After a weeklong trip in search of diamonds, I began making
my way back home to Florida. It was not your typical diamond mining territory,
the Midwest, but I had inside information that I was reasonably sure would satisfactorily
pay off, so I followed my instinct on this one.
I am a dreamer. I have always been a dreamer. Mixed with a
heaping helping of determination, it sometimes means those dreams come true.
More often than not they come true as a plan B rather than the original dream,
but oh, how I have learned to love plan B’s, for they keep company with
surprise. When I decided to make the trip it was spur of the moment and without a specific plan. That’s the way all my best work begins. I know enough to start, but rarely have any real idea how the pieces of my thoughts or dreams will come together. If I were a pants wearer I would be flying by the seat of them most of the time. Perhaps that is another reason I prefer dresses.
I did pack my pants for this one though, jeans, and my one and only pair of boots. I forgot bug spray, gloves and tools, remembering that I forgot them within minutes of leaving home. I was already so late in getting started on the twenty plus hour drive that I decided to figure out a plan B when I reached my destination.
My first stop didn’t quite work out as I thought it might, a
missed connection with an old friend, so I drove another hour before stopping
for the night. I had a supper of macaroni and cheese brought from home. It was
the Fourth of July and I had hoped to go see fireworks nearby, which would not
start until ten o’clock, an hour later than at home. I had forgotten how light
that part of the country still was at nine p.m.. When it came down to it, I
decided I didn’t really want to get back in the car that late for more driving
and traffic, so I drew a picture of fireworks instead. The picture didn’t turn
out like the good idea I thought it was before I started.
I was beginning to think I shouldn’t continue the trip since
my friend connection didn’t happen and then my drawing turned out ugly. Maybe I
had made a rash decision. Should I just go back home rather than spend a lot of
time and money chasing yet another silly impulse? Was the rest of the trip
going to wind up much the same as it had started out? I watched a little HGTV, something I don’t do at home and love to get to do when hotel-ing, turning it and the light off for some sleep shortly before midnight.
Stepping outside the next morning to begin the second leg of
travel I was completely delighted to feel a tad chilled. The temperature and
dry air were a wonderful treat compared to the humid ninety’s of home only
seven hours south. It was a new day and I was refreshed and ready to continue, and I knew continuing was indeed what I needed to do. Whatever happened, whether I
was able to mine some diamonds or not, I knew I had to make the effort or
forever regret having not done so. Really, a diamond had already been mined in
the beauty of that crisp new morning.
It is a thrill for me to drive across a border and see a sign
welcoming travelers to the state, it indicates progress being made. In
Tennessee the welcome center is among the hills and trees. The scenery was
beautiful and since it was lunch time I stopped for a picnic of hard boiled
eggs from home, and fruit from the breakfast buffet of the previous night’s hotel.
The sounds of boaters on a nearby lake and birds overhead in tall trees were
like vacation to my ears. I stayed a little longer than I should have, but not
having a strict schedule is what I like most about no specific plan.
I stopped driving when I had only about five hours left
until my destination would be reached, the next day. My hotel for the night was
next to a planted field with a wild edge growing the familiar weeds I love but
don’t get to enjoy in my Florida home, Queen Anne’s Lace and Black-eyed Susan’s.
My eyes feasted on their delicate but sturdy charms, and my camera captured
images backlit by the setting evening sun.
The night before I left home I e-mailed my aunt and uncle
hoping they would have room for me at their house while I was in the area. Not
five minutes after the email was sent my phone rang. “Of course” my aunt
replied, “we would love to have you”. A clean comfortable safe place to sleep
is always good to have planned, and did make me feel rather like I had received
confirmation to even be making the trip at all. I still doubted the
sensibleness, offering myself the same argument I always do before making such
a trip; old car with high miles, traveling alone, best use of money. In the end
I always win the argument with me, stating if not now when? If not alone, not
at all and that’s an unacceptable alternative. Summer is short, it will be a
long time before the opportunity presents itself again, and when it does, if it
does, everything will have changed from what it is now.
I arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house about five o’clock on
the third day of travels after stopping on the way to take a few pictures of my
freshman high school campus, which happened to also be only a half mile or so
from Sherman Road.
