When the Past Knocks…
November 11, 2008|Comments (24)
This was my favorite house at Westville Village (where we spent Saturday afternoon). I could move in tomorrow if they promised to insulate the walls. Seriously — that would be the one request. Oh, and also a little thing called “internet.” The Harris Farmhouse spoke to my soul from the moment we rounded the corner and recognized the scent of sugar cane syrup cooking. There in the dappled light stood a dog-trot log home with an open breezeway linking the main house to the kitchen
On the back porch, dishes were set to soak in a slightly cracked earthenware kettle beside a folded dishcloth and a lye soap cake overlooking a garden and paddock with sheep. My heart began to sing. I confess to sitting on the steps and simply soaking it all in. Aside from internet, I truly believe that I was born in the wrong generation. As I sat on the splintered stairs, I watched Josh explore the chicken coop and offer reassuring pats to the sheep — I was overwhelmed by a sense of belonging.
Are we generationally displaced? Throwbacks to a forgotten time? As we wandered from house to house on narrow clay streets dotted with mule droppings and scarred with wagon wheel tracks, I can’t help but wonder why our civilization believes that we have progressed in comparison. In the pre-industrial age, there was no global warming or home owners associations to measure the length of your grass. People lived in communities and knew that each member of the town provided an important craft be it shoemaking or basket weaving. Those traditional skills linked the early settlers into more than just a subdivision — they were a family. Can our society really say that we have improved since then?
Of course, medical sciences and other advances have certainly impacted society for the better since those of us outside of the third world do not have to worry about contracting Yellow Fever or Tuberculosis. But the sense of community? Lost. How about truly closeknit families? Rare.
As Josh and I reflect on our time at Westville Village, we keep returning to the same phrase: “Let’s not let our children wander around such a town and mourn the lack of a closeknit family. Let’s make sure that they wander through such a place with confidence — knowing how to churn butter, make soap, weave, build tables and chairs, spin, quilt, garden, cook over a fire, and also knowing that they didn’t spend their childhood parked in front of a television but making memories.”
What are your favorite childhood memories? What memory do you think your children will recant to their children as a best-loved tale? Are you generationally displaced, too?
Read more about our trip to Westville Village in A Quiltin’ Man and check out homesteaders cattle in Irish Dexters: 4 Door Sedan Bovine. What’s up with all this homesteading talk? We’re wannabes. Plain and simple: wannabes.
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Lacy: I guess I can say I’ve lived through several generational changes. I will take this modern age. I never liked the outhouse at the deer camp. I didn’t like the coal furnace that was too hot when you went to bed and was too cold when you woke up. I would not go back to 3 channels on the TV.
I do appreciate your thought but there are a lot of things to give up to go back to that age then just the computer.
[...] This was my favorite house at Westville Village (where we spent Saturday afternoon). I could move in tomorrow if they promised to insulate the walls. Seriously — that would be one request Original post [...]
I know that I would love to live in a past generation.
My heart sings when I see old fashioned things, antiques, or others doing things like they did way back when.
Hey Fishing Guy!
I gotta tell you… I don’t care one lick about tv, don’t mind an outhouse, and wood stoves are all I’ve ever known. When the power went out in Washington thanks to a record-breaking windstorm — guess who cooked on her wood stove, heated water for bathing and washing clothes, and who had oil lamps in her house? This girl. I loved it! I was in my element.
Chocolatechic, you sweet thing – whatever souls are made of: ours must be cut from the same material. I knew you would understand!
Blessings!
Lacy
I’m starting to think you’re my long, lost sister or something. I would have felt the exact same way.
I don’t know if I could have lived in an earlier generation. i’ve become to dependent on things like the internet, tv, cell phones, CARS! haha But I wouldn’t mind the community that was around in the past.
I love my computer and eyeglasses (I have to wear trifocals to see at all) – but DH and I both know how to do things – real things not TV and video games. I wasn’t able to have children so nobody to pass what I DO know along to – don’t enjoy being around people obsessed with being entertained. Work to do, friendships , bible and a source of music – we’re good to go! While the advances in medicine are wonderful – they are also creating situations we aren’t prepared to deal with – but that is another topic for another blog. I love the pictures and dreams you and Josh have – knowing how to do something and not HAVING to do it but choosing to – is a confidence in living few people seem to acquire. Good on ya!
