Preservation And Defense

Not long ago, two old farmers - a brother and sister - moved out of their family farmhouse: the last two surviving members of the Welch family had stayed at home as long as they could. They were each nearly a century old when they died a few miles down the road, beneath the flourescent light buzzing over a nursing home deathbed. But before they left this life, they bequeathed their farmhouse, and all of the surrounding land, to a conservation group: the old siblings did not want their legacy to fall into enemy hands.

Adjacent to the Welch's homestead, just east of the old rooming house, stood a clutch of barns. Inside one barn could be found the initials, carved into pine or painted in stove black, of every farmhand that passed through the farm dating back to 1865. It was clear that not a few workers took jobs at the farm several years in a row; others would be off to fight in some great war, never to return. There were chains and old scythes hanging in rusted silence; there were old tins on the wall; a set of old oars stood in a corner, crossed. It was a hall for the silent past, but a past that was not so silent if one but listened.

After the old couple died, I would walk the forsaken farm, taking pictures here and there. The photo above was taken along the northern wall of the old house, just off the ell. I could not help but take the photograph -- with the old lamp and bulb, the paper-wasps' nest tucked beneath the shade, the flecked paint, a lonely window and the ghostly imprint of old shutters -- all calling me to remember. But what seems silent is not at all; and what seems old is still rather new: the tap of hands on a window flung open, the smell of fresh paint on a horsehair brush, the piquant air of harvest. I hear children nearby, the shouts of farmhands heading to town with a wagon-load of milk; or the muted thud of boots beneath a dim lamp during heavy snows.

The conservation group which inherited the land, in response to fears and anxieties and sundry other modern maladies, decided that the best thing for the preservation of the old regime was for the new to vanguish the past. So the fire department was called. The volunteer fire corps practiced in the light of burning barns. They rescued smoke and soot. They aimed their hoses only after all memories had disappeared in the heat of a spark fanned bright by legal arson. Later, a bulldozer would level the old farmhouse. Soil was pushed here and there beneath the row of singed catalpa trees; a little monument was erected to remind stray visitors of the monuments that were burned and buried.

Occasionally I return to the old Welch farm. Nothing much remains, of course, but a few flecks of paint, a shard of glass, an ember pressed into soot. And the wasps nearby.

Peace.

Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.