Chapter Eight: School of Dreams
If my grandmother's home was a museum and the shack was a paradise, then my grandfather's house was a school of dreams.
For one week each summer, my grandmother let me spend time with my grandpa who lived five miles away in Plimpton, Massachusetts.
His home was a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse located on 100 acres of farmland deep in the forest just a few hundred feet from the Kingston town line.
The house had no electricity, running water or central heating. Except for age, it was virtually unchanged from the day in the 1650s when it first opened as a colonial roadside inn.
It was a little island in time that had somehow escaped the benefits of the 20th century. Even the windows contained the original handmade wavy glass so common to antique colonial houses.
After my grandparents got divorced, my grandfather lived alone in the house.
Simple but delicious meals were prepared on an ancient wood cook stove located in the corner of the kitchen. The stove was a smoky thing, and everything we ate or wore had the comfortable mellow-brown flavor of wood.
Food and milk stay fresh and safe in a wobbly wooden bucket at the bottom of a deep stone well. Even in the hottest days of August, water from that well was cold and clear.
In the evenings, after dinner and dishes were finished, he and I would sit for hours at the kitchen table, and I listened as he filled the night with one story after another.
Shadows from the flickering yellow light of the kerosene lamp moved on the walls as he unraveled countless tales of knights and unicorns, leprechauns, elves and the travels of Gulliver.
"Look over there," he would say pointing to the shelf above the stove, "those three boxes of cereal are just like the sails on a whaling ship. And, over there, that butter dish looks just like the dories the men would use to hunt the great whales."
His words transformed the kitchen into the whaling grounds and ships from the saga of Moby Dick. Shadows became the characters and crew, and the coat rack with my grandfathers felt fedora hat came alive as the stern and possessed Captain Ahab.
A long story like Moby Dick would take several nights to tell. The evening hours my grandfather and I would spend around the kerosene lamp became the center of my summer days.
I’ve so many recollections of that kitchen as the deck of a sailing ship or the treasure mines of King Solomon that it's hard to recall how the place actually appeared. The remembrances and images of his stories are more vivid than my memories of that room in daylight.
My grandfather would ask, in fact, demand, that I see things in a different way. "Look at something and then look at the things around it, ask questions of it," he would say, "What else does it look like? How does it feel and how did it get there? Pick it up with your thoughts and turn it over in your mind. Hold it from the inside and look out through its eyes. Hear its story."
Shredded wheat wasn't just breakfast. It was an adventure. "You're eating wheat all the way from Kansas," he would declare before launching into a tale of covered wagons, the long journey west through Prairie fires and floods. "If you chew it carefully you can taste history."
That was just the cereal. A teaspoon of sugar became an excuse for tales of plantations in Cuba, pirates, buccaneers, slaves, and freemen. Everything has a story, and everything is part of something else.
When we walked in the woods, he kept challenging me to "see."
"What is that?" he would ask while pointing at a stone wall. "What do you behold there?"
He did not want to hear a reply like, 'Grandpa, that's a stone wall.' We both knew it was a rock wall. The question was "what else could it be, " and it was all part of the game.
I would look at the moss-covered rocks, squint my eyes and let my six-year-old imagination take over.
"Why, Grandpa!" I would shout, "There’s the wall of a high castle. See the towers? Over there where the stones have fallen is the gate."
Now the game was on! Pointing to tiger lilies gently moving in the breeze he would ask, "What are those?" I would answer describing the pennants and flags of the castle's knights. Dragonflies became the Falcons of the king.
All day long, our game would continue as we reworked the forests and fields around the farmhouse into the enchanted lands of mighty kingdoms.
Grandfather taught me that everything could look like something else. Imagination could transform the world into whatever you wanted it to be.
For a week each summer, my grandfather's house became a school of dreams. As is always the case, as I grew older so did he.
One winter my parents, sister, brother and I visited, as he lay sick in bed. Every time before, we had gathered among smiles and laughter. This time was different, the feeling was grim, and few words were spoken, the visit ended almost before it began.
By spring, he was dead, and the grand old farmhouse stood silent and empty. The house remained vacant as I entered and finished high school. My visits to the old place became less and less frequent. Each time I returned the weather and ravages of time and vandals had taken a little more away.
The hand-blown glass windows were shattered, and the cast-iron wood stove lay smashed on the kitchen floor. Empty beer bottles and trash was everywhere. Horsehair plaster walls and ceilings sagged and cracked in every room.
Some fool had thrown a shopping cart down the well. The yard had become a sea of weeds, and the tiger lilies had vanished.
While overseas in Vietnam I received an almost gleeful letter from my mother telling me that she was selling the land and that, “we’ve torn down the farmhouse and sold the parts at a splendid profit.” The hand hued oak beams crafted by the children of pilgrims now belonged to a developer in Connecticut. Sand and gravel filled the cellar hole.
Years after I returned from the war, I finally paid a visit to the Plimpton woods. In place of my Grandfather's house was a litter-strewn clearing. Nothing remained of the old place.
I looked at the bushes that had grown up in its place and decided to practice what my grandfather had preached.
I closed my eyes and slowly reopened them and let my imagination run free. The leaves gradually turned to walls, the canopy of trees became the roof and the spaces between reformed into windows.
The old farmhouse is still there. It hadn't changed a bit.
I just have to look a little harder to see it.