Probably Amanté has. He's lived in Evansville for most of his twenty-nine years and knows all of it. He maneuvers through a maze of side-streets faster than I can keep up with which direction we're going.
But I find a place. I find one place he hasn't been. It's Union Township on a map, but Dogtown from the mouths of locals. It exists in a horseshoe bend of the Ohio River, a mostly unpopulated floodplain that's submerged in water every few years, tucked away at the bottom of Evansville civilization. There's a locally renowned tavern and a boat ramp and...what else? There's no through-traffic, because there's no way through. A ferry ran from the southern tip, decades ago, to take you across the river to Henderson, but not now. Now the way out is the way you came in, so you only go if you need to.
We don't need to, but one evening, we go anyway. There isn't much to see. The main road is an endless narrow loop along the inside of the horseshoe, with crowding trees, a marsh to one side, and the river just beyond. The occasional street of gravel intersects, dust still and long settled. A handful of bungalows dot the way, unmarked industrial buildings like something out of The X-Files, an ancient train trestle leading across the water into Kentucky. It's so strange to be in one state and constantly have view of another. It's really no different, though, I know that. Just a man-made border borrowed from where a river already flows a line between.
Amanté comments that this is where you dump a body in Evansville and he's right. The old train bridge towers against the graying sky with an ominous look. Dark clouds blot out the sun, already hanging low on the horizon. The trees lean over the car like something from a cartoon, like something with bony hands and a long, ghoulish face, obscuring the last of the fading light. I know we're fine, but there's a sense of tension in the air. We are somewhere neither of us has ever been and we haven't seen a soul since we got here and a storm is brewing and I don't know if we even have cell phone service, but I doubt it. If anything should happen...
At the end of it all, we find an abandoned yellow building, piled high with refuse. There are still numbers visible on the mailbox and I jot them down to research later. We stop to gawk from the safety of the car and Amanté points out that there's some kind of artificial light in there, behind all the junk. I think it looks like a meth house. We elect not to investigate.
 |
| Imagine this, but grimmer and full of garbage. |
I look it up later. The Internet reports:
-The yellow house is often referred to as Old Dogtown School.
-A bunch of people were murdered there.
-It is haunted.
The truth, as is usually the case, is much more prosaic. I find it with a minimum effort at research. Built around 1915, the structure served as the lock and dam house for a reservoir that existed in the area until a flood destroyed it in 1975. Exactly zero people are confirmed to have died horrible deaths in it. The current owners began renovations on it a few years ago. The mountain of garbage inside indicates that they gave up at some point. Maybe that flood in 2011 was just too much and they realized nothing was going to get all that mud out of the basement.
And why is there a basement, when it comes to that? A basement with windows? It was built in--indeed, for--a flood-prone area and even has marks up one side of the building to measure how high the water levels get. I'm not used to this lack of foresight. Houses in Wilmington just don't have basements, for the very same reason, i.e., they're going to flood anyway.
I still think it could be a meth house.
We make it out of the wilderness just fine. Half-drowning in the summer downpour, but fine.
If you're interested in more pictures and information on the dam house or other abandoned buildings in the Evansville area, The Recreational Trespasser (from whom I borrowed the modern photo of the structure seen above) is a fantastic resource.
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