Midtown Clearing on the Right

The lot across the road from the old Heckes house is cleared now – at least the front part of it is. What a difference from the way it was just a few days ago. Now it feels open, neat, hopeful. Suddenly it’s one of those I-wonder-what’s-going-to-happen-next spaces right in the middle of Oysterville!

The area has been overgrown for so long that I’m having trouble recalling what it looked like when I was a child – when Uncle John (Heckes) had his barn there. It seems to me that the barn was to the south and west of the cleared area. But it’s hard to remember. I looked for a photograph in Anne Cannon Nixon’s wonderful book, the Heckes Kemmer Caulfield Family History, but to no avail. Lots of photos of the house and garden, but none of the barn.

Oysterville Moms and Kids, Summer 1938

Anne, a year older than I, was a summer kid at the Heckes place (just as I was a summer kid at my grandparents’) and Uncle John was her great uncle. During our childhood – and until very recently, in the great scheme of things – the Heckes house and the H.A. Espy house were ‘next door’ to each other. Well… they were actually a block apart, but there were no intervening structures. Now, there are two homes in between and there are fewer and fewer of us who remember the way it was.

There is talk of putting a small house on the newly cleared lot. It looks almost too shallow. But perhaps this is just the first step in ‘seeing’ the lay of the land. Or maybe there will be more clearing before the building begins. I find it hard to imagine how that part of the village will look with another house there. I’m even worse at envisioning that I am at remembering — which probably explains why I tend more towards history than to city planning.  Anyway, it makes for high anticipation!