House on a Nebraskan Hill

There was a house on a hill outside of the town where I grew up in Nebraska. The house probably wasn't that unusual if it had been among other houses, but being all alone on the hill was something different.

The story is that the people who had lived there put in their will that it was to be kept just as they left it! The family did honor this request and a caretaker lived on in a smaller home some distance away.

I used to have many dreams about visiting this house and the attic was filled with trunks full of beautiful clothes. I never did get to visit the house!

Maybe I still will get to see it someday!

Sylvia Kleindinst

 

 A Swarm of Memories Rising
from Sylvia Kleindinst

"In my beginning is my end. In succession
House rise and fall, crumble, are extended.
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new buildings, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die; there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break a loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field mouse trots....
T.S. Elliot "Four Quartets'

Sylvia took the TS Elliot quote which so perfectly expresses what has happened to so many buildings. She wrote saying that "I used the quote to go with the picture of my Grandmother Smith which I've placed in the house she lived in as a young woman. My father was born here. Now, it is in shambles. I stopped by one summer and took lots of pictures of the house just to remember it and I also have old photos when it was inhabited."