Gladstone Road

Yesterday, when Cricket and I were out driving, we passed this abandoned farmhouse. I had brought along my old Sony camera just in case we saw something worth photographing -- we have flocks of cranes and pelicans, and herons this time of year.

We've passed this house every time we head east so I stopped and took some photos.

The prairies have many abandoned houses like this -- many were abandoned in the thirties, and years ago, when they were not so derelict, you might find kitchen utensils still on the table. Now they are disintegrating, and nothing much is left of the inside.

This house was lath and plaster. It's a two-storey house, with a cement foundation.

I could not see a staircase going to the second floor. The rooms were small, and the hallways were only about 3 feet wide.

It had a little bay window, which was fancy at that time for this part of the world. All the outside work was wood, soffits, and trim were all painted wood.

I try to imagine it as it once was, with a family, decorated for Christmas, or with a Mom out in the yard hanging laundry on this clothesline.

The colors inside were blue, yellow and pink, which were popular here in turn of the century houses. No wallpaper, just paint.

The floors were wood, no sign of linoleum or tiles.

The inside wall of the living room now looks like a map.


So many lives and moments vanished.

A good friend of mine told me he was at a party where the spirits flowed. A school trustee and her husband told him that they had always passed a yard on their road that had a long, intriguing driveway. One summer day they drove up the drive, and found a charming house and yard. They walked up to the door to introduce themselves, and knocked, but no one answered. They went round to the back, and it looked to them as if everyone were nearby, since there were toys, and coffee cups, and a little table outside. They went into the back porch and called out -- the house was furnished, there were pictures, and calendars, and a vintage kitchen and lovely old oak furniture. No one was there. So they left, thinking they would call again sometime.

Sometime later, they mentioned to a neighbour that they had tried to meet the people at that house. The neighbour was surprised, and told them that that house had been abandoned for years, and was completely derelict. They could not believe it, since when they had been there it looked inhabited -- antique, but inhabited. So they drove there again, and found the house in a very different state -- abandoned, empty and decaying.

The woman who tells this thinks she walked into the past.

This story has all the hallmarks of the rural myth, except that I can go to the site, and I can talk to the people it happened to. They are completely unremarkable people and not given to

flights of imagination.

Whatever the explanation, it's an intriguing story. Travelling across the prairies I can imagine finding passages to the past and not even being aware of it, the landscape is so deserted and unmoored from time.