|
| |
|
Donna's
Doorways
Renovation
Project |
From the front porch
there were endless vast prairie vistas.
Tied into that view were breathtaking sunrises and sunsets
witnessed only in this place,
as far as anybody living there was concerned.
The startling colors of the sunsets,
whether they be "hot" pinks, or "cerulean"
blues,
or dark "ultramarine" blues met by
"iridescent" silvers and golds,
(color distinctions remembered only by an artist),
were accepted and enjoyed by anyone ("artiste" or not)
who simply raised their eyes to look.
 
 
At night on the prairie, the lonely laughing of the coyotes
would make a child's mind and body shiver,
as to the wondering about it.
When a train traveled through the long stretch of land,
it would lend a lonely call through the night air.
Those moments were a conciliation to a child,
to know there was a civilization out there, somewhere.
Today, there isn't anything, as this old house sits alone,
in its inanimate skeleton, knowing and telling nothing.
The telling to be done only by one who remembers, and that,
only because of a yearning for grandchildren to learn and
experience
through words, the happiness of the people who lived there.
To say the prairie rattlesnakes are not remembered,
or the relentless vise-like cold wind is forgotten, would be
untrue.
To cover over the truth of the fear implanted into one's mind,
as to taking care to watch our step, or to never go off
without being properly prepared to deal with the cold,
is something that youth now cannot really comprehend
during these days of easily-heated homes.
We do not lament this,
we are proud and happy for the pleasure, may it ever last.
There is no joy in waking up to a house as cold
as a walk in a refrigerator,
where ice has to be broken on the drinking water.
Or in enduring the needle-like cold
for what can seem to be an eternity,
while the heat is slowly forthcoming from a blazing fire;
slowly, simply because the house was not insulated
and was far too large to warm quickly.
|
Damage to the Front Stone Porch
Dennis said,
"I had to run to town, and when I came back,
I was sick to see they had used the total amount of cement
I had allotted myself. They had filled the area
from the ground to the top of the rock floor.
I had intended they fill the area with rubble rock,
then set the larger rocks on top of that. In this way,
I would have had enough cement to rock the whole house."
Has anyone ever noticed that sometimes a seemingly small
error,
such as that, can reach out across many years
and cause a significant outcome of a thing?
If this house had been covered with stone,
maybe it would have been less vulnerable,
but maybe not.
The statement Dennis made about his having a cement
"allotment,"
did prove a controversial point, though,
that there was not an endless income of oil money,
(contrary to what some people think).
The fact that there was just one allotted budget was pointed
out
(within the discourse of telling about the porch project),
by that one, off-the-collar, remark.
|
Fossil Rocks
Lee was a lover of creation.
He said he picked up rock from out of the terrain.
The photograph above,
is a close-up shot of the fossil rocks
on the front of the rock porch.
The tiny fossils cannot be seen, but in life,
tiny sea shells are visible all through some of the rocks.
Individually,
the photographs below do not portray accurately
the overall beauty of the porch.
But, if they could only be combined, perhaps then
they might relay a FULL scope,
as to the intricate beauty of rock AND porch.
|
|
|
