This photo essay is the first of what we hope will be a regular posting on MidLifeBloggers: contributions from MidLifeBloggers who are visual artists.
by Onedia Sylvest of Onedia in the Ozarks
My husband was clearing of dead undergrowth and life-sucking vines the acre-and-a-half woods we recently acquired next to our house . We discovered an abandoned house there. A few people have told us that it probably dates from the days of the construction of the Bull Shoals Dam, in Arkansas, begun after World War II. Many of the workers lived in small houses with their families in what was then called Newton Flats, above the wild White River. We imagined this was such a house. All that remains is the foundation and concrete block walls.
How delighted we were when members of the local Historical Society stopped by, asking to look in our woods. They were in search of a structure that had once been in the vicinity of our woods. We thought they could tell us about the family who had lived our abandoned house.
How we laughed to discover instead that it had been the post-war Veterans Club, where the vets gathered to drink the beer and whiskey that was illegal except in private clubs in our dry county . I was so pleased that the Historical Society recorded both the location and the passing of this place, so that it and the men who gathered here will not be forgotten.