I think you’ve hit on something really important that many people neglect: the possibility that not all technolgical advancements are a good thing. There certainly are things that are good (medicine etc.) but that doesn’t mean that everything is good. I wish more people would step back and really consider what the advantages of new technologies are and how they can also harm our quality of life. For instance: the lack of sense of community…is partly due to the modern combustion engine which allowed us to travel farther and therefore build our homes farther away from each other and the things we need. Now don’t get me wrong, I drive to work everyday. But if I had a job I could walk to I would be much happier doing that. And Lacy I agree, sometimes I think I wouldn’t mind going back a century or two (if it weren’t for some of the hightened risks for women like dying in childbirth)! I think you would find you had a lot in common with historic reenactors. beccahttp://swampyankeesfromouterspace.blogspot.com
Such a cute little place! I could live in there anytime, but with internet ;-P… I would really like to know a less stressful life in which family ties and real friendship exist!
Cheers,
Rosa
My heart has always been drawn to those seemingly simple and quaint times of the past, as well.
Why can’t friendships and family ties co-exist with technology today? For me, e-mail helps me keep in touch with the extended family who still wish to keep the contact going. Friendships -well, that’s a two-way street too and with some of my friends/neighbors, we’ve had the relationship as long as I can remember. Other newer neighbors have become friends -most have anyway -but that depends too on personality type as well as, at times, mis-matched work schedules. I love the look and feel of “down home” things -quilts, rustic appearances and such, but I wouldn’t trade my indoor plumbing for all the tea in China! My grandmother had to carry water or have my uncles help her to carry water on wash days up a steep hill and then, she had to have a big fire in the coal/wood cook stove to boil said water to wash clothes -by hand, using a scrubboard on the dirty, no filthy, work clothes of my Grandfather and uncles from the mines. I would not wish to endure that lifestyle at all. I love electricity, TV too and the internet -without it, I think I might come close to withering up and dying for sure! In my lifetime, I grew up with a coal furnace for heat and just as one commenter above said -hotter than hades when you went to bed and colder than all get out come morning. Frosted window panes may look neat and pretty -in pictures -but aren’t all that wonderful in reality! We also had a “bucket-a-day” stove to heat our water here too and firing even a small stove like that, requires a lot of work -along with the daily chore of carrying out the ashes too. People complain of having not enough time now but with “inconveniences” like some of these things were they to be the norm again, I wonder if many of us would ever get anything accomplished!
Funny, I get the same feeling when we visit the same place! LOL! I love the whole feel of “community” there. Wandering through the neighborhood is such a treat! And the man with the donkey pulling the cart was so sweet! Seems so weird that an Internet friend actually goes to the same places we do! =D
I’d like to add to becca’s comment. Historical reenactors are an overlooked resource for people interested in self-sufficiency and (not so) simple living. While volunteering at a local history museum I met many skilled people and had a chance to try various crafts: soap, candle, broom and basket making, open hearth cooking, paper and quill pen making. Others are experts in wood and metal crafts and textile arts from “sheep to shawl”. Most were colonial era or Rev War reenactors so I don’t know how important these skills are to Civil War and Western groups but the website of the Society for Creative Anachronism has links to some useful articles about medieval life skills.Diane (becca’s mom)
I am totally generation displaced. I remember churning butter, milking our cow, sewing with my mom, everything was homemade. We did not ever know of Hamburger Helper, bicuits in a can or cookies from a bag. I miss those days. I can remember coming home from school on cold winter days and as I crossed the cattle guard I could smell the wood burning in the wood stove first, then as I walked up the porch steps the smell of homemade stew and fresh bread and cookies. I miss those years. I don’t want to live in the city anymore. I want to go “home”. I try to keep as much as I can homemade, but I miss having the land to keep livestock on, to run and explore. The wild life and their noises and beauty. City life stinks.
Lacy, great post. I loved the pictures and enjoyed reading the other comments. I can relate to feeling generationally displaced. There must be a happy medium where one can live in the modern age and enjoy the conveniences of today, like internet and flushing toilets, yet do so in moderation, still tied to the land and the old arts of working with your hands and with “real” things.
