Many years ago, my mother and father salvaged an old two-story farmhouse in an abandoned wheat field near Moses Lake. They used the wood to build a home in Cascade Valley. But one sunny Saturday in September, a horrifying event made them rethink the wisdom of reclaiming that decrepit homestead.
The house was stuck in the middle of an unshorn wheat field, sprinkled with sagebrush and black volcanic rock. Branches of two wiry, leafless trees pierced a cloudless sky. There was nothing else around for miles. The crumbling building had the look of a lonely, tattered child.
My brother Mike and I, at the ages of 8 and 10 years old, were enlisted to help. The sweet aroma of pungent weeds wafted into the bed of Dad’s pickup as he took the ruts and bumps at 40 miles an hour on the deserted road. Then we swished past the front-yard wildflowers that covered a buried gravel path to the open front door.
Glass shards hung in the window frames. A chimney of slate-gray stones was stuck together with crumbling mortar and a rusted storage shed leaned over precariously. The tin roof had gaping holes. The house was a true piece of Americana and soon to be demolished, if my mother and father had anything to do with it.
Were these people wheat farmers during the Great Depression? Did this family hastily abandon the place in quiet desperation? Where did they go?
Mike and I spent our morning pulling old rusty nails from the wall slats in one of the bedrooms on the second floor. A single metal bed frame with rusted springs was pushed against a bedroom wall near our working spot. A soiled quilt had been tossed there, its cotton batting bleeding out in huge, dirty clumps.
Then it was time for lunch. I had made sandwiches for all of us before the sun came up. My father insisted on laboring the minute he saw the light of day, so we were used to getting up and heading out at the crack of dawn to help our parents.
I had been looking forward to eating my own Wonder Bread roast beef sandwich. Apricot halves from one of Mom’s canning jars would be our dessert.
Dad was on the second floor of the farmhouse. Mike and I stood by the old pickup like dutiful wartime recruits waiting for our chow.
Mom pulled nails out of boards below, and yelled, “I’ll be right there. I’m almost done!”
Suddenly, the entire side wall of the farmhouse tumbled to the ground. The vibrations and cracking were deafening. A bunch of musty, dirty lumber was headed directly for my own dear mother. Dad yelled, “Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!,” for he knew that she was working directly beneath this wall.
The wall missed the truck and us, and neatly framed Mom in its door opening. It was a God-like, prayerful save.
Mom was sitting on the ground with her legs straight out. She stared at the side of the house that now had no wall. An invisible knife had sliced it, and I could see the innards of the rooms. It reminded me of my metal dollhouse at home, with its bedroom, front room and bathroom now open to the breeze.
Dad continued to screech on the second floor, and jumped down the dilapidated stairs to my startled mother, hopping several steps at a time. Mike and I screamed!
Dazed, Mom turned and gazed at us with a stunned, perplexed look. Her face was ashen, covered from the soot and dust of the fallen wall. Except for some bruises on her forehead and cheek, and a few superficial ones on her legs, she had no broken bones or other injuries, thank the Good Lord!
We stopped working for the day and drove home. I thought about what might have transpired if Mom had been killed. And how lucky we were that she was still with us. I’m sure each one of us was speculating about the same thing, including my mother. But no one spoke.
Mom went to her job at the National Bank of Commerce the following Monday. Her makeup didn’t completely cover the black-and-blue bruises on her face and she didn’t even attempt to conceal the marks on her legs. Her bank co-workers wanted to know if Dad had beaten her up.
“No,” she casually retorted. “Of course not. We were just tearing apart a house over the weekend and a wall fell on me.”
They looked at her incredulously, as she apprised them of the harrowing story of “The Wall That Fell Down.”
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