Photo of The Month – May 2008

Home Sweet Home

Picture contributor: James Harris

It might have been in the late 1960s or the early ’70s when the River Street houses started to go. Most were torn down and consigned to the trash pile, but some, like this one being jacked up to be hauled away, were purchased by the former occupants or someone else, whose intent was to refurbish them in some other location. Good luck with that. These old houses had no insulation and their wiring, heating and plumbing were inadequate, to say the least. Most of them had been built 60 years ago out of green lumber, which over the years had twisted and warped so that nothing about the houses was square or level.

But one can understand the reluctance of some to just walk away from “this old house”—in which they’d lived for many years or perhaps their entire lives—when, for a small (initial) sum, they could take it with them.

We’re looking north, back to the river bridge. You can see the Methodist church in the distance, and beyond that the smokestack of the school building at the other end of town. It’s obvious from the debris in the foreground the house that stood next door has been demolished.

Photo by Roy Lee Harris