See You in a Hundred Years

When we near the house, the horse trader’s tone softens. “You got good hands,” he says. “You keep ’em nice and steady. You’re gonna make a good driver.” Whether he means it or not, I am thrilled. Here I am successfully doing what for months I have dreaded. The leather feels good in my palms. Cushioned by three sets of elliptical springs, the wagon jiggles smoothly over the washboard road. With its high spindly wheels and trim bed, it seems to me a vision of elegance, despite the royal blue paint job and fluorescent orange warning triangle dangling in back.

The simple act of taking the reins lifts a weight off my shoulders. It’s one thing to swear off grocery stores for a year. Sure, we’ll work our butts off to grow our own food, and failure could, technically speaking, mean starvation. But that kind of risk, like procrastinating on your preschooler’s college fund, leads to a nagging, down-the-road worry. The thought of steering a wagon tied to a horse, on the other hand, nearly makes me soil my crisp new overalls. Yet, if we are serious about re-creating 1900 life, we’ll have to master 1900 transportation. “Weren’t there cars back then?” a concerned New York friend asked me. Yes, exactly 8,000 among a U.S. population of nearly 76 million. The odds that the average rural American drove one of them are only slightly better than the odds that your plumber has a two-man submarine.

I say goodbye to Marshall after writing him a check for the horse and beam at Heather, who stands in the front yard with Luther toddling around her feet. Luther likes what he sees―a grown-up-size wagon and a real live horse jingling in her harness. Despite my near total lack of experience, I can’t pass up this chance for a family drive.

Sitting high on the seat, Luther nestled between Heather and me, we roll back down the lane. Spreading out before us is Trimbles Mill Farm. Our staging ground. After we bought the place, closer inspection of the house revealed that the lovely little front porch was sagging and propped up by steel posts where the brick piers had crumbled. Half of the pickets were missing. Nor was the house free of feces: mouse droppings and rat pellets littered the pine floorboards. Then there was the kitchen floor, rotten from water damage and sinking into the red-clay crawl space. Over most of the plaster walls, previous owners had tacked flimsy faux-wood paneling. And in the bedrooms, someone had hammered up two-by-four closets beside the fireplaces.

But the house has good bones. Beneath the decay and tawdry add-ons, the original walls, wide-plank floors, windows, and doors are all intact. Peeling away the layers, we have unearthed a dwelling that, like Hawthorne’s house of the seven gables, seems to have a “life of its own … full of rich and somber reminiscences.” Its hand-shaped wood, brick, and plaster proudly bear the wounds and wear of time. Even the window glass is original. Today, the bubbled, hand-blown panes distort views of the distant hills just as they did a century ago.

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