Sherman Road was the location of the diamond mine.
It surely wore a disguise that made it look very much like a
house, a quite ordinary house except that it looked forgotten, tired and sad.
No one had lived in the house for several years, maybe even as many as ten
years. It was a property now bank owned, since the people who purchased it after
I lived in it twenty eight years before, had abandoned it. Some of my family members
had seen it over the years and warned me that it was a dreadful mess. I have
driven Sherman Road with each visit to Illinois, seeing for myself it’s sad
shape. The house has been like a magnet to my metal. I am drawn to it and it
has been a comfort to see, and to know was there, even if in deplorable
condition. I took a few pictures and briefly sized up the magnitude of the
mission before me. I needed to be prepared. I needed to muster courage.
I intended to mine any diamonds I could from it.
On my first morning I had an eleven o’clock meeting arranged
with my dear friend, who is as much a part of my Sherman Road life as the house
there. I was so excited to see her that I actually had a little trouble
deciding what to wear. I wanted to look nice since we had not seen each other
in about three years, and yet I needed to be comfortable. It was hot outside
and there was no predicting what we might end up doing for the day.
As we prepared to place our food order our server remarked
on what my friend had in her hand, something I hadn’t even noticed until he
mentioned it. She turned to me and said “oh, this is for you”. She handed me a
crow bar, hammer, and knife, all tied in a pretty bundle with a purple bow. I
was flabbergasted. All in a few seconds
with that single gesture she indicated how truly in sync with me she still was.
These tools were similar to the ones I had left home without but would need for
mining. They were a remarkable plan B. The gift expressed her willing approval
for us to delve into the depths of the mine, together, just like we used to, and
of course that speaks of her love for me, her friend. Her sweet daughter
engraved our initials “P & C” side by side on the knife handle, and the
blade reads “Sherman 2014”. I really was just in awe. I did not expect her to
be a fellow miner because I knew it was going to be very unpleasant and maybe
even dangerous, but she was in. She had it planned, and was ready even that
day.
My uncle extracted the promise from me not to go to Sherman
Road without him, and since I was not properly dressed for mining, we had to go
to his house for me to change clothes. Learning that my friend would be with
me, he decided to let us girls go it alone. I am all but certain he said he
wanted to go there with me simply so I would not be alone when I went. Even though
the Sherman Road house was his childhood home, he was comfortable to just leave
the past, in the past. He sent my friend and me off with gloves, a flashlight
and boots, and my aunt provided bug repellent. We were as equipped as we
thought we needed to be.
Having sized up the mission on my way into town the previous
day, I was not surprised by the sight when we pulled into the space that was once
a driveway. I think however that my friend was shocked and saddened. I don’t
know what memories remained in the picture files of her mind, but I am sure
what was before her eyes in those moments hardly matched the memory pictures of
the many, many days we shared there with our young children.
We pushed growing things, small trees and big weeds, away to
pass into the small back door area. It was the entry we had always used. When I
lived there I had fashioned a patio of gray slate, laid down like a stone
puzzle, with two white wire chairs off to the side. It was my attempt to create
an inviting welcome area. My Grandma’s concrete swan planter, the one that is
still with me here in my Florida world, brimmed nearby with pink begonias in
spring and summer. The driveway leading to that entryway was lined with Hostas,
offshoots from my friend’s plants. It was a beautiful thing to see Hostas still
growing there after more than a quarter of a century, but no other evidence of
what I once thought was so charming remained. The door itself was still the
same door, but it had a gaping hole in it large enough for a person to pass
through.
I stuck my head
inside for a look. It was dark, scary, and smelled wet and moldy. With a hole
that size, and knowing it had been that way for years, I expected critters of
some sort, raccoons, who knows, I just expected them. I gave myself a mental
pep talk reminding me that I would not forgive myself if I chickened out now,
and stepped through the hole. My friend was
close behind but I couldn’t help but think this was my mission, and if anything
sudden was going to happen it was she who needed to get back through that hole
first!
