Pookie's Place, Part II

Today we continue the tour of Ms. Pookie's grandfather's place, led by Mathews Mark.

The superfluous commentary is provided by Chesapeake Bay Woman, free of charge, as an extra nuisance bonus.

From the main road, all you can see is the house and the old kitchen that I featured yesterday. Imagine my surprise when Mark said, "Wait, there's more back here." More? Back where? How could this be? You can't see anything more from the road.

This is where legal trespassing with someone in the know really pays off.

After plowing and clawing through a small jungle some overgrown shrubbery we made our way to another country yard. Angels started singing, Aaaaaaleluia!

There in all its weathered red paint glory, with the sun paying extra close attention, was the rooster house. Or the hen house. Mathews Mark called it the rooster house. Hen house sounds better to me, but no matter how you slice it we can all agree that it's a chicken coop male and/or female farm fowl lived here at some point.

Mathews Mark said that during his childhood in South Carolina, Pookie would bring the family here during the summers to visit with her grandfather. The kids would spend hours playing in this rooster/hen house. It's easy to see why adults like me children would want to play inside now, but if there were chickens or hens or roosters or whatever living inside, I'm not sure how much time I'd want to spend in there. Have you ever smelled a chicken coop rooster/hen house?

Regardless, this one smells good now.

Below is Mathews Mark relaying more critical information, probably about the outhouse that we were trying to locate to no avail. He's standing in the doorway of another structure, used primarily for storage, next to the hen/rooster house.

Ladies? If I haven't said so today, Mathews Mark is single and available, unless he's met someone I don't know about, which is entirely possible since all we were talking about is outhouses and rooster houses and chicken abodes that may or may not actually be hen houses.

Finally we went inside the main house. Although it's old and has seen better days, that house is solid as a rock.

As you walk in the front door, the first thing that greets you is this staircase, below. Tomorrow I'm going to post my two favorite pictures from inside this house, and they involve that staircase.

Currently the house's primary function aside from being beautiful is storage, and there were some fascinating relics hiding inside, like this great kitchen chair (below) vintage 1970. The chair stands out with its green white and yellow flowers in the middle of an otherwise plain brown room.

That seems to be the theme of my favorite photographs from this house: A vintage item with lots of color clings to some lasts breath of life in contrast to the surroundings which seem to have thrown in the towel.


And speaking of throwing in the towel, it looks like somebody threw in the broom. This is how my sweeping sessions usually end up too, complete with broken glass.

Yes, kids, this is what brooms looked like when your mother was growing up, back when the same traveling salesman also sold whisk brooms that we used to sweep out the car because there was no such thing as a mini-vac.

We have hardly skimmed the surface of everything I want to convey, and the best is yet to come. A loose agenda for the rest of the week is as follows:

Tomorrow - My two favorite pictures, taken from the top floor of the house.

Friday - We'll move down the road to Pookie's current house where she will regale us with some stories. We'll also begin taking a look at Chesapeake Bay Daughter's notes from our visit, which are very thorough.

Saturday - Who knows, it may be a continuation of Friday's stories, there really is so much to tell.

Sunday - Your guess is as good as mine. Pookie has another family dwelling she wants to talk about, and Mathews Mark has a friend with an old store loaded with antiques just ripe for photographing.

Or perhaps I'll finally get around to announcing the Name that Ghost winner that is two weeks overdue.

Nah, I'll save that for when I run out of things to say, which is why I held the contest to begin with another day.