It is said you can’t really go home again. And I can’t. My boyhood home is falling down and owned by someone else. But the farmplace has been in the family for 150 years. The house has changed a little. But it is mostly the same structure it always was. And the spirits of the past are plentiful now.
My great grandfather, Friend Aldrich, established the farm in the 1800s. My great grandmother, Emily Brannon Aldrich bore him three sons. Henry Aldrich and Ira Clarke Aldrich were their elder sons. My grandfather, Raymond Aldrich, was his youngest.
My grandfather and grandmother, Neva Hinckley Aldrich, lived in this old house after my Great Grandfather was gone. They had Larry, Lois (my mother,) and Donny, the youngest. Uncle Donny was a favorite of Great Uncle I. C. and his wife and inherited their farm since the old couple was childless. Uncle Larry eventually bought his own farmplace, and my mother was destined to inherit Grandpa’s farm. Thus the spirits of the whole clan still gather there. (Uncle Done is the only one I have mentioned who is still alive.)
This will be the first summer trip back home where no parent will be living there, and I am officially a part-owner of the place.
Now that it is a place of mostly memories… and ghosts of the past… I don’t know if you can really call it going home. But it will be good to get back there one more time.
Catch a Falling Star 