RIP back shed

My sister sent me these pictures a few days ago:

The back door of our old house.   There used to be a shed on it that my brother recently tore down.  The back door was way above  the ground at one time.  We used to pile wood under the steps.

My dad, lying in a wheelbarrow probably after chopping a lot of wood for us to pile in the back shed.   This picture says 1956 so I  was only about 3 years old.  Look how much higher the door was here than in the picture below.

This is before it got torn down.  Just a few years ago - the little door is where we used to throw the wood in and pile it.  No one had lived here for several years when I took this and it was on it's way to dying.

That back shed was such a big part of my childhood.  I remember my dad bringing home huge loads of wood and dumping it in the backyard.  He would then split it with my sister and my brother's help - I wasn't good at it.  There was a wedge that you put in the wood and then you would hit the wedge with a hammer like thing and split the wood in half.  I couldn't even hit the wedge with my puny arms.  And when I used an axe I could never hit it in the same place twice   I was also afraid to swing with all my strength because I thought I would miss the wood and then chop my foot off.  And besides, my arms were puny and they still are - but getting better cause I have been lifting weights.

After the wood would get chopped up, we would throw it in the door and then pile it in the shed - under the steps as well.  We would pretty much fill up the entire shed and also have wood piled outside a bit.  I will try to find more pictures when I am back there in a few weeks.  We did not have another source of heat so we depended on this wood to keep us warm all winter.  My dad would start getting the wood in the summertime.  He didn't buy it from anyone....just went out in the woods and chopped down trees.  I remember many mornings when it was so cold in the house you could see your breath - and the floors were like ice.  After my dad got the fire going, I would lay on the end of my bed and put my feet on the chimney to warm them.  I can still hear him poking around the wood to get the fire going - and hear the snow popping on the big pieces he put in the stove at night that were supposed to burn all night.


My sister had names for different kinds of woods.  Everyone knows about kindling or the thin fast burning wood that would start the fire with newspaper added.  When it was going good, you threw in a different kind of wood that would burn slow, hot and longer.  Barb and Siggie burned wood for a lot of years and they had these kinds of wood.


Now wood - the kind that you wanted to use to get the place warm sooner
Mary Wood - the kind that they would bring to the older neighbor, Mary
Casino wood - wood that would burn the entire time they were away at the casino
Good night wood - wood that would burn all night or most of it.  


Barb feel free to add more cause I know you probably have other ones too!

While I didn't much like piling wood I remember how good it felt to look at all that wood stacked in the back shed.  Sometimes we would pile some on the top part that was just outside the kitchen.  I can still see my dad coming in with his arms full of wood to put in the kitchen stove and also the stove in the "room by the stove" which is where we all huddled on cold mornings.  

My mom's old wringer washer was on the top part of the shed.  She dragged it into the house and hooked it up to the kitchen sink probably once/week to wash clothes.  I can still hear the noise it made.  We never had a clothes dryer in the summer; she hung our clothes outside to dry and in the winter they went on a rack around the heater stove in the "room by the stove".  This same rack made a tent for us when we had whooping cough, my sister and I.  I thought the tent was pretty cool. 

I remember how that back shed smelled too - like wet wood and a hint of decay.  We had a lot of cats and they would rattle the doorknob to get in the house.  At the bottom of the stairs, there was a few more steps that led into a cellar - it was a scary place with a dirt floor and it smelled like potatoes and I was always scared to go in it.  I had bad dreams of nuclear war and having to live down there.  My sister said there was an old still for making moonshine there when my parents moved in.

The area outside the back shed always had a nice cushion of wood chips, as did the bottom part of the back shed.  It always looked so bare in the summer after the wood was gone - but not for long.

My dad loved the woods and getting the wood.  He chopped wood and kept the fires going as long as he was able.  When he knew he couldn't manage any longer, he finally moved over to live with my mom in the home my sister and I brought for them.  He really hated to leave the place that was his home most all of his married life.  He threatened to run away into the woods and to disown me.  Later he apologized and said "It is hard for old people to leave their home.  And I have already lost one home".  The people who bought his childhood home simply burned it to the ground and built another one on the site.  That bothered him a lot.

 This is a picture of my dad when he was still able to chop wood and "keep the home fires burning" maybe a few years before he moved over to the new place.  He sure loved the woods, chopping it and keeping the house warm.  He was always happy when he could be outside puttering around, chopping or piling wood, or talking to someone who happened to drive by the house and stop to chat.

It is funny how everything seems so big when you are a kid.  Part of that is because we were smaller but also I think a house, when people abandon it, shrinks inside itself and dies because what made it a home is gone.  And be it ever so humble...it was my home and where I grew up and where there were lots of good memories - more good than bad.