It has been over a year now since the old farm house belonging to Far Guy’s Maternal Grandparents was burned down. It was a hazard. We were gone the weekend the Fire Department used it for a training exercise or we would have been there.
This is the newly built house before it was sided, it would get boards painted white just like the dormers and it would stay that color throughout the years. Uncle Willard designed the house in a drafting class in high school. The bump out with the windows was specially designed for Grandma Meade’s plants on the main level and in the basement there were shelves that she stored canning jars full of vegetables and fruits.
I have notes someplace of a conversation I had with Uncle Willard about the house and it’s construction. I will find them someday…just not today…I looked. I must have put them away real good.
I grew up catty corner from this farmstead. Note the old house behind the new house. I only remember that house as a fallen in heap. Us kids were not supposed to play on or around it… “You will get nails in your feet or get hurt.” Far Guy says “I can only remember when half of the old house was standing.”
Now both houses are only a distant memory.
November 2012
It is hard to watch these old houses and barns that were so familiar to me as a child disappear one by one. Far Guy’s Cousin “Alaska Guy” says he will never drive down the highway past the old farm again, he cannot bear to see the house gone.
Times change, old buildings get older. Empty buildings are vandalized….you can never really go home again except in your memories.
