Nicholas Howe [04/17/2008]

By Nicholas Howe

Theres been news about the barn behind the school in Jackson. Should it be saved? If so, what should it be used for? Should it stay where it is, or should it be moved?Im familiar with the questions. My sister gave me a beautiful book about Deerfield, Mass., where we grew up, and there was a lot to tell because the authors wanted to begin at the beginning, which was in 1671. Its a work of scholarly devotion, and they traced the use of every parcel of land in town, the buildings that were put on it, and the people who lived there.The documents are not the kind we see today. One deed shows the dimensions along six sides of a lot and all the abutters except one. That side is marked, Land belonging to the Lord knows who. The names are not often heard anymore, either. The first names of the other abutters include Ebenezer, Erastus, Eldad, and Mehumann. Another conspicuous element in the Deerfield story is the frequency with which houses were moved. Many towns did this, because in an age when there were no overhead wires it was not difficult to move a disused building to a new site where it could have a new life. Many towns had rollers and ropes and farmers with horses and oxen, so everyone would turn to and get the job done. This habit was in hiatus when I was a little boy in Deerfield, then one year we came back from our Jackson summer and the Ashley house was in the middle of the main street. It began as a farm house, then times changed and it was moved onto a back lot to serve as a barn for the stylish new Italianate house in front. Times changed again, a new self-awareness came to town, and the 20th-century newcomer was moved away and the old Ashley place was moved back to its original lot and restored as a museum house. I think that first removal was in 1949, the impulse gained momentum and money, and soon there was a set of misfitting but still useful houses in a discretely distant meadow, what my mother called Calamity Row.The town became world famous for its museum houses and it learned new habits. One of them came to our house when the heel of one of my mothers shoes went through the floor in the living room. The floor was made in the old manner, with very wide pine planks fastened with square-cut nails, but the cellar was damp and the moisture had taken hold on the underside of the living room floorboards and theyd become infirm in their old age.When we left for the summer in Jackson, my mother asked the town carpenter to fix the floor. She rued the day, because the old pine boards were beautiful and age had bowed the back of the joists so wed climb uphill to the middle of the room and then down the other side. It wasnt a very steep climb, but we liked it and now the floor would be replaced with new joists and new boards and when we came back in September wed surly find a new hardwood floor with all the charm of a bowling alley.When we did come back my mother avoided the living room as long as she could. She finally had to go in, and there was the same old humpy pine floor. She was momentarily happy, then she realized that the carpenters hadnt gotten around to the job during the summer, so now theyd tear the room apart while we were living there and it would be no end of mess. She called one of them and he said the job was all done. He knew that when the old houses were built, leftover boards were put loose in the attic as a floor. So he reproduced the curve of the original living-room joists and used the old wood from the attic to make a new floor that looked like it had been there forever.There are three boarding schools in Deerfield, and they enroll the modest and the mighty alike. (King Abdullah and Crown Prince Ali of Jordan took all their primary and secondary schooling there.) The motto of the academy is Be Worthy of Your Heritage and this includes the expansion programs. For instance, when several new dormitories were built a generation ago, they were made with an exterior form that Eldad and Mehumann would admire. Since then, one old building after another has been restored and furnished with antiques and opened as a museum with a modern apartment in back for the guide who tends to the needs of visitors coming from near and far to study the rarities each building contains. This trip into the past was lead by the chairman of the board of trustees at the academy, and before long his work became a foundation that funded and managed the increasingly complex and expensive projects. For instance, an old town like Deerfield would have a tavern, but now it didnt. A suitable example was found in a town about 20 miles away, a very large building with nine windows and an elaborate door on the front wall. It was dismantled by a crew that numbered and mapped each smallest part so they could put it together again with perfect fidelity, and now it sits where Streckers Store used to be.All this transformed my old home town, and I was comforted to see that the book also has a picture of Streckers Store and the swamp behind it just the way it was in my childhood. This was the only store in town and it had a creaky floor dusted with green powder to help with the sweeping. It was rather dim inside, and in the back, behind all the shelves and counters and cases, there was a green metal rack holding bottles of a drink called Moxie. This was so unknown and so vaguely threatening that I was afraid to go near it.We skated on Streckers pond in the winter. The best ice was where open water had frozen smooth, but there were also bubbles made by swamp gas, and reeds were frozen in the ice, too. It was almost impossible to avoid these and I always hoped that a fall would chip one of my front teeth, which I regarded as a sign of virtue.The book about Deerfield shows all the renovated glories, but theres also an old picture of Streckers Store and the swamp in back. I was encouraged to know that the people who documented the Deerfield restorations had not neglected the time-worn originals. Nicholas Howe is a writer from Jackson. E-mail him at nickhowe@ncia.net.