Making It Up As I Go Along #334

MONDAY...
— I work okay. Not too tired today. It took a week but I’m getting the hang of days again. Still like the evening better.
— Rained out softball. Heaviest thunder storm I’ve been in since London, Ontario in 1985. Inch sized hail... probably 5 inches of rain... big lightning strikes. I think one hit the house next door. I just about jumped through the ceiling with the blast of light and crash of thunder.

TUESDAY...
— Got through today fine... but still, at the end of the day it felt like it should be Thursday, not Tuesday... oh dear oh dear.
— Walk to the grocery store. Over to Farm Boy for some healthy food... and supper. And walking instead of the car is good too.
— Post supper nap is accidental... I hope I don’t pay for it come 11:00.

WEDNESDAY...
— Work is pretty normal. Go across for lunch today with Janice, Devin and Annick. After work walk around the pond and some evening napping make for a pretty relaxing time.

THURSDAY...
— Leave the office for lunch today. Janice, Devin, Bruno and I hit the Chip Wagon for burgers and fries. Good good.
— Go to discuss real estate with an agent after work. Not sure if I’ll sell or not, but knocking the idea around in the mind... getting out of the suburbs would be nice.

FRIDAY...
— Last day of CNI supervisor work. It goes alright. Home for a short time afterwards and then off to supper with Karl at the pub. After supper, I go on to the Mayfair for a movie alone... Mongol is good. After that I meet Sheila there for the second of the double header... Hancock is pretty good itself.

SATURDAY...
— Quiet day around the house with some cleaning and a ball game. Paula and Eddie come over with the baby in the evening. We hang out and talk for a while and then go to the Works for burgers. A nice visit with them.
— I nap in the evening after they leave. I’m having to work at staying up again now. With the compressed schedule I’m going on, I’ll be at work until midnight each night... so I need to get my late night legs underneath me again.


Ever Changing Landscapes.
People always change the landscape they’re on. Yes there is that sentiment that we can’t tame nature, that it’ll put us in our place. And there’s truth to that. But it’s a neck and neck fight and sometimes we do win.

Our initial reaction is always that people’s influence on the landscape is a negative one. I remember, years ago back in Wedgewood Park, there was once talk of building a snow plow garage in the open space that stood between the softball field, our line of homes, and a group of houses that were built only a few years prior. One of the new home owners went around with a petition, trying to get us all to sign and stop the building of the garage... that it would be harmful to the peace and beauty of the neighbourhood.

I was struck by this because, only two or three years before, I was a heartbroken teenager who watched the destruction of the forest I had grown up with. My playground of trees, paths, rivers and (most importantly) imagination was all destroyed... or permanently altered... to allow this neighbour to come live near me. They were as big an intrusion to me as the garage would be to them... and I ignored their petition.

And the fact is, the home I had grown up in had severely altered the forested environment as well. How many animals were dislodged from homes... only wishing to have the brains and equipment necessary to petition the houses me and my friends grew up in? Were there hiking and ski trails that others had used... simply destroyed for my home?

The newest arrivals are often seen as the destroyers of paradise. And often, for the people in question, that extreme view does become reality. The Irish and English immigration to Newfoundland was the primary reason for the extinction of the Beothuk Indians who already called large portions of the island home.

In later years, for my cultural and historical geography studies, I wrote a dissertation on the history of a particular plot of land located near the university. The present day cul-de-sac, left paved and ready for homes, yet only as a large green space among homes instead made for an interesting study.
Forest, tamed for farming... it was a rural farmstead for several decades. A place where a family lived on the edge of the city. People grew up on this land, used to a particular way of life. Taken horse drawn carts into the city to sell their produce or walking to the lake a few farmsteads over for a Sunday picnic.

As time went on, the city grew around the farm. In fact, expropriation took away much of their land for the good of the city. The farm was left cut off at the neck. The family still owned the head (the homes and sheds which surrounded them) but the body... the fields... were taken by the city and homes built up around them.

For a few years, the family hung on... grasping at the past through a maintenance of what remained... but the writing was on the wall. Soon the chickens had to be removed as well. Selling eggs is a life best left for those living in the countryside, they were told... there were too many complaints from the neighbours. Too much smell... too noisy in the morning.

