there's a loneliness in midwest gothic. not from the style itself, but from the assumption that everyone who lives like this must be lonely. empty.
i grew up in a one-room schoolhouse turned into a home. it was called barrens when it was built; the ground was so clay-rich even our apple trees didn't survive after a single winter. even after a hundred years, someone still tried and found the same result as those who named the land. still, day lilies sprung up by the concrete foundation of what used to be the coal storage.
my parents probably knew the name of every single family that lived on that gravel road. i probably tried to sell candles to everyone that was home. a little kid riding a bike with a catalogue crumpled between fingers and handlebars, knocking until someone would give in and answer the door. the prizes for those school fundraisers weren't even worth it, but winning them was.
i went for walks with anyone who would go with me until i was old enough to go by myself. down the road, not towards the highway but towards the creek, there was a house only a few years from falling in on itself. my older sister went with me, past the "no trespassing" sign and into a grove with dead vines, spanish moss, and pink and blue african violets that were the prettiest flowers i had ever seen. sometimes i wonder if those pictures still exist on an old phone somwhere...
there was a time before that house was torn down, the man who owned it was there. he and my dad stood around talking about whatever was new while my mom and i sifted through a falling-down shed on that property that the man just wanted to get rid of. you couldn't see the floor of that shed, it was covered in sea of glass jars, many of them broken. my mom picked through the pieces and handed me unbroken jars so i wouldn't hurt my hands. in my house now there are still old old mason jars, blue and clear, scattered about and finding different purposes. that house's foundation still sits there, but the shed is long gone. i wonder if it was his parents' land, once upon a time.
there's a cattle farm not too terribly far from where i live now that has two old houses on it. one of them is for rent, runs on filtered well water but i wouldn't drink it if you asked me. the man who owns it grew up in that house, and it really hasn't changed that much from the 70's. he offers extra crawfish sometimes. and the other cute little house house right next to the one for rent is small, so small i can't imagine what it was for. hunter lodging, maybe. but it doesn't matter much anymore, it's not in good enough shape anyway. there's a hole in the east side, the siding is peeled back, and you can hear the buzzing of a honey bee hive from far away. no one lodges there anymore, but it's still a home. there's still life. there's still life.
