They tore Gilbert’s house down yesterday and today. My uncle cried.
The late Gilbert, as of just a few months ago. He and his wife passed within a few weeks of each other, both in their late 90s. I knew Gilbert forever. We all did. He lived in the old Victorian next to our work shop.
Originally our shop and Gilbert’s house were the same property. In the late 1800s a very short fellow named Artie built a house and a blacksmith shop, and at some point after he retired he partitioned off the blacksmith shop and sold it to the Angel Farm, a dairy out on State road, which used it as a distribution center. They would bring the milk in on big wagons, store it, and distribute it to the different milk men who would deliver it around town from there.
Artie would die soon after, leaving behind a house that felt like it was built for a hobbit. Tiny stairs. Very low ceilings. Little rooms. It was a cute old place, and Gilbert fit in there well. My uncle is in his 70s, and both Gilbert and that house next to the shop had been there his whole life. I get why he cried.
It will be interesting to see what god awful monstrosity goes up in its place. I don’t think there is any room what so ever for us to even work on our own shop, from the outside, property line wise. We had always counted on Gilbert’s good will and friendship (he was still plowing the snow out front for us just as something to do right up until he died). I anticipate another hideous McMansion, much like the rest of the homes that replace the classic Victorians once they are razed.
Stress has been heavy of late, and I find myself drifting back in the middle of intense moments to the quiet carpets and sunbeams of my childhood. Just sitting, nothing to do, nowhere to go. Just me and whatever I had in front of me to look at. An apple core maybe. A table. The living room. The window to the street. Once in a while, someone walking past. That smell- of spring mud yet chilled by shadows of snow, and that feel of deep deep youth. That world of bygone giants who have now either departed or shriveled to skeletons.
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