A Fall Day Afield

Seems like my recent postings here could be called, "Reflections of a mature gentleman", subtitled, "musings of an old guy". Well, let's suffer through this one more time.

Yesterday I climbed on my four-wheeler and went for foray out over the countryside hereabouts. Now, to do this you must be familiar with the land, where the old logging roads wind through the timber, where the wire gaps are in the fences, and where the old home places are hidden in overgrown pastures.

I had my camera with me and decided to take some photos of the old wrecks of houses and barns, the collapsed cabins that have settled to earth in a grove of trees, the faint marks of humanity on the land. Then it hit me: All these structures were standing when I was young.


The old relic of a house was inhabited then, a family tending the fields in the creek bottom. This pile of boards and logs was a place, though abandoned then, had the traces of children in the upstairs bedroom where I sifted among their scant leavings. I realized out there yesterday that I have experienced a broad span of years in the surrounding land. Let's just say that yesterday I felt experienced.

Twas a beautiful fall day and I gloried in it, accepting my continually broadening span of years as something more than simply a relentless aging. History resides in me. I know these things personally. They don't come from old books. In fact, in a certain way I wish I was older.

I wish I was personally acquainted with the folks that lived in that sunken house. I would like to see their faces in my mind, perhaps have attended a spare one-room school with their rambunctious offspring.

Then, I would have even more to muse about on a clear fall day in the Ozarks.

The Hired Man at Rock Eddy Bluff Farm www.rockeddy.com

Old houses out in the hills

While going through some files today, I happened upon these photos I am including. They show a two old houses, which, if they were currently occupied, would be some of our closest neighbors at Rock Eddy Bluff Farm.

As you can see from the photos, the first house is in bad condition and may not stand many more years. I can hardly believe that I remember the people who lived here. One of the girls who grew up in this house was a contemporary of my brothers and me. The family farmed the upper end of this creek bottom. Some years later, after I left for college to make my own way in the big world, the family dispersed leaving the house abandoned.

Over the years hunters and others have gone into the house and ransacked it. But even now there is strong evidence of the family that once lived there. The oddest thing is that it appears that the family just walked out of the house and took almost nothing with them. Clothes are still on hooks. The battered furniture in still in the house. There is perhaps more to that story.

Now, at my age I have a memory of other such house places not far from here. Most were not occupied when I was a child but they were then standing, along with a few outbuildings and hand-dug wells. Cabins (not houses as we think of them) were scattered along dirt roads and deep in the woods where the tracks leading to them are no longer even faint. You have to know where the remains of these places are located to find them. Some are now gone to rot with only a few foundation stones remaining to mark their location.

I have always been intrigued by these old house places. They each have a story. I know only a few of those stories. The last photo showing the old house that now has collapsed into the ground was called the Algerine Place. In that log cabin a son accidentally shot and killed his mother. He was preparing to shoot a hawk that was perhaps threatening their chickens. The shotgun somehow discharged in the house, killing his mother instantly.

Nearby is a house (not shown) where a wayward daughter killed several of her family members by poisoning the water pail. And, there are more such places where families once somehow scratched out an existence. Many are now only traces in the ground.

Well, I like these old pictures. I like to look at them even though they make me feel old. And somewhere among boxes of old photos that were taken on some medium they long ago called "film", I may even have photos of some of these old places when they were younger and in a better state of repair.

From the Hills, The Old Hired Man