My paternal grandmother is probably the one who instilled the fascination I have with abandoned houses. We would pass a ramshackle, falling down and abandoned home and Grandma Eva would say, "A perfectly good house...."--leaving the open-ended question of what happened? Where did the people go?
Just around a couple of corners from the Farm (around the field, across the bridge and make a left) you will come to the "Goose House" (or its remants). I don't know why we call it the Goose House. Ever since I can remember, no one has lived there--human or goose. I've never stepped foot in it--not even the yard. I'm the chicken cousin. My brave cousins have explored it, though. I would stand on the road as my cousins peaked and prodded through the doorways and windows. I remember that there used to be a dining table and chairs...the kind of chairs with carvings on the back. I was so sad to think that a family just up and left their table. What about all of the times that they sat around after supper discussing their day? Didn't that table warrant taking with them? Now there is nothing more than a memory that a house was there--a few pieces of wood and a rusty old car in the yard.
Now the house is gone, grass and weeds and trees growing where once a family grew.
I stopped by there a couple of days ago. Several deer were hiding in the rubble and I stopped to try to snap a shot before they ran off into the woods. Once I stopped, I started taking photographs of the trees and rocks across the road. Something made me turn back around towards the house. The sun was just right & a beam spotlighted a yellow and purple iris. Looking closer, I found more iris blooming. Who planted them? Was it the farmer's wife? Was there once a plan to where they grew? Along the walk from the front door to the road perhaps? How long ago were the first bulbs planted? Did my Grandma Ruby and her sister, Nell, drive their buggy past on their way to school? Or perhaps they were planted later, when my mother and my aunts were girls--did they walk by and pick an iris to give to Grandma?
A perfectly good house...with a reminder that it was once a home.
