Re: Old Houses OT

Posted by JRSutton on July 27, 2015 at 06:40:33 from (98.110.210.114):

In Reply to: Old Houses OT posted by John B. on July 26, 2015 at 19:51:42:

It's a shame to see an old house come down, but sometimes you have no choice.

When my cousins, who were also our neighbors, tore their old house down, we found a pile of old letters in the wreckage. Not sure where they were in the house - I think maybe in the basement near the sill of the house. Very interesting reading. There was a lot about having to ride a carriage down to washington dc, and what a long trip it was (from mass.) Just a slice of some unknown person's life 150 years ago.

In our own house, that my grandfather built and I grew up in - my grandfather had hidden a bunch of stuff that we as kids found decades later (without tearing the house down).

Way back in a crawl space under the house behind some rocks was a large metal chest. My older brother was the only one brave enough to shimmy way in through a little crack in a hole in the foundation wall down in the basement to get in there to explore, he found the box. I think my grandfather had probably put it under the floor when he built the room it was under - I doubt he shimmied in there to hide it.

I went halfway in after my brother and held the light. My other brothers were further back peeking in.

It was literally like finding buried treasure.

I was probably about 8 or 9 at the time, and I'll never forget how amazing that moment was.

The metal box (the size of a large suitcase) was fastened with one screw. We dispatched a little brother for tools.

The screw came out easily enough -

We opened it and it was full of old balled up newspapers... All yellowed.

Kind of a let down.

Then my brother reached in an unballed one of them.

I'll never forget his yell "it's A GUN".

It turned out to be my great grandfather's collection of antique pistols and other items that he had accumulated during his time as Sheriff of Worcester county where he ran the jail.

There were about 6 matched pairs of of beautiful old percussion cap pistols, and a bunch of individual ones. A really cool variety of odd guns. There were some knives, some of them apparently made by prisoners. Lots of old coins and buttons, pictures, even the old newspaper that every gun was wrapped in was interesting. There were huge old padlocks, big jail keys, bullet molds, horse teeth for some reason - I assume it must have been a favorite horse.

A real time capsule. And to find something like that at that young age was better than winning the lottery to us. It just blew us all away. I'll never forget the old musty smell of that box, and that feeling of looking through it once our father came in and dragged it upstairs.

He had never seen any of it before either.

I doubt you'll find something that unique, but having experienced it - any time I see an old building coming down - I've always got my eyes open!

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