You know, after Ike, when there was no power and everyone was making due, it was such fun. I’m fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood of porches. Everyone was out on their porches trying to catch a breeze. We visited more with our neighbors, had them over for dinner a couple of times, people walked by and said hi, and we helped each other pull limbs out of the yards. I hadn’t enjoyed living where we live so much in a long time. It felt much more like a community than it does on the average day.
So yes, I think much has been lost in the way we live today. I could go on and on, but I’ll just leave it at that.
Hmmm…. favorite childhood memories eh? For me I think that’s either going to one of the local farms to pick strawberries (we still do that every year!) then coming home to make homemade bread and jam… or following my Pap around watching him work on whatever he was doing at the time and helping when he said I could.
As for memories my kids (once I have them of course lol) will have to share… I dunno. I want them to have loads of memories not unlike those you and Josh want for your kids!
I do agree that while medically and technologically speaking we have advanced tremendously the sense of community has degenerated to practically nothing in most areas. Even where I live, in a tiny town not even a dot on the map with zero traffic lights and a mere handful of stop signs there isn’t really a “community” in the true sense of the word.
Anyway. If you want to take a peek at the new blog it’s located here: http://1makeup-junkie.livejournal.com =)
Sydney is insisting on sitting on my lap right now, lying across my wrists so typing this has taken far too long. I’m off. Have a good night my friend!
Are you generationally displaced, too?
Without a doubt! I do not belong in today’s world.
I have never bought a t.v. , microwave or dishwasher. I cut my own hair, do not paint my nails and will not spend over $25.00 on a pair of jeans.
What are your favorite childhood memories?
The times spent with my great, great Grandma Burr. I couldn’t have been older than seven; she would hand me a paring knife and I would sit slicing the weeds out of the cracks on her patio. Then we would pull all the yellow leaves off her roses. After these chores were accomplished the sun had set to the west where we would move to the front porch and she would sit and braid my hair in rags. These are my fondest moments of my childhood.
Thank you for carrying me back in time!
a.
Lacy, I can say without a doubt I’m a wannabe too…I would love to have a log house like that…forget the chrome and glass and ultra modern structures…none of that for me. I love visiting places like that…just want to sit and stay and say please bring me my clothes…for I’m not leaving..yep. I’m a wannabe too.
Hugs,
Dianne
Oh darlin’ – I don’t think I have any favorite childhood memories. Well, okay…probably my cat, Boots – I loved him so much and he loved me. As you know, it’s *still* about the animals for me, lol! I just have that connection to them, no surprise.
I love this post! We grew up on a little 40 acre farm in the 70′s and 80′s, but Mom was generationally displaced as well and we cooked on a wood cookstove, had an outhouse (and indoor plumbing as well), learned to wash clothes in an old ringer washer, milked the cows and goats, churned our own butter and learned to cook from “scratch” among other things. We, as a family, cut down tree’s, de-barked them and built a log house as well as a barn. I know how to give my critters any shots they need, trim goat hooves, castarate piglets, and help birth lambs. So many of these skills I haven’t used in forever, but would jump at the chance to use them again and for my kids to know them as well. If you have a chance to raise your kids the old-fashioned way, do it!
I didn’t really grow up around my own extended family. My grandmother was the closest relative outside of our immediate family and she was a 4 hour drive. My husband, though, has only lived in a small town where his whole entire extended family lives! That’s where we live now. So we are constantly seeing cousins at the grocery store, aunties at the bank, sister-in-laws at the shoe store etc. Sometimes I like it; sometimes I want a break! : )
The one thing I can say about growing up without close-knit family around is that FRIENDS became as close as family. I feel SO CLOSE to my friends, I know I could call on them for ANYTHING. Sometimes I wonder if they would be as important to me if I had had cousins there to fill that role. Who knows.
Gorgeous pictures, by the way! I would totally move into that house, but I’d want plumbing, and yes, the internet!
I love visiting these places too. I like to dream that I could live in that era but dont know if I could REALLY do it. Especially after this summer. We had a port-a-pot in the field and that was a wake up call. Eeeewwwww
The village reminds me of Fort Edmonton. We love to go there and look at the way things were. I remember growing up on the farm milking cows, making butter, making sauerkraut and now I do those things as an adult and teach them to my children. I hope they carry on the tradition.