Trimming Grass and Weeds Around Old New England Property (Antique) Granite Landscape Fixtures - Part Eighteen - "Being Thinking" - (B)

Trimming Grass and Weeds Around

Old New England Property

(Antique) Granite Landscape Fixtures

Part Eighteen

"Being Thinking"

(B)

            This... era... of the... aura:  The ‘era’ being “1850” to... today (2014) and... the aura... being “FARM ABANDONMENT” is... the most lush, complex and romantic of the antiquarian intrigue on ‘old New England property’.

            Attic

            Barn

            Shed(s)

            Ell

            Chamber

            Tool shop

            Parlor

            Summer kitchen

            Library

            Crawl space

            Cellar

            “Hired man’s” (“hired girl’s”)... “quarters”.

            I... “being thinking”... the that... “my whole life” I stated.  I... being thinking... of the ‘so many’ variables to that aura... that halo.  I, myself, being thinking of just MY ‘so many variables of that aura, that halo’.  I being thinking while I stand where I CAN... ‘still see the chimney’.  I can see the fourth diorama too.

            Being thinking I... did not ever SEE the Harris Place.  I can see ‘where it was’.  And I wonder about my ...being thinking... in this ‘of’ farm abandonment.  Do I, being thinking, be too... but a maggot on old New England property?

            OR IS THIS, I being thinking, THE old New England property; the wholeness of it:  The foundation cap stones “taken off” ‘beep, beep, beep, beep.’

            The well cap snatched “beep, beep, beep, beep”.

            The scraggly, rotten, falling... cornice.

            The sagging shattered ‘six and eight’ windowless wind blown flapping shutter falling sill rotting floor buckling unlocked open front door showing a sagging staircase to the... too.

            I did not climb that stairs at the Harris Place.  It was gone when I got here.  Herbert did; he climbed that stair

            SIXTY YEARS AGO.

            The old crank was dead

            Found dead in his bed.

            And no one cared.

            I didn’t want to go down into the bottom of the cellar holes.  The little one was too little and too boring; just ‘falling in’ field stones ‘left’.  The big cellar hole had, in the 20^th century, been used on one end as a trash dump by the loggers.  Their trash, the visible being vintage 1960’s... looked the bad taste of dumping it was and I

            Didn’t like that; the way it looked.

            I knew there had to be at least one and probably as many as three ‘old wells’ ‘right around here’ including ‘by the barn’... foundation but I

            Didn’t care and

            Wasn’t thirsty.

            Maybe there would be survivals in the garden; old plantings holding on.  I could go look.  The garden would be just right over there.... right over there... where... the old stone wall

            Has the ATV mud trail right along side of it

            Where the back of the garden

            Was.

            I being thinking

            That’s where it was... right there.

            “That hole (‘punched’ in the old stone wall by the loggers) “MY ATV”... “CAN GET THROUGH”... then back “OUT” at the... old gateway by the rear corner

            Of the old farm yard where it

            Joined the old pasture with there

            Being, too, ‘a road’; a

            Now muddied “OFF ROAD

            Race way

            “STRAIGHT OFF” across the old pasture (now ‘recovered forest’) to

            Be above that pasture and ‘head’ another wall and

            “TRAIL THROUGH”

            More Harris property land once called ‘wood lot’ but now

            Delineated with little clipped metal signs

            Showing the way

            Off and away

            To a petroleum fabricated, muddy, rutted

“There”.

            The fifth diorama shows the first cutting of the second growth of trees.  That’s when the old stone walls started getting punched (mangled).  That’s when trash was first dumped on the property.  That’s when... the old ‘head’ of the oldest stone wall... was still visible even when two men used it to ‘butt off’ their logs as they sawed them.  I... being thinking

            Of how all the slash from that first second cutting... left in windrows and now rotted away... followed that old colonial wall ‘up’ to this field stone piled wall head...;

            Are those now rotted windrow following... are they either a ‘still’ or an... ‘after all’?