For a moment, I saw past all that was wrong, feeling like I had
come home. Straight ahead were the same shelves with sliding doors that once
stored our games and my craft stuff .There were the three windows where
curtains hung that I made by coloring fanciful images with my little boy’s
crayons, onto the white cotton fabric of feed sacks left in the attic from my
grandparent’s days. To my right was the corner for our swivel rocker layered
with colorful red Indian blankets, and the wall behind it where a fancy
sombrero hung. When I was a kid, it was where my grandparents set up their
aluminum Christmas tree with an electric wheel that cast colorful light onto
the tinsel branches. During my time there, the room was used for a family room
and later as the family grew and space was needed, a bedroom with bunk beds for
the boys. The T.V. was in that room, and many baskets of laundry were folded
there. Our dog Amber stayed there, and at one point so did her pups. We entered
the garage through that room, a nice feature on freezing winter days. It was the
only garage I have ever been able to call mine.
A sound startled me back to the moment at hand as I turned quickly
toward it, believing it at first to be from a critter, but thankfully determining
it to be just a drip through the porous roof onto the muck layer that covered
the entire floor. It made sense since we had had a good rain the night before. My
gasp made my friend chuckle. We laughed at ourselves and it lightened the mood,
a little. Shuffling some of the muck away with my booted foot while shining the
light in the cleared spot, I could see there the flooring that I had chosen.
I walked toward the three stairs leading up to what I
remember being the most beautiful kitchen I have ever seen. The way that
kitchen looked back then is forever etched in my memory. It has always been my
favorite room of every house I’ve lived in, Grandma’s kitchen, and then my
kitchen. At the top of the stairs, the door I was hoping to see, one of several
with glass knobs and Skelton key plates was still there. It was the door that I
single-handedly installed, while seven months pregnant. The door was identical
to the one it replaced, with a solid wood paneled bottom and a glass window at
the top. I cannot recall how the previous door’s glass got broken, but I
remembered seeing a door in the garage rafters and decided to see if it would
work as a replacement. I climbed the ladder, got the door down, and into the place
of the broken one, even with a baby belly. That may not seem like a big feat,
but for me it really was. And there it still was, as I had placed it. The glass
of the replacement door was broken now too, with cardboard taped over the
opening. The once beautiful honey colored wood was dark and peeling, the
kitchen side including the glass knob and plate were painted white. Really bad
idea I thought, but I was excited to see it still there, and I could fix the white.
Before allowing my eyes to move on I made a mental tally,
one diamond.
Yes, there was my kitchen, at least some of it. The same
metal cabinets that I rolled with a fresh coat of gloss white Rustoleum paint
when I was getting the house ready to move into, were still there. My Dad
helped me with that work. We taped off the inset silver handles and shelf
edges, and used a small roller that applied an ever so slight texture, but left
no unsightly roller or brush marks. It was a very professional job. I displayed
a couple teapots from my collection on the rounded end shelves, along with a
panda bear salt and pepper shaker set that was grandmas, which had lived on
those shelves ever since I could remember as a child. My friend and I washed
many dishes together at the white porcelain sink topping those lower cupboards,
still there.
When I moved in, the space had a pink and black checked floor.
It was what grandma chose and I was happy to have it as mine too. I scrubbed it
many times on hands and knees, stripping away the old yellowed wax and
refreshing it with a new coat. No floor was ever prettier. Grandma had sheer
pink curtains at the room’s two windows; I kept them that same way. The bottom
half of the walls were covered with a pink sheet vinyl with white lines meant
to resemble tile. To the upper half of the walls I added a wall paper with
apples, pears and grapes in soft shades of pink, plum and green on a white
background. It was perfect in every way, as if made especially for me, especially
for that kitchen.
The pretty wallpaper was like bringing a little of the
outdoors in. Not far outside the kitchen’s window grew two apple trees from
which I gathered apples to bake my first and only completely from scratch,
crust and all, home baked pies. That too was a big deal for me, someone who
didn’t like to cook. Two pear trees also grew there. That part of the property
was affectionately called the orchard. Purple grapes grew at the field’s edge
near the front side of the house. I tried everything I knew how to make them
useable. The fruit was sweet but seedy, and the skins were bitter. Juice turned
out gritty but jam was mostly ok. I used the vines for wreaths.
My eyes could not believe that grandmas old stove was still there.
