Bob stepped carefully up the battered and broken porch steps. The house, once dressed in a fine cream color was now a sad vision of dried, gray wood with an occasional spot of paint trying desperately to hang on. The two front windows had long since become nothing but shards of broken glass standing as sentinels in the faded green panes, and he could see a definite lean of the structure as he looked straight up the wall. He carefully slid the old screen door, to the side. Its hinges had rusted out years ago and the door no longer able to make that slamming sound on closing he remembered as a young boy. His grandfather had often replaced the connecting spring that made sure of a tight closure and in turn would keep the constant barrage of bottle flies out of the house.
He pushed, with some effort, the old battered wooden door and it gave way. The panels were still intact but the glass in the upper half of the door was cracked and just waiting for the right pressure to fall to the floor.
He stepped into the old kitchen and stopped to look around. His eyes immediately scanned the area down and to his right. He expected to see the old wash basin, the Lava soap, and a thread bare towel hanging on a little stand sitting just below an old framed mirror. There was nothing there. The blue flowered linoleum was curled, cracked, and buckled, the wall paper, probably put up by his grandmother, was split and falling. The old wood burning stove was long gone, a treasure that some cousin absolutely needed to have; his plan was to return it to its early glory so that it may be used in a mountain cabin. It still sat in the back of a garage after twenty years.
The musty smell was everywhere and a fairly thick layer of dust, blown in from the nearby fields was evident.
The door in the corner of the kitchen was the opening that led about five steps into a dug-out potato cellar. He remembered descending those treacherous steps to retrieve canned preserves or some such thing for his grandma. The spiders and the darkness made the chore a challenge. A few cupboards still hung on the far kitchen wall, and the ceiling had dropped in many places, a victim of weather that had destroyed a long-ignored roof.
Diagonally across the kitchen was the door to the front room. At least that was what it was called. The area, at one time housed a sofa, large chairs, a heavy library table, doilies everywhere, kerosene lamps, and many meaningful pictures adorning the wall. Bob remembered an elongated photograph, in particular, of his grandfather and other soldiers posing for the camera sometime during World War I.
He stared out the window for a moment and let his mind wander.
Bob imagined the excitement his grandparents must have felt when they, in 1916, had moved from a tiny homesteading shack into this gloriously roomy home. The days of dirt floors was behind them. They, along with neighbors, endeavored to build the house from the ground up. It was most certainly not a small task during those years. The outhouse, some thirty yards behind the back of the house was barely upright and certainly gravity would soon drop the structure into the dugout hole below it. Down in the coulee below the house, remnants of the old water well poked through the tall dried grass.
The floor creaked and groaned loudly as he walked across the room to the door that opened to a second floor. The stairs were steep, and so narrow that moving furniture must have been a real challenge. Years of bird invasion was immediately evident. Two separate areas had been crudely structured and a small closet with four hooks sat in both corners of each room The tongue and groove floor looked to be holding its own against the ravages of age. Bob assumed several layers of gray paint must have helped that situation. Missing were the wrought iron bed frames which held the old bed springs and mattresses. He smiled as he remembered their sag that nearly reached the floor.
He stared out the opening at one end of the house looking down at the array of abandoned, rusted farm implements. A large red barn, once the home of chickens, pigs, and a horse or two, had collapsed years ago. He stood there and remembered. He knew his grandparents had left this house for a move into the nearest town, necessary as they had two sons that would soon need schooling. It was also a move because the farm was not supporting his grandfather and the family. Luckily, he had found employment at a farm implement store, just blocks from their new home. A home they would live their entire life in, and die in.
Bob thought back at the summers of staying in the old house while his father harvested the fields for his grandfather. The house was made livable for a few days each summer so that Bob and his siblings could “rough it” and he seemed, in his mind, to accept the feeling of ownership. He could almost smell the burning kerosene that emitted a dull flickering light at night. He could make out the staticky sounds from a big boxy radio drawing power from a large battery. They sat and listened to the farm report, news, and, of course, the weather forecast. Later, maybe the Jack Benny radio show and music kept them entertained as they played card games. The entertaining Armchair Theatre program usually finished about the time his mother announced lights out. That was a long time ago.
Bob slowly and carefully stepped back down the creaking stairs, across the front room, and out through the old kitchen door to the outside light and fresh air.
Bob moved a good distance away and nodded to the volunteer fire department chief. An accelerant was splashed around the base of the old house, and the blaze was set. The training of the new recruits began.
He walked away and never looked back.
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