This past Saturday my childhood home caught fire and was damaged beyond repair. It was the home I grew up in, out on the prairie of Southern Illinois, my great-grandfather's house. I spent the first 18 years of my life there.
I learned of it though the weird light-speed grapevine that the modern world has stumbled upon. A neighbor and family friend who lives nearby called my mother to tell her the house was on fire and three fire trucks were there. My mother lives near us here outside Columbus, Ohio. She promptly called me. I, in turn, called my father, who still lives near the old farm. He was at breakfast in town, and said there was no problem when they left their house, but the diner where they were eating was across from the fire station and the trucks were gone.
An hour or so later he called me back and said, yes, the house had caught fire and was badly damaged. All of us, my father and mother, long divorced, and myself, were rather matter of fact about the place. It was an old farmhouse, and we'd all been gone for some time.
It's a shame really, but I'm no longer connected to that life. My great-great-grandfather came over from Ireland in the early 1860's. His brother who traveled with him, promptly joined the Union Army and is buried with an Army marker. My great-great-grandfather traveled on to Illinois and settled there.
My Uncle Bill still lives in what was my grandparent's house - on the original farm. But he wasn't a farmer - he spent his years as a truck driver. My grandfather, who died in 1967, was a farmer, and my father was too. So was I. Or more accurately, I worked the farm that my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and his father all worked.
It was a typical farm house, but with a story. In the basement you could find massive cracks. And the circle of massive walnut trees, each with frightening scars from limbs torn off by the prairie wind. The story was told that not long after the house was built in the 1920's, it was completely destroyed by a nighttime tornado. None of the occupants were seriously injured. If I remember correctly, there may have been one broken leg. And my great-Aunt Gladys had her long hair trapped beneath a bed frame, which turned snow white over night (at least that's the story I was told, and Aunt Gladys did have white hair). They rebuilt the house on the same, cracked foundation. And throughout my childhood I would come across bits and pieces, buried in the garden or yard, left by the destruction of the first house.
As you might imagine, my childhood dreams were filled with the threat of tornados. I clearly remember the dream of them lining the horizon, ominous and inescapable. In my teen years the dream-tornadoes became mushroom clouds.
I do think of my childhood as happy, although far from idyllic. Work on a farm is hard and I was glad to leave it behind. It's been the best part of 30 year since I left for college and it's a distant, different life. I have no particular nostalgia to return to the farm, no desire to remodel the farmhouse and take up residence. But it was reassuring to think of it still there. It was a connection, now lost.
My daughters have no concept of what my childhood was like. I've worked hard to provide them opportunity, let them learn, travel, decide what they want out of life. But they don't know that skinny little farm boy, bundled up against the icy prairie wind and accompanied by his best pal, Nicky, a black and tan German Shepard. He'd lean against that little farmboy's side, providing some bit of warmth while he worked the handle of that rusty red pump to provide water for the cows. There's no point in going back. There's nothing to see and the property belongs to someone else. We held the ground for a little over a hundred years and profited by it, but now it's time to let it go.
And here, courtesy of Google Maps, is how it looked recently. During my era, there were three red barns and a metal shed we used as a garage, not the trailers and surrounding buildings, and no pond. Click the "-" to back slowly out - you might get some idea of where the old farm is.
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