The Wind
I am done with everything but this business
of recalling what is human --
faint letterings insane, this burning leaf
or a curtain blooming in a still room --
all I know of eternity. How it burns me, how borderless I become in the wind
Evaporating like the sweat on fingers
and blown blindly over the blind ocean --
no mark will tell the wind of my presence
my feet will fail to remember you
dancing in a dark room
O my love how how the windows shudder.
( by Alison Croggon (I owe her a Quarter for this))
I hesitate writing about these old leavings: sad places now -- once filled with smells, sounds, livings, dyings, happiness, dancing, music, all of the living passed and over now.
From a plat map I have seen, the land on which this house stands has been in the McCall family since 1856 Callaway County, central Missouri when a lot of the population were black slaves and probably lived in a part of the house. Hard to tell how long the house has stood without going through an abstract search.
This another leaving of a Doctor Offitt of Readsville, Missouri who practiced about the turn of the centeury and died in 1903. Going to rack and ruin-- a good roof helps keep it up. I think that this was
the waiting/operating room since there was a drug room with shelves way in the back. ( There are four structures still there)
This seems like the living quarters, still in pretty good shape with nice wood trim inside and a pump house out back.
This a newer place abandoned a few miles to the East of Readsvlle. I am told the family raised 3 kids on 40 acres here probably in the 40's or 50's. It is being kept up by, I guess, some of the kids or hired out (grass is kept cut).
In the past, Sears sold house kits -- this may have been one of them:
http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/index.htm
Barn and out buildings across the road.
The old places still survive.
People are gone, except in memories.
