Madeline (Giles) DeJournett is the Advance writer for the North Stoddard Countian. A retired high school English/history teacher, she spent 32 years teaching in 5 schools in Missouri and Alaska. These days, she lives quietly with a menagerie of wild and domestic animals on 52 secluded acres in the remote Tillman hills south of Advance. She graduated from Dexter High School in 1960 and Southeast Missouri State in 1964. She can be contacted at advancensc@sbcglobal.net.

Abandoned stuff seen on the road

Posted Thursday, July 14, 2011, at 4:27 PM

Seen in the Middle of Nowhere:

As I drive from place to place, I am forever fascinated by the things that are abandoned out in the middle of the countryside. Old houses fascinate me, and I have to overcome the urge to go traipsing on private property to open doors, climb through windows, and snoop in the past.

I try to imagine why places were abandoned--and, believe me, more and more buildings are becoming deserted.

I saw this old silo west of Sikeston in what seemed a highly unlikely location, along a stretch of road not far from the power plant, amid a huge field of .....NOTHING!

What is it?

Why was it abandoned?

How could someone build something so BIG and so STURDY--virtually indestructible--and then go off and leave it?

It won't rot, will it?

No tornado could possible tear it down, could it? It was built to last, and LAST it does---but for no purpose.

There are no farms nearby. What has happened to them?

Why did the builders of this silo leave? What forces came into play to make this massive structure obsolete?

It reminds me of a castle, left to guard a king who died a long time ago or who has gone off and left it behind, unwanted, unused...forgotten.

I feel a great sadness as I look at it and the area around it. I wonder if America is going forward or backward. We wear things out and throw them away. We discard the things that were once precious to us, and we replace them with new, glittering, sophisticated things that will someday become like this silo--old, used-up, useless, obsolete, sitting alone on a desolate stretch of road, too well-built to fall down but too old-fashioned to be useful.

Where are we going.....????

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Quite a silent beauty left standing alone in a quiet field and one can only imagine the activity that surrounded this beauty in times past. I'm sure lots of good times were enjoyed around this monument still standing.

-- Posted by Dexterite1 on Fri, Jul 15, 2011, at 6:48 AM
Madeline, since you have unanswered questions about the Sikeston silo, I wonder what the speculation will be about the tower's purpose when its ruins are discovered two thousand years from now. Was it an observatory? Was it a burial monument?

-- Posted by FJGuy on Thu, Aug 4, 2011, at 2:34 PM

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