Maybe it's the fog blocking your view. Or the trees.
Just a few years ago, I had the neatest front lawn on this stretch of highway. Or, at least that is what I heard whenever guests came to see my family.
It's pretty quiet around here now. It's also pretty cold. This cold damp weather is turning my fine oak floors into messy sheets of water and ice.
Linoleum floors are tattered and pulling up around the edges. My new "families" are taking care of that. I think they might actually be eating it, but what can you expect from little groups of raccoons and opossum?
You can't really tell from across the road, but I'm a mess. Birds, even bats are roosting in the attic. Squirrels chatter the day away and seem to laugh about storing their nuts in the kitchen cabinets.
For goodness sake, there are even little trees starting to grow in the living room. A couple more broken windows and a little bigger hole in the roof will be the end of me yet!
I was built in the early 1920s. A fine sturdy farm house with plenty of room for the big family that lived here for my first 30 years. Eight, no, ten children running around the yard and sliding down the bannister if their mom wasn't looking sure kept things lively around here.
Mr. and Mrs. Schwimmer raised those boys and girls; 20 dairy cows; some goats; and enough chickens to provide eggs and an occasional Sunday dinner. To the side and behind me stretched 80 acres of bountiful farmland that Mr. Schwimmer planted each spring and harvested each fall. First with a team of strong Percherons and later with a cute John Deere tractor.
There used to be a barn right over there. I forget when it was torn down - some contractor came out to re-claim the lumber from the barn for houses the city folk were building. I guess they want the feel of the farm without the actual work.
The Schwimmer family was great. 5 girls and 4 boys on an every other one line from the oldest daughter to the youngest. By the time there were 4, they were doing something around here. Usually it was some work in my big family kitchen or helping pick up around the rest of the first floor.
Then they helped get the eggs from the chicken house after one of the older ones checked to see if there were any Badgers or other critters inside having breakfast.
As things go, the children grew up, went to school, and most of them moved into town. The oldest daughter married a farmer, but they moved to his family's farm.
Eventually, Mrs. Schwimmer sold after her husband died. I am much too big a place for one, so she rented out the land for several years and moved into town.
Life as a rental house wasn't as nice as having my own family here, but it was better than sitting empty.
It's been ten years now since I last felt laughter in the kid's bedrooms and the conversation around the dinner table.
Sometimes, on calm days when the windows stop rattling for a while, I dream of what it would be like to be a real home again. I've been on the market for a while, but at this point I don't think it will ever happen.
Wait! Isn't that a set of car headlights pulling in the driveway?
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