A faded and tattered flag waves in the wind. Its edges trailing their threads against the knotted columns girdling the open porch of the two story ranch house. With no ceremony the wind lifts the banner up the pole, then drops it again.
The home, patriotically sagging under it's own weight, is old. Damp gnarled wood makes up two of the three remaining steps, and the middle step lies broken, barely touching the others below and above it. Long since crumbled, only a few creatures claw their way up the splintered rot.
Animals entering and going as they pleased, the heavy lock on the door made no difference to them since half the door swung on the hinges freely. Torn in half long ago, the barrier to entry hung lower than the tiling on the roof. Decades of mismanagement had left holes in the shingles, and puddles of rotted wood in the banisters.
It was an old house, and with its glory days long over, the only thing left standing was the memory of a time when the banner waving in the wind had stood for something. Now, like the decay around it, only the washed out traces of the past remained.