Have you ever stood in an abandoned house? One that’s falling down, but inside it’s clear that it wasn’t completely emptied before the last inhabitants fled?
In my wanderings over the years, I’ve encountered several such places, and I find, as I look around, that I cannot help but try to imagine the occupants. Their hopes, their dreams, their life encapsulated in a home. Perhaps there are some derelict toys that speak of children growing up in the home, or perhaps books or other personal items. What were they thinking when they left? Where did they go? What was their fate. I find such places more than a little melancholy.
In all my travels, I’ve never encountered such a place like the one I encountered today. Nothing could have prepared me for it.
The abandoned property, the ruined buildings and mobile home you see in these pictures used to be my home.
My mother was killed in a car accident when I was three. My grandparents came to live with my father and me in Tucson. Perhaps because of the accident, my father, who had been a city employee, came to realize that working an 8 to 5 job for someone else was a pointless existence. He quit his job and using the settlement money from the accident, decided to pursue something that he really liked – gambling. Specifically, greyhound racing.
He didn’t go bet all the money on the dogs, nothing like that. He decided to be part of the “industry.†To that end, he purchased one of the boarding kennels that supported the nearby greyhound racing park.
It was far past the southern outskirts of Tucson, in the middle of nowhere. It was, I’m sure, barbaric by modern standards. The dogs were kept in small cages, some 30-40 per kennel. The dogs were periodically let out into a small pen area that fronted each kennel, and a practice track was along one side of the property for training – the kind of training where live rabbits were released for the dogs to pursue. Those were different times, to be sure.
My father owned no dogs, he just rented the kennels. There was a trailer on site and, for most of the week, my father lived there. He’d come “home†to our house in town on weekends, or he’d take me to the kennels for some weekends, and all summer – when we weren’t out camping.
A few things I remember most about the place:
- Cleaning and and painting the kennels whenever a unit was vacated. My dad always had the disinfect and clean out the entire kennel, painting all the cages a uniform color grey.
- Unstopping the drains. Each yard had what amounted to a sink in the ground. The dogs owners tended to flush their newspaper bedding down the drains, which always clogged them up.
- Hauling the newspaper to the dump. The dog owners were supposed to haul their bedding out to a giant cotton trailer that was on the property and when it filled, my dad would haul it to the county dump and dispose of it. Soaked in dog urine, it had its own unique smell that I’ll never forget.
- Playing in the crap pit. OK, this one is pretty nasty. The dog crap was disposed of by digging a gigantic ditch, 8 foot deep, 8 foot wide, 30 ft long on the property. The pit was filled from one end and sprinkled with lime on a daily basis. There were steps dug at the other end. When the pit was relatively empty, it was a cool place to play, but it is another smell I’ll never forget.
- The dogs. Greyhounds aren’t raised as pets and while they’re not particularly violent dogs, they’re also not socialized with kids. My dad would have to carry me through the yards when the dogs were out because they’d be jumping to get me. 40 dogs jumping at you is an intimidating for an under-10 year old.
- The desert. There were a few inhabited properties along the road, but for the most part, the area was unbroken desert. What a cool place for a kid with an imagination to play. Star Trek, mostly. Come to think if it, it was Star Trek when I was playing in the kennels (the cages were cool alien prisons) and the crap pit made a great subterranean world for playing Star Trek.
To be honest, these events in my life are so far distant in time that I have largely forgotten that part of my childhood.
I haven’t seen the place since 1974 or 1975 but I decided that on this trip, I’d make the effort to find the place. When my dad sold the place, the city of Tucson was inexorably moving towards the kennels. It seemed certain it was just a matter of time before they would have to disappear beneath the onslaught of the city.
I had been prepared for many things, but not this. It seemed the wildest bit of imagination that the kennels might still be operating in some capacity, but even that seemed to have a slightly credible possibility. That they might be completely torn down and turned into colorless, featureless modern urban house seemed most likely. Finally, I considered it possible that some of the buildings might be repurposed, but still standing.
Not being familiar with the area, I missed the street as we drove along and had to turn down the next block. That street was lined with soulless, new stucco homes. (Completely out of character in Tucson, but entirely consistent with the urban sprawl that is Phoenix.) Back on the street with the kennels was a different story. The empty desert lots had largely been replaced with trailer parks, and in the intervening time, those had deteriorated into slums. Almost cater-corner across from the kennels is a “new†and completely incongruous middle school.
Amongst all this, the kennels sit forlornly abandoned. There are no “keep out†signs and no fences to stop people from entering the collapsing buildings. The trailer I used to stay in stands wide open, the inside gutted.
Weeds are growing really well over the area where the crap pit used to be. (No challenge to spot the area in the panorama at the top of the post.)
Tumbleweeds have piled up and collected along the northeast corner. Some of the kennels have had their cages removed, others still have the cages with the dogs’ names written on masking tape stuck to the cages. (I remember often they’d write the names directly on the cages in indelible ink and my dad would have to paint them several times before the name wouldn’t “come back†through the paint.) Clothes still hang in some of the buildings. Muzzles and other artifacts of the day to day operation of the kennels are still in evidence. The kennels were still painted the same color grey and the smell inside had an uncannily strong power to bring back memories of the place.
It was if the end came, at first slowly, and then finally, they just walked away. There isn’t even evidence that a for sale sign was placed out on the property in the hopes of recouping some of the loss. It was just time to go.
I can’t tell how long it has been abandoned. Long enough for the ceilings to begin to collapse. Long enough for the trailer to be gutted, and yet the buildings are surprisingly free of graffiti. Tell me how that’s possible less than 50 meters away from a school populated by 10-14 year olds from slum-like conditions?
Words elude me as to how to describe the almost shell-shocked feeling I had at walking around the kennels.
I’ve got, perhaps, a total of three photographs of the kennels from when we owned them, but I was only able to find one. Perhaps it is fitting the picture I found is one of me in an empty kennel yard while my dad does maintenance in the background.
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