sheds

sheds
Originally uploaded by rod lewis

many old rural home places have accumulated outbuildings over the decades. The outbuildings have accumulated stuff - a few things, but mostly stuff.
Most of the stuff has long since been forgotten. Chances are, it would have been thrown out, had that been convenient at the time. But to where do you throw it when you live out here, and there's no one to haul it off, and no where to haul it? So it gets piled in layers in makeshift sheds over decades, and the doors are haphazardly secured with chains draped but not locked. Perhaps it's not necessary to lock it all away, because it is so quickly forgotten.
The sheds are dark and dusty and filled with cobwebs, spiders and wasps. The stored and hidden stuff is only ever half-encountered in glimpses when the doors are quickly swung upon to receive more stuff. The doors are quickly closed again and the chains re-draped. Eventually, the shed is full and the sideboards bulge and the chain stretches against the pressure behind the door, and there is never any reason to open the door again.
Ironically, a lot of these places have newer, once nicer stuff, piled in the weather on the porch, or under a tree, or rusting in the yard, because the storage space was filled with useless stuff.
Don Henley observed years ago, "so often times it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key."