In my many phone conversations on the road home, I learned that my brother, The Boy, had a plan.
The Boy told me that he had a plan. Or rather, he had an undertaking he needed help with. On the Clone Farm are several buildings. My parents' home is your typical 1970s ranch-style and is intact. My grandparents' home, a few yards away, was the original "homestead." It's not a real homestead in the legal sense, but it was one of those farm houses that started as a 10' by 20' two-story structure and ended up about three times that size, after two additions.
My grandfather died in 1979 and my grandmother in 1981, and no one has spent a night in it since.
We used it as storage space, and as an extra bathroom for a while. Then after the water was disconnected, just as storage. A few years ago my dad started taking it down, before it fell down. He didn't want it to become a danger and a legal liability.
He was dismantling it in the reverse order it was built. First he removed the mud room and bathroom, which were put in when they got indoor plumbing. I don't know the year and I wouldn't tell anyway, in case you'd think my family is totally backward.
Which it is, but I don't want y'all to think that.
Then he took off the kitchen and dining room, and his own old bedroom. He'd used the stove to make a heater for his fish house, and gave the cupboards to my brother for garage storage. The stuff we had stored in these spaces made their way into my parents' house, or were crammed into the remaining space.
That leaves the original house.
The Boy investigated this spring, and discovered that the floor had become totally unstable, mostly due to the fact that the wall in between the two first-floor rooms was made of brick. "Totally unstable" translates to "sunken by a foot or more." The place needed to be emptied and demolished.
My parents claimed that "most of the stuff over there belongs to you kids."
Um, bullshit. Or at least, if I wanted it, I'd have it by now.
But anyway, The Boy told them that he'd go through it and discard and salvage using his own judgement, and suffer the consequences should my sister or I take issue. He was a little relieved that I'd be around to assist.
Unfortunately, the day dawned rainy, and there were a few artifacts that really shouldn't be exposed to such conditions.
Or so we thought. Once the initial deluge ended, we rallied on and discovered that there was nothing in the house but a bunch of crap. Oh, there were a few things that were worth something--a lovely blinged-out peacock-inspired handbag of my grandmother's, and a little box filled with gold jewlery that would have been pilfered for sure if my aunt had known it was there. But mostly, excrement.
Literally. Some raccoons had taken up residence for a while and we found their...leavings.
Of value were some antique apple boxes and my dad's crib, and perhaps some toys, which my mom will distribute to the local historical society where she volunteers.
So we emptied the place, mostly by pitching things out the doorway that used to lead to my dad's room, onto the [unstable] floor below.
We were almost done when I was walking down the stairs and stopped halfway.
"Wait. I've gotta do this."
I started pulling at the plaster at a certain spot. My dad was perplexed, and asked me why I needed to pull at the plaster there. He seemed a little offended. After all, he said, he had put that plaster up, 60 years before.
"In all my recurring dreams about this house, THIS is where the door to the secret room is!"
The spot was a square of plaster, whereas the rest of the wall was wood planks.
"It used to be a window," The Boy said.
"OH!" Well, that was the answer. Thirty years of recurring dreams, all over an architectural band-aid.
Maybe the dreams will stop now.
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