Silent Witnesses

By Rosanne Gulisano

Lonely, forlorn, bereft of families to love them. There are so many homes, abandoned, unsold or just derelict; their occupants scattered to America’s four corners and the cities and towns in between. A family has left the area. Might not there be another to take their place? Why are these homes left in waiting? Why so many? A buyers’ market, they call it.

Neighbors who have been here just one year have moved away, transferred by corporate dictate. Their home, loved by their family, sat alone through the heat of summer, the crisp air of fall and the cold of November, waiting for a new family to love it. At last it sold. So there will be one less empty home on my street.

A house, after all, is just a shell until someone moves in and leaves a distinctive footprint, a stamp of individuality. Something is added or changed in some way. Names and dates may be scratched in new cement, a few pencil marks on a doorway indicating growth and progress of the younger occupants, perhaps an inscription on an attic rafter. A greater treasure is the trunk or other time capsule left behind by previous owners. The house has become a home as it absorbs the energy and essence of the people who live there.

A house in a subdivision near a city may take a long time to sell in a down market, but eventually, price, location and buyer all come together in a happy collaboration to breathe life back into the property. The seller, too, breathes a sigh of relief.

In our inner cities, we come upon building after building cast aside and left to the unmerciful ravages of time. These building can attract squatters, drug dealers, arsonists and all sorts of nefarious activity. The 24-flat apartment building of my childhood is one I can relate to with a heartfelt sentiment. It was once a solid brick beauty with a lovely, quiet courtyard, finely-milled woodwork and a crystal chandelier in each dining room. Many years after my family moved on to a different neighborhood, I returned to cruise past the haunts of my past. In dismay, I saw this fine, old building standing empty, its windows missing or broken. It looked so very dispirited.

Several years passed before I ventured through the neighborhood again, this time on a chartered bus with an elevated view of the woebegone old neighborhood. I waited anxiously for the upcoming corner to appear in my line of vision. We passed familiar city blocks for several miles and then, there it was, just ahead. A stop at a red light gave me all the time I needed to view the beloved old building. Gas station on the corner—gone. Brick apartment building—gone. The corner lay filled with rubble and broken dreams. Where families once lived and breathed life into its hallways and back porches, all that remained were broken bricks and chunks of wood and plaster. The neighborhood waits patiently for a spark of regeneration.

Saddest of all are those old and abandoned farmhouses with peeling paint, graying boards and empty window frames—like toothless old pioneers. They sit along main roads and back roads beside dilapidated barns and silos, sometimes partially crumbling as their once sturdy trusses give way to time and neglect. These houses were home to generations of farmers who put their sweat and toil into the earth surrounding them to raise crops and livestock.

The farmer and his wife have moved on to a more manageable existence in town or to their eternal reward and their children have a more citified lifestyle in mind for themselves. Anyone in the country will tell you it’s mighty hard to make a living on a family farm these days. Close to town and sprawling suburb, the price offered for the property is irresistible.

The farmhouses wait bravely for the end, standing precariously next to a broken windmill. Development encroaches and they stand, waiting for the jaws of a bull dozer or front loader to munch away at what remains of their beams and structure. They become a pile of rubble, no longer recognizable as a family home, until their remains are carted away to a local landfill or burned on the spot. Does no one weep for them and what they symbolize?

Houses, no matter what their age, currently occupied or not, were once filled with love and pain, laughter and tears, dinner gatherings and family secrets. All but the brand new have stories to tell.  As you pass them by, do not fail to pay silent tribute. Look, think and visualize the children who played there, hear the hum of a vacuum cleaner, inhale the smell of supper cooking on the stove and the tune in to the sound of laundry flapping on a clothesline. These are the rhythms of life that once dwelt here. Here’s to you, Old  Homesteads.