PBW: Savage Vandals

For this week's Photo Blog Wednesday, I found myself searching for art amid ugliness. The mysterious aftermath of trespassers partying on my dad's lot remained there when we returned this past Sunday. Though the owner of the neighboring warehouse had offered to repair his fence where the breach originated, it remained broken. Bottles, cups and cans were strewn exactly as they had been on our last visit, along with a black garbage bag, contents unknown. We still don't know where the metal frames came from; the warehouse owner denied they were his.

So, after getting a healthy amount of “before” shots, we set about filling garbage bags of our own. I found a discarded flashlight, which explained how they could see back there. With some difficulty we lugged the metal frames into the warehouse property. If the volume of alcohol wasn't evidence that there were a lot of invaders, the heavy frames indicated the same. In the yard behind our property, dogs barked, and I wasted sarcasm on them. “Sure, you bark at us; where were you when this all happened?

It was a tough job, done cautiously with heavy gloves. A lot of broken glass was impossible to cull from the rocks and weeds, so I did the best I could and definitely got all the big pieces. When all was clear, we slapped a few temporary boards up to hold the fence in place, at least until its owner can properly replace it. Speaking of whom, he ironically left my dad a message later that day. “Yeah...um, I was by the property and it looks like someone cleaned it up. I...I don't know if it was you, but I said I was going to take care of it. I know you live a ways away and I was going to do you a favor. If it was you, if you do something like that, I'd appreciate a call. In the future, just call and let me know what's going on. I said those metal things weren't mine; if you were going to move them you could have put them out to the curb....”

He went on like that a bit more before our machine cut him off. I thought it was interesting that after offering to fix things, on the off chance any of his workers were the perpetrators, he doesn't swing by until two weeks later, coincidentally the same afternoon we took care of it. And if the big metal things weren't his, then some random group of people drove around with them, carried them to the back of a warehouse driveway, knocked over the fence of the neighboring property, and dragged them behind our garage.

Maybe I'm being too suspicious though. When I was a kid I wanted to be a detective. Now, I'm happy enough just taking pictures.