what you can buy with a cow and a calf

Ever since backtrailing a billionteen miles from where I want to be to where I feel like I've died and gone to hell, ones of people have emailed and said they wanted to see a picture of the new place. Then there are those who live close enough to visit and see it for themselves, but for some reason they won't cross the state line to do so. I'm not naming names; I'm just saying is all.

So now you've seen it. And it explains a lot as to why I haven't been putting my heart into blogging lately. I'm just too blamed tired every night after working on fixing the place up, although why anybody would want to live in this town is still beyond me.

We downsized a lot when buying this place, but the price was right (see above: it cost a cow and a calf, or around $60 in terms of 1883 dollars). It's two rooms below and a chamber, double board sided and tar paper double between the sheeting. I know it's not much to look at now, but it will be lovely when it's painted white with Virginia creepers over the windows, a flower garden, roses, verbena, phlox, etc., before the door. There will be an arbor at the left over which a magnificent grapevine will grow, and a henhouse with yard, etc. The walls will be nicely papered and there will be carpet except for the kitchen and that painted. And lace curains. Did I mention the lace curtains?

I am very much attached to my little house.

Okay, so maybe you've already figured out that the description was written by Eliza Jane Wilder about the second house built on her homestead claim. See A Wilder in the West for snippets or Eliza Jane Wilder's homestead file for the whole thing. And the photo above just happens to be of that same house taken a few years ago, which is, yes, still barely standing on private property and surrounded by lots of junk and snakes and old cars and snakes and weeds. Minus windows and most of the walls, you can (or could when I was there) still make out the various rooms and see layers of wallpaper on the walls and vestiges of white paint on the siding. There is an interesting rock walled "garden" at the south (facing De Smet) side of the house, with no access except through the house proper. It must have been a lovely place at one time, and it's a crying shame that somebody didn't do something with Eliza Jane's house decades ago when perhaps it was still salvageable.

My house isn't Banker Ruth's, but it was built by an early Backtrailerville banker in the days when people had horses and barns and town lots had alleys behind them. The alley behind my house is now covered with trees that two people can't hold hands around, they're so huge. Quite frankly, I'd rather have the alley. And the barn was converted into a barely standing garage, and the yard has been oh-so-neglected for what must have been decades, judging by the ivy in the trees, ivy in the yard, and ivy over the very roof itself.

So, as much as I'd rather be up to my ears in "Little House" research, I've been up to my ears in tasks like pulling ivy out of trees and digging up stumps of long-ago shrubbery and laying a brick edging so, hopefully, when it comes time to plant something, I can plant roses, verbena, phlox, and a grapevine (well, maybe scuppernongs) before the door.

I will never love it here. I will never even like it here. And in order to keep my sanity, I will be spending a lot of time taking my anger out on the earth and hoping that one day in the future, I can once again live in a house I can love in a town I can appreciate.

But I can't help but wonder how Charles Ingalls felt all those years in De Smet, when he really wanted to have kept on moving west.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:14 PM