Saving Grandpa’s Home The old farmhouse was abandoned and falling apart. But tearing it down would be like razing the author’s past By Jerry Nelson FROM THE BOOK DEAR COUNTY AGENT GUY n 1963, at age 65, my grandfather, Erwin, decided to tackle a crazy project: he wanted to build a new house. He wasn't quite sure what to do with the old house. It seemed a waste to demolish it, but something, had to give, since it sat where the new, house would be. In a moment of in- spired frugality, he hired a bulldoz- er to push the old house far out into a grove of trees. That old house sits there to this very day. Erwin and his wife, Elida, passed away, and I purchased the farm from their estate. My wife and I raised our sons on this place and have lived here for more than 30 years. When we first moved in, my wife took one look at the derelict house and declared it a hazard. | agreed and planned on a colossal bonfire. But I deemed it pru- dent to check out the old shack first, just in case something of value had been left behind. Our two young sons tagged along, and we waded through the tall grass in the meadow where the old house sat. Time had taken its toll. The front verandah had collapsed in on itself, most of the windows were gone, and the wall cladding was falling off. We entered through an open window tdasia.com 53READER’S DIGEST and got the olfactory impression that animals had resided beneath the floorboards. I felt as though I had stumbled onto a time capsule. Here lay the sundry detritus of my grandparents’ lives. A broken chair. Some old clothes. A thermometer from a grain elevator. But the thing that drew my eye was a cardboard box stuffed with papers. 1 dug through its contents and was instantly transported back in time. There was a tax return from 1957. Cancelled cheques from June 1962. Greeting cards from old friends and relatives, now all dead and gone. An uncle's third-grade spelling book. spent most of a pleasant hour going through that box. All the while, ] had to answer a stream of questions from my sons about the old house. They were amazed that nine people once occupied the tiny structure, and that they did so without running water or electricity. I related how on cold winter mornings, a bucket of water would be iced over even though it sat right next to the stovetop. And they shivered when I told them that in those days the stove- top their only source of heat. So it was that the old house was spared the torch. The years passed, and our visits grew infrequent. The house once again enjoyed the lonely solitude of our meadow. As we hur- ried through our lives, | might catch 54 novemser 2019 I HAD TO ANSWER A STREAM OF QUESTIONS FROM MY SONS ABOUT THE OLD HOUSE a glimpse of it through the trees and wonder: How did they manage? How did they survive the storms and the floods and the Great Depression? They must have been made of sterner stuff than I was. As I stood once again on that ancient linoleum, my eye was drawn to a jumble of papers on the floor. An envelope, yellowed with age, lay on top. A blue stamp on the envelope read ‘Passed by Naval Censor’, How could I have missed this artefact? My father had served in World War II and had written home whenever he could. My grandmother saved all of removed one letter envelope, It was dated his letters | fully from iSaving Grandpa’s Home September 1944. My father would have been somewhere in the South Pacific at that time and all of 18 years old. I studied the familiar scrawl. Dad wondered how the harvest had been and how his uncle’s new team of horses was working out. He sup- posed that his youngest brother was Starting first grade and imagined that he was becoming quite the little man. He asked his mother to greet every- one and said that he missed them ali. It wasn't hard to read between the lines. Here was a homesick young man, a kid really, who had spent his entire life dwelling upon a sea of open fields. Now he was on a dif- ferent kind of sea, an ocean that was being roiled by the thunder and the lightning of a world at war. At the bottom of the page, in underlined print, my father had passed on one last message. Tears burned my eyes as I read those words he had so care- fully emphasised: “All is well here. Please don’t worry. I am doing fine.” As Lleft the old house that day, I took one last glance back at it over my shoulder. I don’t care what anyone thinks, | decided. That old house gets to stay there until it rots into the earth. FROM THE BOOK DEAR COUNTRY AGENT GUY BY JERRY NELSON, © 2016 BY JERRY NELSON. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION BY WORKMAN PUBLISHING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. rdasia.com 55