Decaying Grandeur

Someone once told me that he hated driving past the long abandoned farmsteads dotting the western North Dakota landscape because it's where someone's dream died. The daily hustle of chores and farm work are long gone. The children who once played in the yard and tended the garden have grown and left the country to become city mice. The house that was once impeccable and welcoming is now shuttered while the prairie proceeds to reclaim it as the elements lend a hand in its demise.

These places have a lot of soul. I'm sure to a farmer who's father was a farmer and who's father's father was a farmer that's exactly what he sees when he sees that weathered wood. Those words have always resonated within me.

I used to drive around the countryside with my grandpa when I was little. We would go on fishing excursions on his home turf in the wilds of Stutsman and Kidder counties. The fishing was fun but the time spent in the passenger seat was the best part of the trip. He would know the story of each abandoned farmstead, the family who lived there, when they settled, and a century worth of gossip that was meticulously cultivated over a lifetime spent at auction sales, small town cafes, and lord knows where else but I sure wish I would have been there for those original unedited conversations.

He would take my mom out there too and they would explore some of those old structures. One of my favorite stories involved my teenage mother opening a drawer only to find a handful of human teeth and a pliers. Apparently the previous inhabitant was appalled by extravagant dental bills and took matters into his own hands literally. I'm sure he was greatly amused by her reaction.

My parents also had a nose for exploring. We would often visit prairie graveyards and explore abandoned houses. One house was located on the edge of the Jamestown Dam. I remember walking along the edge of the water, walking around wagon wheels that had washed ashore as well as parts of washboards, washtubs and who knows what else.

I always wondered what lie at the bottom. My whimsical side imagines a murky hillbilly honky tonk Atlantis straight out of an old Fleischer cartoon. While the realistic and paranoid part of myself imagines a whole slew of things that can bite or cut any one of my limbs off at any given time. My grandma would always warn me to stay away from "that filthy water" which actually sounded more like "Filssey vatter" (she has a thick German accent that only gets thicker as she gets older.)

I also remember my parents taking me out to a field because there was a supposed crop circle out there. I was around five years old so it was roughly 1989. By that time I had seen ET and knew that anything alien related was absolutely horrifying from each and every possible angle. I remember getting so worked up that I managed to get a whole piece of double mint gum stuck in my glorious child sized mullet.

Anyway. I don't know if it's a terrible habit or an endearing habit of overly romanticizing these places. I guess that's the basis for most if not all of my art. I see these abandoned structures and imagine them in their glory. I envy the former inhabitants for their self reliance and their work ethic. I imagine they led hard lives and I imagine their joys were as genuine as their sorrows.

The older I get the more I realize I'm meant to be a country mouse. During these beautiful fall days I feel like I should be roaming the countryside collecting stories, documenting points of interest and developing fodder for future art pieces. I feel compelled to collect these histories before they become forgotten. I guess it's all a work in progress. Next weekend I head to Aberdeen to drop off work for a a show which will be accompanied with a paper cutting workshop. What do I look forward to the most? The drive. Obviously.