Remnants of the Past

In the homestead community where I grew up, there is an old school house. I don't remember exactly when it was built. I think it was the late fifties? Anyways, I have very fond memories of playing there as a child- it had a metal merry-go-round out back, along with some rickety monkey bars and a sand pit and a field for baseball. (And just next to it was the new school that was built in the eighties or something like that.) It was made into the community centre a few years back, and about a year ago, the old post office building was moved to the same property. 

Recently, as I drove by the school, I noticed that they had moved the buildings, as the old foundations needed some work so the buildings wouldn't collapse. 

 

There isn't much "community", per se, to be found here. And I don't think they'll make it to the goal of having a "Sterling Museum" by this summer. However, there's quite a bit of sentiment for this old building for the old time homesteaders. The first post office was actually in someone's living room - I actually know the woman whose parents ran it. That house burnt down at some point, and this one was built. Now we have a fairly modern one, about as old as my brother, and this one is definitely in need of some renovation...

I love the old slatting though, and the wall sconce. This really does look like some of the old cabins I've seen, and rather reminded me of the house that I grew up in, and then later burnt. (A story that maybe one day, I'll go into on here...) Admittedly however, our cabin wasn't as nicely finished as this and had no slatting inside.

They had to board up the doors to keep bored teenagers from doing any damage to the already dilapidated and floorless post office. However, I'm skinny and got in through the little gap between the walls and the ground. 

And here's the windows to the school. I found it sad that the post office had lost it windows, when the school managed to keep the ones that were put in back in the seventies. I suppose some of the windows need a bit of repair since frost was forming between the panes. But they are just so lovely, and I can't imagine that it would look quite right if they were replaced.

I just have to wonder if the school's had a paint job in the last forty years...

It's kept locked most of the time, but I still remember the inside well enough from my childhood. I love the look of the whitewashed door against the untreated logs though. (We didn't have a whitewashed door to our old home, but the hinge was beautifully made and I loved it even better...)

I left the school feeling rather nostalgic for my own childhood, and the childhoods of those people who attended lessons in this schoolhouse, some of them I know, others will always just be the memory of the scratched initials in the trees or the out-house or the logs (if you know where to look.)