What Have You Been Hiding?

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

                                                                             Joubert

Today I travelled to the little village and went to the little house where I grew up. I noticed while slowly driving by that the man that bought the place and has been trying desperately to preserve its lovely charm was there, I parked and went up to talk to him. He has graciously let me explore the house ever since he bought it and has been working on it. There was finally an old wall with old wallpaper, old newspaper and horse hair exposed, he let me take some pieces jammed under the old trim. I photographed different snippets of the old paper still stuck to the wall. I could not believe it had survived.

This is a house that my Dad used to always insist was built the year Jesse James was born. I had no idea who this Jesse James was at the time until I seen a movie in black and white on the old TV set, fuelling my imagination.

Mr. New Owner I shall call him Pierre was informed by the engineers that no matter what he was to do with this house it would cost too much to save it, it was structurally unsound. He has decided to demolish it and built a brand new fancy house.

I remember as a kid in that cold old house with lots of drafts and no plumbing, and wishing the wind would take it away like in the Wizard of Oz. We would all be whisked up into the air and land in the land where Munchkins and the Good Witch lived. I would always wish for a warm place where my Mom and Dad and all us kids would not have to huddle all together, and we did not have to go get buckets of drinking water up the street, around the corner. I wished for my own room and a fancy toilet that you could flush like the other kids who lived down the street. After thinking back and remembering dreaming of that day so long as a kid, I must say on hearing this news today I was a little sad.

There is a whole lot of history in this old house and that history began long before we had ever been born. First off we were always told stories that it was built on the old Stage Coach Road. All I knew about Stage Coaches was what I had seen on those Old Westerns on TV and I loved that thought. The Stage Coach Inn used to sit on the man street and I imagined the Stage Coach would bring guests to the front of the Inn and the drover would pull hard on those reins on those beautiful horses and holler “Whoa. The people in the Stage Coach would go inside and rent a room to wash up and sleep, and the horses would go to the stable behind to rest and eat hay. At first light they would again begin the long journey to Toronto or Montreal. I stand here thinking back to those long lost stories in my head and glance over to still see the road bed hill in our old back yard.

I had also imagined the Stage Coach with those tired horses prancing down this old road with well-dressed weary people sitting inside, the horseman directing the horses, with old trunks stacked behind him as he sat high atop. The luggage would be filled with beautiful dresses, and treasures of jewelry and coins. This was usually when my imagination used to take me off in the direction of robbers ambushing the Stage Coach, and coins being spilled all over the ground while the beautiful dressed people tried to hold tight to their coin bags while fighting with those robbers.

I seemed to be able to pull my brothers and sisters into those stories that I delightfully shared. That is when all this compulsive digging started. We were all searching for treasures at different times and different spots all over the back yard. My stories would just keep getting bigger and bigger. Everyone was always trying to find those spilled coins that missed the robber’s eye lying on the ground during the scuffle.

Well one day my brother actually found a coin from 1850’s and I then knew I was not just a storyteller, I was truly a teller of truths or so I told myself. Maybe I was not as “Full of Malarkey” as my Great Grandmother used to say. This made for constant searching and more holes in our back yard over many years. We were going to find the coins sell them and be rich and then move out of this old house someday. No more coins were ever found.

I have gotten to know the new owner Pierre very well and he vowed to inform me if he finds any of those hidden treasures in the walls that I have always imagined in my head. Who knows what this house has been hiding.

Yes it is a sad day but, I do know there are many more stories hidden in this old house or under this hunk of land and I intend to keep trying to solve some of the mystery. 

I wonder if Pierre could lend me a shovel. Stay tuned.

Later