Waterman, Illinois, June 28th, 1878

My dad, a successful commercial designer of some note, decided he wanted to be a farmer when he hit 40.I don't think the term midlife crisis existed back then, but I'm sure this act of vocational insanity on his part qualified as such. I was about 6 years old, and saw our move from comfortable middle class suburban Batavia, Illinois to the little farm town of Waterman as an enormous adventure. The farm had been a steal, and we soon found out why. Situated on 140 acres, the farm house was so dilapidated that the previous owners had kept chickens in the living room, which was sectioned off from the rest of the house with chicken wire and plywood. Rat holes were covered with old license plates. The original deed on the farm had been signed with an indian tribe, the Shabonna Indians, in 1865. It was the oldest building I'd ever set foot in. Dad immediately started spending every free weekend moments dragging us kids out for "work weekends" trying to get the house habitable, which, to his credit, he eventually did, making something of a local landmark of the place. In the process, he tore into walls - ancient pre-sheetrock lat and plaster walls, and discovered what I considered to be some of the greatest wonders of my young life.
Once upon a time, when people still actually used razor blades, when they changed them, they would slip the old blade into a slot at the back of a recessed medicine cabinet. If you see an old medicine cabinet, look for this slot at the back. It's just the size of an old double edged razor blade. When dad tore into the bathroom wall, a torrent of ancient razor blades came pouring out. These were startling, but not much in the way of collectibles. This was not all that came out of the walls, however. Here's a list, as best I can remember:

1 - One woman's high button "greave" shoe, with perhaps a dozen buttons running up the side. Shrivelled from age, it was still impossibly small by modern standards, and yet black, clearly an adult woman's shoe.

2 - Corn cobs. This as a complete mystery to us. At first we thought that rats had taken the ears of corn into the walls, depositing the cobs. We later learned from an old neighbor that people used to put cobs in the walls as primitive insulation.

3- A letter (copy below) dated June 28th, 1978. This floored me as a child, like taking a time machine back to the time of Civil War. The edges had been nibbled off by rats, so many of the words are missing, but the general meaning comes through shining across the decades. A young woman is not going to a dance, and most certainly going nowhere with "Georgie". In fact, she's not even going to be at church on Sunday, but safely at home. Poor Georgie. Was this a letter sent and received, secreted in a wall, or written and never mailed.


Etta, I love you across time, feel your pain, think about you sitting at home at the farm house hating on Georgie, but probably really wishing you were at the dance. Thanks for sharing your house with me, a hundred years later.

Later.