I loved that stove! For a person who didn’t like to cook it was completely
adequate. I was surprised to see though that it had not been replaced with an
updated model. It was a gas stove with a pilot that needed to be lit to heat up
the oven so I kept a box of stick matches right on top for easy frequent use.
Before I awoke one
morning, my wide awake, curious, mischievous little boys, decided to get the
matches from the stovetop and start a fire. When I came out of my room only a
few steps away, I could see a narrow ribbon of smoke about eye level, just sort
of drifting on the air lightly moved by my motion. Thin wispy layers of black
ash lead to the kitchen trash receptacle, which was an old diaper hamper in an
apple bushel basket. There I found charred diapers and a burnt yellow baby
blanket clumsily concealed. My boys were conspicuously absent from the room. As
my morning mind struggled to make sense of it all, I followed the ash trail the
opposite direction which led to a burned spot on the carpet behind the chair,
with a sooty mark up the chair back. This house was constructed completely of
wood. My sweet, bad little boys, had gotten the stick matches off the stove top
and started a fire in the living room, on the carpet, behind a fully
upholstered chair and somehow at the ages of five and seven, had the
wherewithal to extinguish it with a baby blanket and diapers. I was lucky they
didn’t burn the house down! I taught myself to sleep much lighter.
The stairs up to the kitchen were no longer properly
attached to the floor, the wall, or each other, so from the top, before my
friend even got up them I said out loud “the kitchen floor is going downhill”.
From where I stood it was slanting away from the doorway. I did not expect to
see that. I took a few steps, on ugly flooring that was not mine, and carefully
prodded the floor ahead with my crowbar gift. It was soft and obviously rotted
through as if the only thing supporting any of it was the flooring material
itself.
I could not walk into the living room like I had hoped to,
but I could see through the archway into it. I could see the ceiling warped and
barely hanging on. I could see mounds of stuff, I don’t even know what, but
stuff, like clothes, toys and small objects. As far as I could tell there was
no furniture but the mounded debris was as tall as furniture. Why would anyone
leave all their stuff like this? I had to wonder.
I could see through to the front door. I always loved that
front door, solid wood with three narrow windows and an especially decorative
key plate with glass knob. I remembered how my piano looked against the wall
near it, and the piano’s bench that I upholstered myself. I remembered the
celery green lace curtains I made for the three living room windows, and how
Rocky the yellow canary liked to perch on them when I let him fly free. I
thought about how the white rug I laid over the green carpet looked when I
first moved into the house, and later when I moved it to the family room
downstairs, and I remembered later still giving it to a friend who had always
admired it. I remembered how my sweet friend there with me in those moments,
had been with me in so many long past moments. I remembered how she used a wet rag
to rub out baby bottle drips spotting the carpet, while helping me clean house.
I learned how to be a better housekeeper from her. I learned how to be better,
from her.
She is a diamond. Mental tally mark number two.
I was literally too afraid of falling through the floor to
continue further into the house where I had hoped I might find the other doors
with glass knobs still there. I don’t know if they were. I would have taken the
whole door, knobs and all, if they were there and salvageable. I would have
peeled away whatever layers there were to get to the original living room linoleum
I remembered my grandparents having, for even a small tattered remnant to claim
again for my own. Clearly, whatever flooring was there was ruined beyond
salvage. The floor in the kitchen was brittle and crumbling with each layer
under it flaking like parchment. It was logical that a leaking building with
mounds of wet debris on the floors, would eventually rot through.
I looked long, reasoning with myself until I was certain that
I should not go on. I took pictures to use as reference with hopes I would make
some drawings when I got back home. I have so few photographs from my years
there.
I turned back to my friend who was stunned at the sights.
She said “there is still food in the pantry”. It really was so strange, like
the family after me just up and left the house full of stuff and never came
back. Then the next thing anyone knew ten years of an abandoned house was the
result we were witnessing in those moments.
I refocused on what might be retrieved. I mentally dug for a
diamond, any tiny little diamond. I got a screwdriver to remove the kitchen doorknobs
and plates. First my friend tried, then I. It was quite stuck, but I was more
determined than it was stuck. We finally loosened the screws and got it. I was
reminded what a really great team we made. I used the crowbar to pry loose the
curved shelf section of one upper cabinet. The cabinet itself was missing which
made the shelf removal fairly easy with the help of my friend. I made a weak
effort to remove the other side but there was no firm place for footing, and I
thought I should be happy with what I was able to get rather than push my luck
trying to get more.
