The other day a friend of mine took me on a walk through her Grandmother's farm in central Idaho and it was like walking back in time. First we peeked into the little milking barn where five or six cattle stantions waited for the cows to come home. On one beam hung an old steel-runner sled, and on the floor sat a forlorn not-quite-red Flyer wagon. One could still read the writing on the wall where someone had taught themselves the Morse Code while milking cows and you could almost hear the old milking machine chu-chooing in the background. The dusty smell, the sled, the wagon, the milking machine, together became my ticket to the past.
We walked over to the house, which I had expected to find empty since my friend's Grandmother had passed away two years before. But when we walked into the house I was greeted by sights and sounds of the past that overwhelmed me at first, and then just settled me back into the comfortable rocking chair of remembrance. The creaky floor, the pictures of four or five generations of family, the old china dishes, the porcelain dolls, the old books, the quilts, the big, flowered wallpaper, the tiny rooms, the old sun-porch, original paintings, the musty canning cellar, the crack in the ceiling, were all just as she left them, almost untouched. The woman who had lived in and loved that little house seemed as near as the next room as we stepped onto the homemade rugs and ancient linoleum. I saw her face smile back at me through the picture of her that hung in her bedroom and it seemed to say, “You are welcome here, only please leave it the way you found it because I like it this way.”
Out in the yard we saw the rake, the hoe, and the old rusty wheelbarrow, sitting poised by a tree, as though they had only been put there that morning, but like Rip Van Winkle, feeling maybe a little worse for the wear. The trees themselves looked like giant patriarchs standing guard round the place, unmoved and immovable for perhaps a hundred years. The little canal that ran through the trees holds the secrets of many a warm night spent skinny-dipping after a long day of work and of coutless hours of fun-filled romping by the children on hot summer days. How many tree houses, how many games of hide and seek, how many hours of sweet solitude those trees could tell about, I couldn't say, but you could just smell the memories. Rusty implements, an old tractor, beautiful old tricycles, milk cans, in short it was a perfect museum of the life of that family. I felt a strange kinship to them while I looked around. I had an incredible urge to see that farm working fifty years ago. I wanted to be a part of it, to see the cows come in, see the children play, help in the garden.
But, like the Grandmother, it is past. All the good that happened back then has happened for them and all my wishing won't bring it back. But, this wonderful family has taught me a lesson. They are keeping this little house and barn and yard in the family. They are going to care for it and keep it pretty much the way Grandma kept it. They will take turns caring for, living in, and keeping alive this most fragile piece of their family's history. By so doing, they are allowing the rising generation to see, feel and smell the past; to be a part of it. Tears filled my eyes as I stood in that Grandmother's kitchen and thought of my own grandmother. They were the same in many ways. And maybe, if we keep the memory of that past way of life alive, we can learn from it enough to heal some of the troubles of the present and perhaps even give our children a little better future.
