Haunted Lane is a crooked little street of former summer cottages from the 1920s, some charmingly decrepit, others merely decrepit. It's about a dozen or so miles out of central Philadelphia, in the first municipality outside the city line (
map). Here we're about half a mile up from where it joins the Delaware River, so even though I grew up at least an hour from the ocean, I got tides right in my back yard. My dad's grandfather had this as a summer place and eventually retired here; he let it go to seed, died, and then his widow sold it to my newlywed parents. After this neglect and several floods, the worst of which was Hurricane Floyd, it's not quite structurally stable. It's due to be knocked down and replaced with what the plans promise is a tasteful, old fashioned kit cottage with a porch, lots of windows, and cedar shakes.
Trivia: Back in the 80s, after Andalusia, Cornwells Heights, Bridgewater, and a bunch of older buroughs merged with their rapidly-developing hinterlands to create Bensalem, the township tried to change the name of the street. My side of the street fought it, and now the other side of Bristol Pike is "Totem Road".
Here's some photos I took back around Thanksgiving, during our very warm autumn and after many weeks of rainy days. They're in chronological order, with the crappiest ones taken out. Sorry for the blurriness, but it was my brother's crapola digital that couldn't handle the slightest hand movement. I thought some of them were good in spite of that, so I included them.
Enjoy, and please feel cree to offer criticism and advice! I'm looking forward to contributing more photos once I'm more comfortable with the camera I got for Christmas.
1. My neighbors' house. Underneath half a dozen additions, this was originally a boat shed. I kind of wish my parents had bought it when it was for sale a few years ago:
2. Front step of my house. I made this out of fireman's brick I found in the backyard:
3. Coming to the back of the yard, this is the first view your eye is drawn to:
4. slack tide:
5. this is only a foot or so above normal high tide. I have a personal stake in climate change, since this property is more or less AT sea level, and might not be inhabitable by the time I inherit it:
6. bulkhead, bench with log from a previous flood:
7. Northeast Corridor bridge over Neshaminy Creek, used by Amtrak, Septa, NJ Transit Clockers and the increasyingly rare occasional freight train. Bristol Pike bridge piers visible behind. We'll come back to this bridge.
8. other houses, other neighbor's gazebo and not-entirely-tacky concrete classical art:
9. lens flare:
10. wall:
11. tree reflection angle:
12. what's that noise? a 4-car R7:
13. ant circuitry:
14. 2-car R7- only clear train shot, sorry
. lots of trains at rush hour
15. back towards house:
16. light gets darker, view downstream gets even more saturated:
17. waterfront:
18. MAXIMUM LENS FLARE:
19. corner of bulkhead. this was kind of fun to walk on:
20. Amtrak train pulled by two locomotives:
21. cars- this time the bridge is in focus, but the train i'snt:
22. Acela- trains every couple minutes this time of day:
23. how the world looks to Canadian geese:
24. how the world looks to 5-foot-10 homos:
25. they paved over my yard with mercury:
26. beautiful:
27. somewhere underneath there is my parent's bedroom and a chimney- damn blur!
28. an honest portrait- it's nicer on the inside:
29. attempt 2: more zoomed in, still blurry:
30. these are real. Tons of interesting stuff scattered around the property- when my parents moved in, there was a bottle dump, and shed full of what appeared to be trolley parts (my namesake great-grampop worked for PTC, go figure):
31. downstream:
32. upstream:
hope you all enjoyed!