Trapped in an eddy of corporate indifference, an empty schoolhouse remains forever at arm's length, taunting us as an eerie echo of the past -- and as a beautiful dream that just won't pencil out.

Many a historian and idle daydreamer has wished for a time machine. Unfortunately, we are destined to satisfy our curiosity with what past generations have left us: the yellowed clippings, the fragile photographs, and the fading memories that we often encounter in our quest to connect the past to the present. Today, we will do the next best thing: step into some newly revealed photos of old Rawsonville.

In the case of old photographs, the great equalizer is time and neglect -- by which any old photo, no matter how insignificant at the time it was taken, has a similar chance at achieving historical value. Today, we will examine a few previously unseen photos from the American Airlines freight agents' office at Willow Run Airport, taken in the early 1950s.

A ghost town has the power to linger on in its own absence -- perhaps through the continued use of a place name, the passing-down of oral legend, or the persistence of wooded hills and feral fallows, cloaking mysterious features that only the legend can explain. Here we take an excursion to such a site.

Shrouded by the wooded shoulder of a busy blacktop road, a forgotten mill dam retains the flow of a small stream -- as well as the fading summer memories of a generation of truant children.