Eyeing the stove, I remarked how I hated to leave it behind,
even though it was a rusted fraction of what it was back when. My friend
suggested taking the knobs. I thought it was a brilliant idea. I took one
burner grate and its porcelain cover too, my favorite feature of the old stove.
Diamonds.
Fearing for our safety to go any deeper into the house of
mushy slanted floors, and having a fair satisfaction with the gems already
mined, we headed back out.
When I lived there I kept about an acre of the land mowed.
Clearly that had not been the case for quite some time. In fact, the property
was so overgrown that what started as weeds had become shrubbery and trees. It
was like entering the woods. There were thistles as tall as me. I had never
seen them grow so tall and for that reason I thought they were really lovely in
a sadly interesting sort of way.
I led, slowly creating a bit of a path so my friend might
have a better idea where to step without getting tripped up on hidden growth,
pushing and holding branches out of the way as we went. There was a pool with a
deck visible through the growth. That was not mine. Past it to the right, where
I should have been able to see the barn as it had always been called, though it
was merely the size of a double garage, I could see some standing boards that
were no longer very barn shaped. I was told it had collapsed so I was not
really expecting much, still, I wanted to get closer. There was a lot of growth,
and a large pile of old wood and rusting metal between it and us.
We opted to continue deeper toward the back. That was where
Grandpa dumped the trash that could not be burned. I had grand ideas of digging
up, diamonds. The exact spot was at least as much farther as we had already
come, and since this woodland growth would be as thick back there as where we
were standing, I began to doubt the wisdom of the mission, not so much though that
I was willing to abort just yet. After all I had driven 1500 miles to be able
to do this. Focused on moving back further, I knew we would find the dump a
little past the big tree.
There it was, looking as old and forgotten as the rest of
the property. Its huge limbs popped dark and black against the vibrant green of
youthful growth. It was not the nice fat, full shade tree it once was, its skeleton all that was left. It stood tall, towering over all the
youngsters that had sprouted up and taken over, and reached wide as if with
outstretched arms. For a moment I
stopped, staring as my heart sank, “oh, that’s where we buried Copper” I said
out loud, “right under that tree”. Copper was a Golden Retriever, a fine farm
family friend. Seeing the lifeless tree immediately sparked that sad memory.
I was shaken back to the moment at hand, when the brush
about ten feet away from us rustled with the activity of a startled to see us
there animal. We were able to trace the movement without ever seeing what
caused it, forward for another ten feet or so, where it stopped. It and we were
still. “What lives around here” I asked. Deer and Raccoon were briefly
discussed. We both decided it was bigger than us, perhaps not literally, but certainly
our big imaginations convinced us of a retreat.
I will never know what may have been left behind. Were the
old iron tractor blades that resembled sewing rickrack still under the
partially collapsed barn? I always wanted to do something creative with those.
They didn’t make it on the truck for my dead of winter move to Florida. And
what more than the old crock, large pink ceramic planter, and old medicine
bottles long ago unearthed, might be buried there still in the back forty?
Ticks, poison ivy, wasps, thistles, rotten floorboards, it
was all on my mind when my mind was made up to be satisfied with what was
already accomplished there.
I didn’t even know what I really hoped for by doing this
whole Sherman Road thing. The house and property was so very different than when
I lived there. I knew even before going that it didn’t look like home. But in
some crazy sort of way, being there, looking at it, with the few things that
did remain near the same, I could still see it just the way it used to be.
I could see the toy box downstairs, the one I pulled from
the attic and painted up fresh. It must have been for my Dad’s stuff, or a
secret place for Grandma’s special things. I could see our dog Amber, the black New
Foundland we got after Copper, looking up at me from the bottom of the stairs,
anticipating my consent to join us in the kitchen. I remembered how she loved
lying on the sun warmed pavement as she waited for the afternoon school bus to
chase.
