I've become a sort of rambler through photobucket. I type in things for the heck of it; sometimes I get pictures and sometimes I don't. Tonight I typed in the words "ghost town" and these are some of the images I found:



As I searched through many, many pictures I was reminded of a song by C. W. McCall, the man from whom I copped my blog name:

the dance hall is silent and empty
the banjos don't play anymore
the music is only a memory
and the dancing is dust on the floor



The song is meditative, half-sung, half-spoken (McCall was never noted for his range), lamenting the life that went out of these little places:

once there was laughter
and once there was life
and once there was silver and gold. . .

as the mines played out and the living moved on to other ephemeral towns, leaving only tumbleweeds, the wind whistling through empty buildings, and the dead.

There are thousands of ghost stories from these little deserted places, and perhaps later I'll blog a few, but tonight I will just look at the pictures and dream.



the dance hall is silent and empty
the banjos don't play anymore. . .

Or do they?

And with a spectral "Oh, Susanna" ringing somewhere just out of the range of hearing, fair thee well.