’
By Jerry Nelson
from the book dear county agent guyThe old farmhouse was abandoned and
falling apart. But tearing it down
would be like razing the author’s past.I
n 1963, at age 65, my grandfather,
Erwin, decided to tackle a crazy proj-
ect: 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 inspired frugality,
he hired a bulldozer 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. I agreed andplanned on a colossal bonfire. But I
deemed it prudent 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
porch had collapsed in on itself, most
of the windows were gone, and the
siding was falling off. We entered
through an open window and got the
olfactory impression that skunks 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 in
a gunnysack. A thermometer from24 september 2019
LIFE WELL LIVED