{Photos of Uncle Greg by his brother Steve.}
We cut a hole in the side of our house this weekend. Because, you know, late January in Maine is the best time to do a project like that, right? Sure!
I wish that I were a well of neverending patience, but honestly, I had been getting a little frustrated at the pace of our progress on this little seven foot square corner of our home. Pesky details like budget and time get in the way of keeping things moving along as fast as I'd like for them to move sometimes. But finally this weekend, a very small door was replaced with lovely large doors, which means that we can now finish the floors, ceiling and trim in this little corner of our kitchen which will someday lead out to a patio. Someday. So many plans, so many plans.
We had wondered what we'd find behind those walls. Surely more layers of wallpaper, yes. A mice nest or two? Yes, we found those. And we also found this newpaper tucked into the wall. August 13, 1929. Such a wild date, yes? Just three months before so many things in this country changed, and here on the front page of the Lewiston Daily Sun is declared "Bulls in Saddle on Stock Market!". Oh, wow.
We've been having a grand time reading this newspaper. The boys would very much like a time machine in which they could go back and buy a car for a few hundred dollars. There are far more details of the sordid affairs of the local Police Chief than I would expect for a newspaper. And the story of the car full of ladies trying to smuggle alcohol across the Maine-Canadian border is quite fabulous. My favorite page though, is the Social Chitchat, with news of all the latest parties and gatherings, who was there and who how it was decorated and who wore what (hmn...kind of just like blogging).
There's been lots of chat about all of that around here. And lots of chat with our babes about the state of Newspaper - and print reading material today, for that matter. What a sweet history lesson we found in those walls.
But deep in my heart, and selfishly perhaps, I cannot stop wondering about the singular person or, wife of the person, who put that newpaper there, that August day in 1929. Who was she? At that point, living in a hundred year old house, was it she who pushed her husband to finish off the walls of that ell to the barn to expand the size of the small cape? Was she, too, sometimes frustrated at the pace of things, while simultaneously overwhelmed with gratitude for what was around her? Were her children climbing the walls and filling her kitchen and requiring more space be made to accomodate all? Did she hope it would all be done before the winter began? Did she knit and sew and feel like she spent her whole day in that kitchen? Of course she did.
I haven't made it down to the town's historical society yet, though we've lived here for over a year now. I keep saying I haven't had the time to do so. But I'm not really a believer in that kind of talk. We make "time" for the things most important to us. No...I don't think it's time at all...I think it's that a part of me really loves the dreaming still. The unknown of who was here before us, and all the imagining and daydreaming of who those people were. Someday, I'll be ready for the details of names and dates and deaths and births. But for now, it's enough to feel their energy here in the ways we do, to find traces of them here and there, and to imagine who they might have been.
I hope they'd like the work we're doing here. I surely love the work they left behind, even if I do take down a wall or two of theirs here and there. I hope they'd understand. I'd like to think she would.
