“Oysterville – 1968

Bill Bailey (via his sister-in-law, Barbara) gave our house a gift on the occasion of its 150th birthday — an 8×10 black and white photograph titled “Oysterville – 1968.”  The picture was taken from the north and shows our house and adjacent pasture, as well as a peek at the W.D. Taylor house, most of the church, and part of the Wachsmuth house on the corner of School Street and Territory Road.

I’ve looked at it a lot — trying to sort out memory from what is documented here.  In fact, this morning Nyel and I spent a good thirty minutes looking with a magnifying glass to determine exactly what was partially hidden by the trees.  An earlier, smaller addition that housed the woodshed and garage is what we finally determined.

It was about that time that Nyel said, “This is why we never get anything done around here!”  Well, I guess looking at a fifty-year-old picture of a house he’s only known for thirty-five years could be considered a time-waster.  But, for me, seeing the field to the north that was used in my girlhood to pasture neighbors’ horses was hardly a time-waster.  (And who was that old horse anyway?  I think it was too late to have been the Holway family’s Prince.) And that TV antenna!  Oh my!  I wonder why it never came down during a storm.  Or why didn’t it take the whole roof off with it.  And, for all its size, the reception was pitiful.

That the church steeple was boarded up then was no surprise, though.  I think it was closed against leaks in the early fifties or maybe even in the forties and stayed that way until the church was restored in 1980.  But I had forgotten about the windows on the north side of the Sunday School  Room also being boarded up.  I wonder if the other windows were closed off as well.  And I don’t remember all the trees in the area that was once my grandfather’s vegetable garden — just to the northwest of the house.  Were they fruit trees of some kind?

Papa in His Garden, 1948

I’m sure that other people will see things in the photograph that I missed… unless they are too busy getting something “done.”  Humpf!