Although spring doesn’t officially arrive for another three weeks today felt like the first day of spring with sunny skies and temperatures in the low sixties. A friend and I went hiking in the woods and hills of my boyhood for a last look at an abandoned landmark that will no longer exist in a few months time. The old stone farmhouse I’ve been visiting off and on over the last 48 years will soon be gone as a new housing development reshapes the long valley behind the home where I grew up. I was surprised how much the area had grown up in trees and brush in the last 10 years since the cattle that used to graze on the hills have been removed as the old farms have been sold for the development of shopping centers and car dealers.
Areas that I knew so well were barely recognizable and indeed I wasn’t sure we were going to find the remains of the house since I lost track of the old roadway that led to it. I climbed about as far up the hill as I estimated the level above the creek bed the house stood and then tried to stay parallel to the water. We stumbled through the brush and kind of blundered on. Just as I was convinced I had somehow missed it I looked up and there it was, barely visible through the growth, only yards away. What follows is an essay I wrote last year when I heard that the valley was going to be developed.
The Haunted House
Soon it will be gone, that place I’ve visited so many times. The newspaper article describes the housing, lakes and parks that will be built as a great boon to a town that is in need of new developments. I’m not opposed to progress or growth. Having studied architecture and worked construction for many years I appreciate well designed buildings and communities. So why the empty feeling and great sadness when I realize what the newspaper article means for that very special site? Has any other place had such a strong attraction for me? Perhaps, but for some reason not in the same way this one has. What draws me to this ancient house time and again?
My brother, cousin and I discovered the house when I was about 10 years old. While following the creek at the bottom of the steep hill behind the new house my parents had built in what was then a small farming community 12 miles south of the city, I found a wide, low stone dam that seemed to have no purpose. I studied it for some time before I realized that the gently sloping ramps of meadow grass at each end of the dam had once been a road. The dam created a crossing for horse draw buggies and wagons. Of course I had to follow and led the others on through the woods as what was left of the road continued along the creek and past an ancient barn. After perhaps half a mile the road turned slightly and began to ascend the hill. On up the hill the road took a final turn through a stand of trees and there it ended at a farm house that must have been 100 years old even then, in 1960.
Windows, doors and parts of the roof had disappeared long ago but the stone steps to the porch and the house’s wooden floors remained intact. The stone walls were a least two feet thick with weathered plaster inside, carved nearly everywhere with names and initials. We weren’t the first to find it, obviously. Still, I was surprised when I told friends at school about the mysterious house. They said, “Oh, you went to the haunted house.”
For more than 45 years now I have gone back to the haunted house time and again. I’ve never known who built it, why it was abandoned or who owned the land. What tremendous labor went into building the miles of road down into the valley, across the stream and on up the hill to the site of house? Who dragged the stones up from the creek to build the thick stone walls? How long did it take to haul the wooden beams and planking for the floors and roof to the isolated site in horse drawn wagons? I’ve certainly wondered, but it has never been important enough to research it. It is enough that they did and that the evidence of their labor stands. Until now.
I’ve taken all of my lovers there over the years. Did I hope they would help me understand what this tumbled down homestead meant to me? Did I expect them to intuit my feelings? To share them? I always wanted to share my passion with them while we explored the ruins. I wanted to make love on the scarred wooden floor under the open roof rafters while the sun poured through the peeled away metal roofing. None of them found this appealing and none of them came close to seeing what I saw or feeling what I felt. We would leave with me feeling disappointed and them wondering why I had insisted on taking them hiking through the meadows and woods for 45 minutes to reach this pile of stones.
I can see the haunted house in my mind’s eye. I have no photos of it. Perhaps it’s better that way. If I had a picture I might see what my lovers saw, a ruined house at the end of an overgrown trail through pastures and woods that was a refuge for wild life and insects, dirty and unpleasant. For them it didn’t represent someone’s dream, a labor of love and perseverance. Maybe I would see the same story of folly they seemed to see. One man’s romantic story is another person’s tale of failure and despair.
From the back yard of the house where I grew up, high on a Kentucky hill, I can see a new car dealership where the huge white dairy barn with the silver metal roof and silo stood. Across the highway where the big frame farmhouse was is a fast food restaurant. The malt shop across from my old high school is gone, replaced by a video store. And a couple of miles closer to the city the twin red and white barns with the red shingle roofs have also disappeared, now a department store. Lights from the Wal-Mart parking lot at the end of the street pollute the night sky. Change is everywhere.
So why mourn a pile of rocks that used to be someone’s home? It’s been abandoned and forgotten for 75 years or more. It’s being replaced by someone else’s vision, their dream for this once remote valley and the surrounding hills. One family’s house gives way to make it possible for 500 families to live where many years ago there was a farm.
American service men and women are dying in Iraq. Global warming is changing weather patterns around the world with disastrous effects. Crime is rampant in the inner cities and homelessness is on the rise. School shootings happen in even the most bucolic small towns. In the bigger picture few people would consider the destruction of a ruined farmhouse of any consequence. But I’m not sure I’ll want to drive though this new community of upscale homes with lakes and parks, the American dream. Someday many households will call this place home, the home of their dreams. I wonder if any of them will know that another family, in another time, lived in their dream home in the same lovely valley in the gentle green Kentucky hills.
