an old work bench. There was graffiti on most walls.

Just a few weeks after I took the pictures, the house mysteriously burned down. I climbed through the fence again. The roof of the house was gone and part of the front wall too. I could see a white fire place in what must have once been the living room. However the pine trees and the big old weeping willows were still standing, barely touched by the fire. A few weeks later all of it - house, gazebo, trees - were bulldozed down. They were supposed to build a big apartment building on the spot, but the lot is still vacant.