Time has stood still in this place. The trailer first parked here in the early 60s sits crumpled and overgrown a hundred feet from where I write, it’s corroded aluminum skin split in several places. Rotted books and magazines, boxes of old clothes, split logs and peeling strips of paneling cover the sagging floor and spill out to merge with the wet earth. The tires the trailer once rolled on crumble at a touch. A rabbit-eared TV, a rusted stove, a round cornered refrigerator, it’s door open and hanging by one hinge, wooden tables and chairs returning to dust, window glass and engine parts are woven together by the dusty strands of a million dead spiders.

I slept in that trailer long ago, spent a winter sitting by a roaring wood stove and sneaking peeks at Playboy magazines in the shed nearby. That shed collapsed long ago, it’s green shingled roof now covering worm eaten books and all those pretty girls and who knows what other once-upon-a-time treasures. I can see the old freezer where once we stashed the butchered remains of a cow hit by a car and left on the side of the road to die. There is a box of old hand guns in there as well as several rifles. More piles of rotting clothes, twisted leather shoes, canning jars with rusted lids, several suitcases, a leather satchel so aged and weather beaten it disintegrated in my hand when I tried to pick it up.

The ground around the shed is littered with washing machines, stoves, row boats, lawn mowers, metal chairs, a swing set, ladders, and tools of every kind. There are metal garage doors, a pile of sheet-metal roofing strips, rolls of aluminum wire and steel cable and enough automotive parts to build a whole, if somewhat weird looking, car, as if the eight or nine rusted hulks I’ve so far found in this Floridian jungle weren’t enough junk cars already.

Not far from the shed, the all but buried remains of another out building becomes one with the earth. I slaughtered rabbits and cleaned catfish there long ago. From what I can see of it now, it looks as though my mother may have converted it to a small green house. Numerous panes of glass, rows of red clay pots merge into the darkness beneath a thick canopy of green. I’m told she planted the giant Magnolia tree that stretches skyward amidst the tall Pines and Oaks draped in Spanish Moss and I’ve noticed other plants growing wild amongst the dense ground cover that I suspect aren’t natural to this area. She was into growing things, my Ma. That’s one of the few things I know about her.

There’s 30,000 square feet to this property, nearly an acre of land. What I’ve described above sits on maybe a quarter of that. The grand tour continues in a couple of days. Y’all come back now, ya hear?