Abandoned Places

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• December 10, 2023

My 2023 wall calendar (yes, I still keep one of those) was that of pictures of abandoned places, beautiful ones, like old buildings, churches, barn, ruins covered in colored leaves, accompanied by quotes of famous writers of the macabre like Edgar Allan Poe or Mary Shelley.

What makes an abandoned place so attractive? Pictures of an abandoned amusement park, or a Western ghost town, could tempt me on a trip or at least tease my imagination. Even when I’m on the road, driving for hours to towns I’ve never heard of, sometimes you’ll pass old and abandoned houses or factories and something about them just seems enticing. There is a temptation to go explore it. To find what, I wonder? I’m not even sure. The fear of a crack head living there usually ceases curiosity from becoming a reality. Though the only thing that feels more magical on a hike in the woods than coming across ruins is a water fall.

On Long Island, there are two very large, extremely ominous feeling buildings that area abandoned. Both are former psychiatric centers— Pilgrim State and Kings Park. They both look like something of nightmares and fantasy, looming with a sadness of the insane souls, unwillingly released back into the world. I had a psychology professor tell me that once there were no homeless people on Long Island, or scarcely any, not until the state shut down the psychiatric centers.

When you’re a teenager and your friends start getting cars, getting your first tastes of freedom away from your motherships, you start aimlessly driving around, avoiding homes you’d later crawl to. For a Long Island teen of the south shore, usually we’d smoke some pot and wander malls or hang out at the beach. The abandoned psychiatric centers were also a place of visit for bored teens, trying to scare each other or perhaps hoping we’d see some sort of apparition. While my friends would drive around the grounds, we never dared entered the buildings. I knew kids who did and truthfully envied them a little. But rationally, the buildings weren’t sound and the infrastructure could be dangerous and further, insane homeless people could be in there.

One time, I was in my buddy’s Jeep with two other kids. We picked up a dime bag and drove up to King’s Park where we planned to smoke a bowl and really just hang out and giggle, making empty dares to each other. Except, while driving around, a cop pulled us over. The driver had forgotten to put his headlights back on when we left a 7-11 (where we bought snacks, anticipating the munchies). I was in the front seat. Insofar, we really hadn’t done anything wrong, besides drive at night without headlights. But given our age and teenagers reputation for stalking Kings Park, the cop knew something was up. And we did have drugs in the car. I mean, a dime bag of marijuana which is literally legal now, but we were relatively good kids despite our love for toking. The girl in the back seat who had the bag of weed tried to swallow it. The entire weed bag. In the little plastic baggie. Admittedly, she wasn’t the smartest. She was unsuccessful and started choking in the backseat while the driver, one of my best friends, was being interrogated about where we were coming from and where we were going.

The cop, slightly perturbed by the girl gagging in the backseat, just told us to go home, and let us off. And then the girl in the back spit out the bag of weed. We did abandon the abandoned building, as per the cops orders. We weren’t going to test a warning when we got away with one. Once in the safety of our own neighborhood, we laughed at our botched adventure, specifically the failed and idiotic heroism of the girl who tried to swallow a small plastic bag.

Are abandoned people as attractive as abandoned places? Whether they’re stung with a lonely arrow of rejection, or ran away from homes or ditched dreams? Who are those drawn to people who need fixing, perhaps beyond repair? What in them desires to fill up a person who is empty? Are they empty themselves, or just a strangely shaped puzzle piece, hoping to find a soul strange enough, to pair with the wholes in themselves?