Grandma and Granddad have passed on, but Laura's mom and her three brothers have hung on to the old family home and the twenty acres of mountain land it sits on. The simple house contains three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a genuine parlor. The latter is kept neat as a pin and appears to be used mainly for company (which we are not). The one small bathroom created an intricate logistical dance among four adults and visitors. During our stay, we learned to cope.
The original house is old. Signs of nineteenth-century construction methods can be seen. These ceiling boards show tool marks from a scrub plane. The boards were cut from trees felled on the homesite and flattened using the gently curved plane blade. The work must have taken many hours and a lot of sweat.
The family calls this log shed the Apple House. The old orchard at the front of the main house suggests it was used to store fruit.
The Apple House is actually a small log cabin. Log ends are locked together using a triangular notch. I suspect this approach is easier (but less stable) than cutting the usual rectangular notches.
Above right, grooves in the sides of the logs give convincing evidence they were squared with a broadaxe—a tool generally seen only in antique shops.
On the inside of the Apple House, mud chinking between the logs can be seen. Built by Laura's great-grandfather, the family claims his thumbprints can still be seen pressed into the mud.
Living in old houses is one thing: my former home on Aldama in San Miguel dates from the mid-eighteenth century—far older than this mountain home. But what makes this place special is that it has been occupied by the same family ever since it was built over a hundred years ago. To its owners, its history has more significance than any colonial Mexican mansion could possibly have for Johnny-come-lately expat newcomers.
Laura's mom, her uncles and cousins and their families all crowded into the old house. We had to take turns sitting, the place is so small. We cooked a country ham. We harvested last-of-the-season squash and potatoes from the garden and ate those too. We found enough windfall apples and pears to make a pie. One of Laura's uncles picked guitar and sang. And in this way, we continued the chain of life that has come down through the generations in this old family home.
Yes, a very special place.
Several years ago I observed the construction of an adobe house in the mountains of Michoacan. The workers use an axe, and a carpenter's adze to square the support and ceiling beams.
Posted by: Glenn | 10/21/2009 at 04:58 PM