Earlier this fall, a red Cadillac SUV slowly drove by our property on a Sunday afternoon. It drove by again. Then it stopped right in front of our house. I was doing yard work and meandered over to the road. The driver saw me and motioned for me to come closer, which I did, still keeping some distance.
He said that he used to work on this property when the Fishers owned it. He worked in the slaughterhouse, he said, motioning to our gardenhouse (which we had heard was a slaughterhouse). He said people would come to the slaugherhouse with chickens or pigs or deer and that it was a community place. He said that the land was good for growing wild berries and that there were many raspberries and blackberries around the house. He said people would come to pick berries, and that every weekend there was a community dinner at a nearby park, and that people came to the picnics on horseback, coach, or horse-drawn sled. He said that it wasn’t a modern place – that when he went to college in 1955 (Baldwin Wallace, I think he said) it was the first time he used an indoor toilet. It was a community, he kept saying, along with it’s all different, it’s all so different, in disbelief. He asked if we bought the place from the Fishers. I said it was the Parkers. He looked down and shook his head, which I took as an indication that he didn’t know them.
I wasn’t sure how to proceed. He didn’t ask me many questions. The woman in the passenger seat, presumably his wife, didn’t say anything and looked completely annoyed. She glared at me, as if to say, “I don’t give a damn about any of this.” (Though, my interpretation may be a little off.) Had she been a bit engaged; had she asked me something, or demonstrated interest, I may have asked them to pull into our driveway and talk for a bit. But, she didn’t, so I didn’t. The guy and I wished each other well and he drove off.