RIDING DRAG / Creak Speak

RIDING DRAG with DEBRA COPPINGER HILL

CREAK SPEAK

When we walk through our house the floor makes a creaking sound. It is the same sound that was made by the floors in my great-grandmother’s house in Keifer, our cousin’s homesteaded house in Mangum, my husband’s grandmother’s house in Red Bank, Tennessee and a myriad of other old houses that we have lived in across the years. It was that sound that attracted us to this 107 year old house that we live in now. It is a soft creak; a sound that says “Other’s have lived here and called this place home; you call it home too. Be safe and comfortable here.”

When we first moved here we knew we would have to do some extensive remodelling work. We even considered applying for one of those home makeovers when that program was still on television. Then, instead of remodelling, we saw that they simply bull-dozed the houses they were renovating and started from scratch and our hearts sank. Bulldoze the history here? Never! This house is partially built on what was once a trading post. The stories people have shared with us about their great-grandparents trading here are golden. The stories of the people just prior to us, who lived here for fifty-one years, are priceless. She was a nurse of 42 years who talked a retired doctor into coming and running a clinic for the farm families of this area and he a farmer himself. The WPA built our terraces and put in the “Eleanor” outhouse; named so in honour of a program put in place by Eleanor Roosevelt so that all rural homes would have a sanitary facility. The concrete base sits in the yard. It would be a sin to bulldoze that kind of history.

So alone and other times with the help of family and friends, we have remodelled ourselves on and off for fifteen years. Behind the barn wood panelling  in the master bedroom there is an area where we traced our hand prints, the hands of our children, the paw prints of our three dogs of the time, the hand prints of the friends and family who came and helped. It is dated and everyone signed their names. I added a poem and my kids drew pictures. Then we sealed it up with the last of the panelling. Each room we have re-done has a similar hidden message inside a wall, between the flooring and the sub-floor and even written on floor-joists and new stem-walls. Little hand prints of our children grew as we went and our family history is played out in story and rhyme. We know it is there and with luck, a hundred years from now, no one else will know it is there because this house will still be standing.

With all the work we have done, we still have been unable to stop the creaking in the floors. This is not a big deal to us; it is how the house talks to us, reminds us we are part of its history. In the quiet of night, when one of us gets up and walks through the house softly it says “Creak” and stories unfold. “Creak”, it says. “Children played here. Creak. Families were raised here. Creak. People loved and prayed here. Creak. I am a home.”  Why would we ever want to change that? We wouldn’t. And we won’t. “Creak!”

*For more about Debra go to the Cowboy Poetry section at AlwaysCowboy.com.

This is Our Eleanor, a concrete outhouse base that was built during the Roosevelt administration and named in Honour of his wife Eleanor Roosevelt who promoted a program that would make sanitary facilities available to rural homes. We have had people stop by to take photos because we are on an "Out-house Tour" as explained by one of the van driver's. We are on an out-house registry and have been given a membership in an Out-houses of America listing as well as having one lady send us the plans for rebuilding the exterior historically accurate. Eleanor sits near the drive (To make it easier for the Out-house tourists to get photos.) and my plans this year were to have Husband move her into the side yard where I planned to make her into a decorative 'flower-pot' (pun totally intended). However, Mommie Cat saw fit to have her babies in here so all moving and planting plans are temporarily on hold. And yes, the rusty old tactor seat is on there because someone told me it really needed some sort of a seat.

"Ride Hard, Laugh Often, Live Free!

Debra Coppinger Hill

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RIDING DRAG with DEBRA COPPINGER HILL is featured each week at ALWAYS COWBOY where Debra is a Resident Western Poet. Join her and her Cowboy Friends for Cowboy Poetry, News & Events. http://alwayscowboy.net/debra_coppinger_hill_poetry.html