Derelict

Sometimes it’s better to take the long way home.  I often find myself driving less-traveled road when I have the time, sometimes to clear my mind, sometimes to let the song on the radio finish, and occasionally to just watch the countryside.  It’s interesting seeing the view for no other purpose but to ‘see’ it.  I mentioned that I only get to do this when I have time.  Who has time?  When do I have time?  There is less and less of it these days.  I never seem to have time to do the things I want.  I have had a hard time making time to write this blog entry.  Maybe the problem is making the effort to afford the time to do things.  Sometimes it’s just not possible.

When I finally get the time conundrum sorted out and I drive through the countryside, I look for certain things.  I have a fascination with old buildings.  They can be anything; maybe an old barn, an abandoned house, a shed hanging in tatters behind an otherwise well-maintained property, maybe a tree house no longer played in by children.  Buildings are like senior citizens.  They have withstood all the storms of life, and yearn to be needed still while they wait. 

As a child, my Aunt Madelyn (actually my great-aunt, but she was close to me like an aunt) had a cottage near our house.  The cottage was sky-blue coloured, and was bungalow shaped with two great, big old-fashioned windows with the small square panes.  She had storm windows that I used to help her install and remove when I was a little older.  The walls were brown paper and cardboard, and there was running water only in the small sink in the kitchen, primed by a pump every spring and shut off so as not to freeze the pipes in the fall.  There was a matching blue outhouse out back, and it was the worst abomination you’ve never seen.  Outhouses are nasty, but this one seemed claustrophobic, musty, and occasionally was home to grass snakes and all assortments of insects.  I used it only when it was strictly necessary.  She used to poke fun at me for being afraid of it!

Auntie Madelyn passed away in the spring of 1992.  She was found in her home on her way back from the bathroom (a real bathroom); presumably she had suffered a fatal heart attack and never made it back to bed.  She died on Mom’s birthday, and to this day Mom swears she died specifically on a day that everyone would remember.  Which of course isn’t true, but if you knew her spirit, you might just be inclined to agree.  She had diabetes, and a long history of heart trouble, so it wasn’t a total surprised that she would pass away in her sixties, but the loss was of course nonetheless considerable.  She had no children of her own, and her husband, Uncle Rae had died years before.  She left behind an extended family of nieces and nephews, and a lifetime of wonderful memories.  Her house was eventually sold, but the cottage remained in our family.

In the twenty years since her passing, the cottage was used briefly by my sister Marcie and I for parties with our friends in our high school years.  We had one of those chemical toilets to use instead of that godforsaken outhouse, but otherwise we had a great time.  You could draw on the paper walls.  We were just far enough away from home that we could drink without attracting too much attention.  We had power and water, but otherwise it was kind of rustic.  Eventually my uncle, who was bequeathed the cottage, began to use it as a storage shed, because really, no one had any real use for it anymore.  As the years passed, the natural age of the structure began to show, and while he made the effort to keep it in good repair, the reality was that the building was nearing the end.  With that end came the dissipating of the memories of many a summer weekend spent there, learning to play Auction 45s, listening to the radio, drawing and writing our names on the walls, and everything else.

My family has a knack for holding on to decrepit old buildings, among other things.  Dad transported, from his homestead as a child, a dog kennel, a garage and an old storage shed.  All three of those buildings have been moved more than once since they were relocated the first time.  The dog kennel, which saw new life as a pen for a half-dozen ducks, is long gone.  The garage has been refurbished as Dad’s new lawn tractor garage.  The shed contains numerous old car parts and the like, and has been dubbed ‘Jackson Auto’, after a nickname my grandfather once held.  Jackson Auto is in pretty rough shape, and is in need of more than a tune-up.  We have a hard time letting go of these things because we are a sentimental family.  My grandmother, whose property once housed these buildings, is now in a nursing home.  Dad was actually thinking of having her house, which isn’t much bigger than a standard cottage, moved to his lot to use as a guest home, which makes sense given our family has grown exponentially in recent years.  I wouldn’t be shocked in the least if he did it.  I would.

Behind Jackson Auto there once lay a graveyard.  It was a boneyard, really; a junkyard of old cars.  My grandfather (whose sister was Auntie Madelyn) was of the generation that dragged things out into the woods to get rid of it.  He was not exactly an environmental child of the 90s.  Things were used as long as possible, and received all of his TLC, until that fateful day when it was proclaimed useless, and unceremoniously dumped in the woods.  If it was anything but a car, it could be found virtually anywhere.  There’s nothing that spells nature like seeing an old washing machine rusting along the trail.  But if it was a car, it was laid to rest in the Spruce Grove, the stand of trees that blocked out most of the sun and harboured a car enthusiast’s dream of old relics.  My cousin and I built a cabin there of the remnants of my mom and her siblings’ old one, only to have my grandfather make a smoke shed out of it.  It’s hard to entertain your friends in a cabin that smelled like smoked fish.

Back in the woods, there is a camp that my family used faithfully every winter for many years.  My grandfather used to walk back and nap there because it was very peaceful.  Like the cottage, we used to write our names on the wall, and we even kept a log book you could sign.  There was an old wood stove that used to start to glow orange when it was super-hot.  We had board games, teddy bears, dishware, and bedding kept there permanently.  In the later years, the mice began to take interest in the bedding, and when us kids were grown, mom and dad never went back to the camp anymore.  After Grampie died in ’98, it was seldom used again.  Recently, I took a trip back to salvage what, if anything, was still of use.  There was a kerosene lamp, a few stuffed animals I remembered from my childhood that the mice didn’t exploit, and the log book we kept.  And the girlie poster my grandfather had put up.  Apart from that, there was nothing worth rescuing.  As I turned to leave, my foot breached the floor boards.  The building had succumbed to the forest that surrounded it, and it was beyond its twilight hours.  It sits there as it was when I walked out that last time, whispering behind me that it was time to leave, time to let go.  However, in the true spirit of my family, I have other plans.  I’ll be back this summer to see if any of the timber is salvageable, because if it is, I’ll take it apart myself to bring back to Fredericton.  I plan to build a small playhouse for my kids.  There is something cathartic about the thought of using the old wood from the camp to build something new.

When I’m driving through the countryside, and I see an old barn, defeated with its big doors hanging off its rusty hinges, I can’t help but wonder.  Who owns or owned this building?  How long was it used?  Did kids jump off the hay loft into big piles of straw?  Did precocious teenagers steal a first kiss out back?  How many makes and models of tractors took shelter within?  When did someone finally look at it and say “it’s over”?  Everything becomes derelict eventually, but the real moment of truth comes when you finally accept that it has.

Auntie Madelyn’s cottage has found new life.  True to form, Dad relocated the old cottage with my uncle, and after some cosmetic surgery, they have transformed it into a working garage for their respective recreational vehicles.  They even have room for the wood splitter.  I must say, it looks pretty spiffy.  They have vinyl siding on it, kept the original door for rear egress, and have removed the front windows, supplanting them for bay doors and ramps.  The old sink is still there though.  It’s pretty safe to say the old outhouse will be staying put.