Where the new owners had removed a wall from the dilapidated
kitchen through to the bedroom, my bedroom, I could see the very window I used
to look out overlooking the field edge. Pink peonies bloomed on the mowed side,
and field flowers on the wild side. There I could see all the way across the
field of wildflowers and grasses to the trees of the woods on the other side of
the creek, acres away.
Across the street, through the living room window or from
the front porch was where I would see my neighbors horses tethered to old tires,
that kept them from wandering too far as they grazed in summer afternoon sunshine.
She and I rode bareback into the woods and through the creek, to a little
secret spot where Lilly of the Valley grew. Just a few stems scented an entire
room. That neighbor friend made me my first Crème Brule, and she brought us
supper, a dish she called “mixed-up-dinner”. I wish she knew it became a family
favorite that I occasionally still make. I could see me sitting on an overturned
bucket peeling apples for pie, while my little boys hunted and found snakes
along the horse tail and Hosta lined railroad ties of the tar-tab driveway’s
edge.
It just seems such a shame that I am the only one able to
see any of that.
It is all gone, has been gone for many years. Going back
there was necessary for me for so many reasons though I can’t say for sure that
any particular of them were what drove me there. It really was all of them. My
need to go surprised even me. Yes, some of the most significant events of my
life happened while there, still, I don’t know anyone who ever speaks of such
an attachment to a house as that which I have always felt for the one on Sherman Road.
My first Sunday back home I looked forward to being at
church with some of my kids, and our usual lunch afterwards. I missed them
while I was away. I missed being able to share with them what I saw, what was
visible, and beyond. I knew though that they would not be able to see as I, and
therefore would not be able to appreciate as I. The only person, in all my
life, in all the world, who could really appreciate it with me, was there. She
knew how it was supposed to look, and I bet she still saw it all that way too.
She was there with me in those long ago days from our past, when she was more
of an anchor in my turbulent life than she can know, and there with me in those
present moments. Back at home 1500 miles away, it was she that I missed.
The summer months bring guest speakers to our church. That first
Sunday morning back in my Florida world as he spoke, it suddenly and very clearly
occurred to me. I realized finally why I was so drawn to that place and time on
Sherman Road. Beyond all the events and all the memories, both of my
grandparents and of my own life there, was this diamond I had not yet fully
mined.
It was there in that house in that living room, on that
antique overstuffed chair with a soot stain up the back, where I peered out the
window and said to God, I have to be more than I ever thought I would need to
be, for the sake of my children, the children You God, gave me. I am going to
need You to be there with me all along the way, and it was there in that living
room that God showed up for me. He was no longer merely the God of my parents, He
became my God, and I knew it for myself to be true. My faith, what little there
was of it previously, was no longer blind. I had while there in that house, on
multiple occasions, my most poignant personal encounters up to that point in my
life, with the one true living God.
I knew all of this before my Sherman Road trip, but it took
hearing that speaker on the first Sunday morning back home a lot of July’s
later, to piece together the puzzle. Sherman Road has been for me a place of remembrance.
Not memories, as much as I do enjoy holding onto the good ones, but for
remembrance of God’s goodness, only goodness, always goodness.
Like the Old Testament accounts of rock altars built in the
wilderness, for later generations to see and be reminded of God’s rescue and
provision, so is Sherman Road for me. Any pieces I was able to steal back were
so important because they would be that same sort of reminder when I see them
here, 1500 miles and a lot of years away from where they started. It was never
about the things at all, but by having the things, I am reminded like rock
altars when I see them, of the only thing that really matters.I am God’s, and He is mine. And see that over there, those bits of things like altar rocks? That is my reminder that I have proven it. And because I have proven it all those years ago, all these years since have been different.
Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, opals, sapphires, silver and
gold have been mined from Sherman Road. And now, with many years between the me
I was then, and the me I am today, they have become precious pearls of wisdom,
of love, of hope, of confidence and of remembrance.
Whenever I go there, I see and I will always see, what it
was. I see past what it has become, and even when everything familiar ceases to
be, even if a different dwelling rises up in its place, for me Sherman Road,
and every part of the parcel of land that the road takes me to, will never
cease to be anything but miraculously beautiful.
For me, Sherman Road will always be a mine, which has brought
forth priceless jewels.
P.J.
