Thursday, October 14, 2021

General's House

Every once in a while, I'll have a dream that I'm living in the old sharecropper's house that stood at a bend in the road where I grew up.  In my dream, I'm in that old house, looking out the front window at my parents' house.  I can see down the road.  It's always night, and there's a gas lamp in the window.

When I was a kid, the house was occupied by General English, the last of his family to live in there.  I remember hearing him plowing with his old single-cylinder tractor, something he was forced to do after his horse, who's name escapes me at the time, died.  When the owner of the farm passed away, and the family sold the land, General moved a few miles down the road into another little farm.

The road to the house no longer exists, at least not in the sense that it's passable.  Trees and weeds now live there. There's no sign of where the house once stood.  

Once in a while, though, in my dreams, it's still there.

The dream isn't creepy or scary, even though it's dark.  There's some sort of odd comfort in seeing the neighborhood the way it used to be through this calm, quiet, nighttime filter.  I don't know why I'm down there in that house, all alone, looking back down the road at everyone else's house, but it's peaceful and reassuring.