Eventually, the family sold off what remained. It was too painful to stay in a farm house that no longer stood on a farm. They were aliens in their own homes... surrounded by those that were different. Stared at as an annoyance in the way of a civilized neighbourhood.

And there the land stays, half developed and waiting for the right price to be paid for the good of real estate investment. A home, and way of life is now long forgotten. Only a few have reminders of it. Family pictures for those that once lived there. Some papers and my dissertation in the university records. I have a brick that I pried from the dirt where the house once stood. A piece of the chimney of a Newfoundland farm house now lays dividing books upon my bookcase in Ontario... an out of place artifact that would be a mystery to any other who’d notice it there (although few do).

Today, I’ve witnessed such a destruction first hand. But now I’ve been on the side of the villain.

I bought into a new neighbourhood. A neighbourhood built on top of old farm land. In fact, the old farm house was still standing when I arrived. Off in the distance, across the now abandon fields only a few hundred yards from my back window. Possibly, while I stood at my window, looking out at them, they stood at their back porch, looking over towards me and trying to remember the pleasant times when they could walk through their fields to some grove of trees that may once of stood where I now live.

Like the farmstead I wrote about in University, this house stood as another severed head... hanging on for a few more short breathes but with no body to keep it going. The once quiet road that once connected this farm to civilization is now a thoroughfare that I use daily. And even I mutter under my breath as the traffic has increased along this road in the five years I’ve been here... used by more and more as the surrounding farm land continues to be converted into the sprawl of a city.

But I always was drawn to the old farm house. I’d use it in my directions for coming visitors. Telling them to pass the strip malls and keep driving until you come to the old farm house on the left. There you make the turn into my subdivision.

I’d pass by and glance at the home each day. Admiring the trees around it. Imagining the life and history that once took place in and around it. The rope swing in one of the trees. The front porch for those evenings when the family sat and watched the sun go down. The last light on in one of the upstairs bedrooms as one lay reading in bed while the rest of the family slept. I imagine the history of the place so vividly that they almost appear as ghosts to me when I pass.

One day last year, I passed the farm house to see a large gathering of people in the back. Tables of food were set up and dozens milled about talking and laughing with each other.

In fact, from that day last summer, to now... I don’t remember seeing people around that house again. Maybe I passed them by and saw them as more of those apparitions of my mind. Or maybe the house was left abandoned from that time on. I will never know now. For the house is no more.

I didn’t realize the end was so close until last week. Working day shift again, I had the opportunity to walk to the grocery store after work rather than drive to it on the way home at night.

You see much more of your surroundings when you walk. Driving by the house, it’s easy to glance at it and think nothing had changed since you first saw it five years before. Walking by last week, I saw the signs that the respirator was to be turned off. That the machines would be unplugged. And that the home would soon be dead and gone.

The large trees out front were stripped of their limbs. Only thick parts of trunks remained standing. And looking through the windows, on my way past on the road, I could see there was nothing inside.
The next day, a back hoe stood in the driveway. And the day after that, the front porch and part of one side was gone. I knew, driving past, that I wouldn’t see the house again.

And sure enough, I drove by yesterday to see a pile of rubble where a house once stood. The back hoe propped over top of the carnage like a victorious beast having fed and gorged itself.

Now I look from my window and there’s no more family on their back porch, peering back towards me and dreaming of their grove of trees at the end of their fields. I see a line of old trees that survived the assault. They frame the site as a reminder, for those who choose to look for the signs of past civilization within the place they now live.

And that day last year, when the family was all gathered for food out back, stands as the last hurrah. The celebration of a lifetime that has to move on to another chapter. The people are now scattered about, probably in more urban settings where they look out their window and wish for more rural views. And the home is gone. To be forgotten by many and never known by most.

Kids will grow up only a few tens of metres from where the place once stood. New memories will be made on this landscape. Happy ones of barbeques, meetings with friends and play in nearby parks. But those distant memories of the farm will remain subtle as ghosts on the land.