Mining the secrets among the debris

Buying land mid-winter can be tricky. You never know what will reveal itself when the snow melts. Sometimes it is great beauty, sometimes not so great. This time, our new land has quite a few of the not-so-great items revealing themselves.
Old farmland is notorious for having areas that could gently be referred to as ‘antique collections,’ These collections may be in a pile, or left randomly over the land. Ours is both. At our soon to be new home, the antique collections were scattered and left in piles in ravines. Even after the snow is melted, some of these treasures will still be hidden under the years of grasses grown among the remnants of someone else’s life.
Engines, old farm machinery, vintage snowmobiles, parts, tires, and more were discarded over the years.
One unique feature of this land is the burned-out mobile home vacated by the previous owners. It has been a somewhat surreal experience cleaning up this part of the collection of history.
As I stood in what was left of the bathroom, discarding the burned contents of the medicine cabinet, I started to think about the family who lived there before the fire. I realized I was not just throwing away old trash as much as I was removing the story of a family’s loss.
The abandoned combs and brushes, toothpaste, and various hair clips told me it was likely a family rather than a single person. In what is left of the living-room, I could tell they liked country music and had quite a collection of CDs, now melted into their packaging. A bookshelf of charred video cassettes remained, their titles now unreadable. The only book I found is a small copy of “Little House on the Prairie.”
They had a fully-stocked larder of canned goods at the time of the fire, including several cans of Dinty Moore beef stew. The rest of the cans are rusted beyond recognition, their labels charred. Their dishes were a mismatched collection of china and plastic. Though the trailer is now a mess of insulation-covered debris, the remains of a vacumn cleaner and the usual cleaning products under the kitchen sink tell me they tried to keep an orderly household. From the back bedroom, I ascertained that they wore jeans and sweatshirts and liked down pillows. And at least one member of the household did not adhere to the orderly scenario.
A half-full container of cat litter and a bottle of dog shampoo tells me they had pets. A circular saw hints that an occupant liked to work with tools.
From the burn pattern, I can tell the fire started in the livingroom, probably in the wall or near the small woodstove left behind. At least one of the two couches in the livingroom appears to have been a hide-a-bed. Perhaps the family had frequent visitors.
What is not left tells as much as what is. There are no crystal chandeliers, no piano, no crib or baby bottles, and no computer. We found several destroyed television sets and the remains of video game accessories. This was a family who lived on a moderate income, yet could afford food and a few extras.
Why was the mobile home left and not removed by the family? I’ll probably never know, but the expense of bringing in a dumpster and finding ways to dispose of the appliances and possible hazardous waste buried under the pile was a factor in what we offered for the property. Maybe it was a factor for the family, too. Perhaps they didn’t have insurance or the physical ability to remove the trash.
Perhaps after suffering this loss, they didn’t have the emotional capacity to look the fire in the eye. As I toss out what is left, piece by piece, I pray the family was not physically harmed by the fire and that Fido and Mouser were saved. It’s hard to imagine that having your home destroyed would not leave some emotional harm, and I hope the family has been able to rebuild their life in the years since this tragedy happened.
For my husband and I, buying this home is a challenge of recovery. We will renovate the existing house and wonder what happy celebrations occurred in the spacious kitchen, and what were they thinking when they painted the bedroom purple? I’ll look at the face of the unidentified soldier in the photo I found in a closet and hope he made it back from his experience in the military to enjoy home-cooked meals on the wheat-designed dishes gently packed away in a box in the upstairs bedroom.
We will wade through the ‘antique collections’ and other debris and find the spirit and beauty of the land once more. And I’ll gaze out my new kitchen window at the expanse of fields between us and the Penokee Mountain range and remember the ancestors who came to this land, built homes and farms, and have now moved on.