Thursday February 25, 2021

 Contemporary archaeology, perhaps.

 

 I don’t make it a practice to sift through the after effect of people’s lives; but I have been offered the opportunity to do so a few times, as I wrote about in Wannaskan Almanac’s Thursday blogpost: http://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2021/02/thursday-february-11-2021.html. The closest definition for what I do, in the most amateurish sense, may be called “contemporary archaeology.”
 

The first foray I made through someone else’s stuff was in preparation for a eulogy I was asked to do by a local family because they knew me as a writer. I was honored, of course, but intimidated too at the prospect of virtually painting a portrait of a individual whom I didn’t really know, for a group of family and friends who had known him intimately all their lives. In addition, it being a Thursday evening, I had very little time to prepare for the funeral service on the following Saturday morning.
 

As family and friends talked to me I began to form a picture of him in my head by the affection pored on him as a man who was genuinely kind to everyone he met, yet was no one’s fool for long. He had never married nor fathered children. He had been born in 1911 on the family’s 1896 homestead, a mile or so south of the cemetery where he would be interred; and had lived there all his life. As the second oldest of six children, he helped his folks raise a purebred dairy herd, sheep, and grow wheat, oats, barley, flax and blue grass on their farm of a modest 480 acres.
 

As his nieces and nephews matured, John would regularly attend their church and school programs, followed their participation in 4H and sports; paid church camp fees or toward their college tuition. They talked about his willingness to help neighbors during harvest or other times when they needed it. They discussed his role as long-time township board member, and the various ag-related positions he held. They laughed about the many old vehicles he drove ‘forever’ -- and the fact he never threw anything away that he could maybe use again.
 

That tidbit of information gave me hope that perhaps there was a collection of things somewhere around the farm that I could examine to compose a picture of Uncle John as an individual, real and imagined, so I asked if it’d be okay if I could visit his house, barn, and outbuildings as soon as possible, and not surprisingly, received a resounding, “YES!”
 

 It looked like I had the place to myself the next morning. I didn’t see any other vehicles by the house or buildings, but knowing as I do that neighbors sometimes keep an eye on neighboring places, especially after a funeral notice, I printed my name in large letters on a sheet of paper and laid it on the dash so anyone could see it, with the words, “I have permission to be here by ____ ____” under it; sheriff deputies act rather imposing otherwise.
 

 Nestled under the branches of two big oak trees, the southside of old white farmhouse was still in the shade that early in the morning. I pushed my way through the stubborn porch door just as the sun broke through the top of the lilac bushes on the east side of the house and brightened the window over the twenty-five year old chest-type freezer there that inspired everyone to say on Thursday night, “They don’t make them like that anymore!”
 

I slowly opened the kitchen door as if expecting someone to be home; the white porcelain wood cookstove dominating the far wall. To my left, I saw at once the oily spot John’s always-combed, full-head-of-white hair had made on the kitchen wall where he had sat at the oil cloth-covered table, and often leaned back against in his chair. The soot-darkened tin ceiling once had been painted an avocado green as had been the ornate wall and window trim; its walls had a burnished yellowish glow to them; the old wavy-looking window panes and their storm window counterparts allowed the sun in behind faded floral curtains, and kept the rain and cold out. The kitchen and cabinets smelled of a century of woodsmoke, cooked foods, and pipe tobacco.
 

Off a dark narrow hall, off the kitchen, was the newer addition to the house that became an indoor toilet, sink, and shower, built-on when the vintage outhouse out back had taken a turn for the worse; and although still quite novel, was deemed ‘unusable’ for female guests and family members.
 

His bedroom, beyond that, was austere. Centered on the far wall, was one black and white photograph of a 4H Guernsey cow with her butterfat and protein numbers at the bottom written in ballpoint pen on a piece of masking tape. His wood-framed bed had its covers turned down as though awaiting him. A dresser of four drawers with a rectangular mirror apparently held his wallet and belt at bedtime; a high-backed wooden chair, his pants. A worn woven rug was on the floor along his bed. Straight ahead, a curtained window overlooked a field’s western edge aside the windbreak; maybe being a place of evening prayer, and contemplation of tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 There was no television in the living room, just a well worn easy chair with pillows on its seat and lamp table near it with its freight of pipe holder and matches, piles of farm magazines, Louis L’Amour paperbacks, and worn, well-used bible. Opposite from where he had sat, a small embroidered quilt draped the back of a huge comfortable-looking upholstered couch that beckoned one to sit, if not lay down for a long afternoon nap. Beside the classic image of a lone wolf on a hill above a farm house, dark visages of his parents and grandparents looked down into the room from a century ago from large oval frames.
 

 

Although John was a wealthy man he didn’t want for much that he didn’t already have; and as he got older, if he needed something, he’d give someone the money to obtain it for him with a little leftover for their trouble. He liked having candy, cookies, ice cream, bags of homemade donuts and the like around (He had that big freezer) in case some of his nieces and nephews, friends and neighbors would stop by to visit.
 

I didn’t go up the near vertical stairs to the two bedrooms as just absorbing the main living space was picturesque in itself in this day before cellphones and digital cameras; my notes were in an unorganized state, relying too much on recall perhaps, seeing as I had yet to go through the barn and outbuildings. I was burning daylight and writing time.
 

Unlatching a weathered barn door, I heard the wild flapping of pigeons leaving the barn loft. My eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness of a vast dark space illuminated only by high narrow barn windows over the loft near the peak. Ahead, below the loft floor was a virtual museum of antique farm equipment that somehow escaped the ravages of time, great high-wheeled wooden wagons straight out of the 1800s set one behind the other; their tongues removed to save on space; objects worthy of state-run history museums, each piece an amazing representative of craftsmanship, saved here, always-shedded in Uncle John’s barn safe from prying eyes; but equally tragic in that no one could appreciate them. He knew that someday someone would preserve them the way they deserved. These were family heirlooms; and even more as I would find out; model after model after model; some with sunshades for summer; and canvas heat-housers and plastic windshields for winter; newer tractors and combines gradually sporting cabs of shiny green paint and glass, atop bright yellow wheels.
 

Uncle John was comfortable living the way he did in his old house still trammeled by ghosts of his familial past and the people of their future. All his life, he walked past the old equipment that his grandfather had used; past the newer equipment he and his father had used, and to add to his collection of ‘stuff’ he merely added onto the barn when he needed more room.

John was much like that old freezer: dependable right through old age and chock full of sweetness.