            The trees “recover” again.  Turning the page to the sixth diorama I have to steady myself to remind that even though I am at ‘being thinking’ I said that only the first five dioramas were ‘about’ (trimming grass and weeds from around old New England property (antique) granite landscape fixtures).  When I turn to the sixth diorama, its portrayal of the Harris Place no longer shows this property as an ‘undisturbed’ let alone ‘intact’.  In addition to the mangling of the property from the logging, most all has, also, been carried off.  “YOU CAN STILL SEE WHERE THE CHIMNEY WAS”.

            I being thinking.

            “At the Allen Farm”.  TWO miles across the hillside.  Two miles through ‘recovered’ forest following a mangled abandoned road with... surprisingly still undisturbed long sections of stone wall stabbing in and out from the... old banked sides of... this was barely ever a true ‘road’.  “Cart path through” to the Allen Farm it was.  How about that.  Well...:  Even WE came in from the other side to get THERE; the Allen Farm.

            When we did, I was fourteen.  And my grandmother ‘remembered’, she called it, the Allen Farm.  “In there” she said.  “Wonder if IT’S still standing.

            Well.

            Only one way to find out

            Back then (1964).  One ‘went in’

            On foot

            “To see”

            It (the Allen farm house) was a dilapidated early colonial era center chimney cape with the roof line right to the top of the front door.  The chimney was ‘that size’; four feet by four feet.  Above the old hearth.  The front door was open; wide open.  All the other buildings once ‘of the farm’ were perished.  The surrounding ‘old field’ was scraggly ‘over grown’.  After twenty-five to forty feet that all became ‘recovered forest’.  This ‘forest’ had not been logged... recently... in 1964.

            The handful of rooms of the first floor of the ...colonial homestead... were filled with scattered and strewn truck about the old furniture that seemed, to my youthful eye, to be in their ‘same place as always’.  The kitchen cupboards were full of china and glassware.  The stove was rusted black iron.  The kitchen table had an ‘oil cloth’ on it.  My grandmother lifted that and stared at the table top underneath.  Then... I didn’t know what she was doing.  NOW... I know she... being thinking... if that table was worth us carrying... on foot... out of there

            That day.

            Another day

            Or any day.

            At the top of the skimpy boxed stairs on the side of the chimney she made me go up to that stair top and “push” the floor board door into ‘the chamber’ above.  All this crud fell all over me when I executed this commanded push the way a fourteen year old boy would.  It was dark in the chamber except for the two square holes in each end ‘under the roof’ where once “panes of glass” had been “PUT” as “WINDOWS”.  I could see there was truck all over the place in this... ‘the chamber’.

            She come up; my grandmother.  My mother too.  No light or anything.  They just grubbed in there; that chamber.  They’d put this there and that there and there too for that and “don’t that” and “not today” for about an hour and then covered it all back up with “that’s crummy”.  Except for a little special pile... that was actually a bigger pile than anyone of us figured... once we started walking down the old... cart path...

            Carrying

            “IT” “OUT”.

            So we’d go back every now and then in pretty regular fashion.

            After few years we’d ‘cleaned out’ ‘everything we want’ ‘in there’.

            That includes leaving leavings that TODAY anyone WOULD

            “DIE”

            “IF YOU LEAVE THAT”

            I thought the old portraits of the “Captain” “Magellan” Allen and his wife were... not only dirty.... and full of holes but... “UGLY”... too.  So we left ‘em... there.  When the roof went... they went.  The roof was already ‘going’ when we were ‘in there’.

            Used to be all like that all over the place... I being thinking... by the farmyard ‘wall’... over to the farmyard garden... in the ‘recovered’ forest... at the Harris place.

            “YEP... YOU CAN STILL SEE WHERE THE CHIMNEY WAS” I... being thinking.  One can see it... just like in the sixth plate of the diorama book.