A picture brings a flood of yesteryear: a house, barn, fields and outbuildings now gone, having given way to 'progress' and an airport. Yet, vivid still are memories of a home filled w/love, a close-knit family, and of..

  • The barn and buggy shed, above, in Barren County, Kentucky at great-grandparents Pa and Granny's farm, belonging first to Pa's father

  • Accompanying my beloved g'mother on coaches (where g'daddy worked and we rode for free) from Louisville to Glasgow junction; the spurline to Oil City

  • Pa meeting his Louisville family at the Oil City depot; transportion provided by him thru the years including wagon and team, horse and buggy, Models T and A

  • Loving, loud, happy family gatherings and fellowship; G'mother's excitement and glee being w/her family

  • Hay bales, feed sacks, farm implements; the huge corn field surrounding the barn

  • Pa's horses; the smell and feel of old, still-soft leather

  • Good eatin'.. veggies fresh from the garden, salty pork, platters piled high w/fried chicken, biscuits; mashed potatoes & gravy to die for

  • White sheets spread between meals over a table still laden w/food; jam jars, stoneware

  • Unfinished, worn-to-gray ladderback chairs w/cane bottoms

  • The inviting smell of a wood cook stove w/hot water tank; Granny's ever-present long APRON; heat in the kitchen and wondering how Granny stood it

  • Icy spring water slowly dripping from a single kitchen faucet into the overflowing bucket, draining back to its origin on the bluff below; a battered graniteware dipper. (For quite awhile this natural and mighty little spring remained nemesis for airport construction, continuing to erode and overflow excavation and fill work.)

  • Nighttime in front of the house, chairs brought into a family circle one-by-one as we drifted outside

  • A canopy of trees in the front yard; a white-washed picket fence

  • Men folk gathering at the barn or in livingroom; divinely aromatic cherry blend pipe tobacco

  • Listening to my precious great-aunt *storyteller Extraordinaire* .. how she was blinded in a nursing accident, then having a little concession stand in the county courthouse; my wondering at her making correct change, but aware of all loving her, making sure she didn't under-charge or over-change

  • The rapport between my g'mother and her many sisters, brothers, cousins.. no judging or hautiness

  • Honest-to-goodness relaxation; days spent in slow-motion; Laughter

  • Rain on the tin roof

  • Linoleum rugs

  • Genuine and loving interest in each other's lives and families

  • Droning 'tick-tock' and chimes of the mantle clock

  • The heavenly cool of the deep fruit cellar above the cave spring at back of house; lead tops on canning jars

  • Night sounds of crickets, tree frogs, owls, bull frogs on the pond

  • Sleeping w/my g'mother on a tall feather bed in the front bedroom; the all-important vessel beneath

  • Single bare light bulbs hanging from ceilings

  • Legends of area caves

  • The wash house above the fruit cellar

  • Cousins trail-traipsing thru the woods

  • Stair steps made of stones

  • Mud daubers in the outhouse

  • Fox calls; g'mother teasing g'aunt w/tales of cave coyotes

  • Hot coals banked overnight in the old wood stove

  • Chickens and split wood out back

  • A gravel county road to the house, off Tabor Road, being more of dirt than gravel

  • Chuckles at the re-telling of Pa's joy in coming to the top of the hill and, w/a twinkle in his eye, flooring the Model T, racing down to the house... poor Granny hanging on


ABANDONED FARMS

Poor house ... poor, lonely house,
Where did your people go?
Why did they leave you alone like this?
Is there any way to know?

So colorless and desolate,
Pathetic, sagging place,
Wretched and forsaken,
Standing only by God's grace.

One more storm ... and POOF ... you're gone!
Though I s'pose it doesn't matter,
Shingle by shingle and board by board,
You'll soon be wholly scattered.

Oh, aging house, if you could talk,
The stories you could tell,
What went on within your walls,
Before you became a shell.

How many generations lived there?
How many can you recall?
How old are you? When were you built?
How many babies crawled your halls?

So, why were you abandoned?
Who left you alone to die?
There surely must have been a time,
When love and laughter were inside.

Who stripped you of your finery?
Or looted things considered plain?
When vandals took your pride,
Did you protest in pain?

When they scrawled writings on your face,
Did you shudder? Did you cry?
Was that when, poor little house,
You just gave up and died?

You know, houses aren't just houses,
All started out as homes,
Once they all held families,
Of their very own.

But, boarded up and clueless,
No sign of who lived there before,
Who knew who was first or last,
To go in or out those doors.

Empty houses are like empty hearts,
They make us sad and blue,
Hearts don't last long when love has gone,
And empty houses give up, too.
-Author Unk.

I choose nostalgia to be a warm revisitation of heritage;
a glance back to a place and time of joy and meaning,
becoming fonder and ever dearer.







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