Friday, August 10, 2012

Ghost Towns

Ghost Town,
by Edythe Hope Genee

Lingering shafts of a parching desert sun
Cast eerie shadows on the crumbling walls;
An air of brooding silence hovers close,
Unbroken by a sound or voice of man.
A door bangs loosely on a rusty hinge,
As dusk creeps forward through the purple sage,
And high Sierra, etched in saffron mist,
Press nearer to the mouldy parapets.

O songs of ages past - is this the clay
That once was Angel's Camp and Rhyolite?
When wine flowed free - when lips and laughing eyes
Flashed through these dusty desert corridors?
Where are they now - the feet that walked these streets?
Do paths of gold still lure them farther on,
Or stay their steps beneath a burning sky
To muted silence in this painted sand?


"Ghost Towns Of The West" is a great Sunset book published by Lane Magazine and Book Co. in 1971.

Bodie State Historic Park celebrates it's 5oth year as a State Park this year. Tomorrow, August 11th, is Friends Of Bodie Day. When we were at the California State Fair, a gentleman who is a volunteer there visited our booth (which was next door to the Mono county exhibit, the one with the stagecoach I showed in my post on the 4th), and he was telling us about it. I haven't been to Bodie in years. I think I'd rather go when it wasn't so danged hot.

"Big Bad Bodie" by James Watson and Doug Brodie was published by Robert D. Reed Publishers.
I think I found the "Ghost Town Atlas", below at a thrift store. Written by Robert Neil Johnson, it was first published in 1967 by Cy Johnson and Son.

(I found the poem in this post in my book "Brief Aprils" , which I have written about before. It is full of Ms. Genee's poems, and was printed in 1947.)

2 comments:

Mary said...

Wow! Google "Ghosts of North Dakota" and click on the link. As you click on the towns, click on the "read more" to see more pics of that town. This is where I live. Fascinating.

Tina Dawn said...

Great post, I love those old, fascinating, stuffed with info and photos tomes! Love T