The House in the Shade of the Sycamore Trees

The 'Big Housee" on the farm that I grew up on. 
This was the owners house, built just after the American Revolution.

The house on the hilltop farm in Virginia that I grew up in was a small, old cottage that sat below the brow of the hill, sheltered from the north by the bulk of the hill. An apple orchard shielded the house on the west, and a long outbuilding stood on the eastern edge of the yard. Several old Sycamore trees shaded the house. That little house was home, the center of my world for 15 of my first 17 years.

There were several Sycamore trees along the orchard fence and a couple of rose bushes. The rose bushes received minimal care – in that place and time, having a bit of a wild streak was an aid to survival, for both children and rose bushes.

The house faced the orchard, and a concrete sidewalk ran from the driveway to the front porch. The porch had waist-high walls and was screened to the ceiling. We often ate supper on the front porch. It tended to be cooler than inside, until the sun dropped below the apple trees, throwing shade across the front yard.

Just north of the house, between the house and the yard fence, there was “a place”, a depression, a sort of wild spot in the yard. A couple of locust trees grew there, covered in ivy that spread over stones that bordered the “place”. It was always dark there. The “place” didn’t seem to belong there. With the advantage of time and experience, I realize now that the “place” had to have been the foundation of an older building. As that property had been occupied since the American Revolution, it is not surprising that there might have been foundations around the farm.

During the American Revolution, about 2,000 Hessian mercenaries were captured by the American army at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777. These prisoners were marched to New York City, where General Washington hoped for a prisoner exchange with the British – the mercenaries for captured colonial soldiers. After months of failed negotiations, these POWs were forced to march to Charlottesville, Virginia, where they cleared a hilltop and constructed a walled camp. Local lore placed the camp on the hilltop just north of our house. The farm and the “big house” had always been called “The Barracks”. (More on this later.)

There was a foot path from the back porch steps, along the side of the house, that we always walked to go to the barnyard. The path ended at the farm lane that went from the barnyard through the back pasture to the 2 tenet houses along the woodlot at the very east end of the farm. At the front corner of the house, the path turned left, south, and ran parallel to the orchard fence alongside of the end of Dad’s vegetable garden. Having come of age during the Great Depression, Dad grew nearly all of the vegetables that our family needed. I wish that I could say that my siblings and I worked hard in the garden, but that would not be completely truthful. We helped – grudgingly and reluctantly. Looking back, that is one of the things that I regret about my childhood. I was well into my 30’s before I started gardening. I am sad that I never appreciated all of work that Dad put into feeding us. I realize now that work in the garden was an absolute labor of love.

I never eat a meal without appreciating all of the work that went into raising, growing, harvesting, storing, and preparing that meal. One of the most important lessons that my father ever taught me.

The front door opened from the front porch into a room that doubled as an entry and Dad’s office. An open staircase separated this room from the living room, and the entry-office was set off from the dining room by a “half-wall”. The back half of the house held the kitchen, directly behind the dining room, the bathroom was directly behind the entry/office, and a bedroom was behind the living room. It was a simple 3 - front – 3 back house plan. There were 2 bedrooms upstairs, and at some point, a previous tenant had “raised the roof” with a flat-roofed dormer that served my family as a bedroom for my younger brother and me.

A big screened back porch served as pantry, laundry, and “mud-room”. A huge chest-type freezer shared the porch with cured hams and sides of bacon hanging from a rafter, our barn clothes, and baskets of eggs. Rubber boots, hats, and coats were not to be worn in the house, so the back porch also served as the “mud room” – an essential room in rural houses, even today.

That little house had a forced-air oil furnace, but the house was heated by wood stoves when we first moved in. I remember a potbellied stove in the kitchen and a charred area of the floor in the downstairs bedroom. At some point in time, a fire started on the floor in front of the wood stove. I have wondered over the years why Dad never repaired that floor. Maybe he left it as a reminder to be careful – maybe he just never got around to it. The house was old, even when we lived there, and it had not been built for central heating. The house was not insulated, and the walls and old windows could not keep the winter cold and wind completely out. But, as Bat Masterson once wrote, “There are many in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed for example that we all get the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summertime, and the poor get it in the winter.” Just as the house tended to be cold in the winter, unless there was a good breeze, it was hot in the summer. Even with good breezes, the upstairs was always hot in the summer! That may have been the beginning of my understanding of the phrase, “It is what it is.”

During the time that we lived there, the world that we knew spun out of control. The smoldering social unrest began to surface with the assassination of President Kennedy and burst into wildfire with the Vietnam War and Civil Rights protests. Every long-held belief and social norm in American society was under attack. Nothing seemed solid, real, certain - - except on the hilltop farm and the house in the shade of the sycamore trees. There, life continued to be controlled by the seasons and the weather and the needs of the livestock. On the farm, in that little house, there was a certainty and a reality that the winds of change could not reach. The timeless cycle of the seasons continued steady, predictable, eternal. That certainty and permanence there was safe and comforting to me.

That little house, with all its flaws and shortcomings, was home. From my earliest memories, and well beyond the last time that I saw it, sitting empty and forlorn on a cold gray January morning, it was safety and security. Through all the traumas, pains, awkwardness of growing up, it was my safe place – the place that made the most sense to an awkward boy who was growing up not sure where the roads might lead.