Bob

Batz

Read Bob's bio and previous columns

October 6, 2008

Tell Me Your Story, Old House

One day recently, while driving along a country road just north of Dayton, I came upon an abandoned farmhouse. As I sat there admiring the weather-beaten reminder of yesterday, the invisible hand of the wind moved a rocking chair on the porch. I found myself wondering what stories the old house could tell . . .

Tell me, old house, where did your people go?

How long have you been here, old house? Seventy years? A hundred or more?

Do you remember the days when the American landscape was a patchwork quilt of family farms? Have you been here that long?

Let me guess, old house . . .

There were people here once. And once, the laughter of children echoed here, didn’t it? Yes, that’s the way it was, wasn’t it? And in those days there was much corn in the fields and every spring was filled with hope.

Children were born in this house, weren’t they? And they grew up here and their playthings were the summer sun and the morning glory vines that grew outside the kitchen window, and when October came and the north wind rattled in the eaves, they lay awake in their beds and prayed for snow so they could hitch up the sleigh.

Then, suddenly, or so it seemed, anyway, the children were grown and one by one they moved away to Dayton and Chicago and other places, and the husband and wife suddenly found themselves alone in the big old house, and on warm July evenings they moved their rocking chairs onto the big porch to watch the fireflies and listen to the chorus of crickets.

The years – as years so often do – passed quickly.

Summers seemed shorter, winters longer. Then came the day when the man and his wife could no longer work the sprawling fields around the house. The weeds moved in and the tractors and plows gathered dust and cobwebs in the barn.

Then, late one December, she became ill and was dead before spring. When July came again there was only one chair on the unpainted porch, and when he sat smoking and rocking into the twilight, he noticed the cricket chorus wasn’t nearly was sweet as it once had been.

Before another winter would come, he locked your doors and went away to live with his children in the city.

Tell me, old house, is that the way it was?  

Contact Bob at bbatz@woh.rr.com

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