Mr. Hilden's Dream Castle
It's my grandmother's 101st birthday today. She's gone, but her stories and commitment to storytelling still animate my imagination.
She wrote letters one or more a week for her whole life. They weren't dull either. They were the meanderings of a brilliant mind looking forward, looking backward, weaving a meaningful life out of the past, the present the future, but also inviting us all into her vision of the world.
Here's one of my favorite letters she wrote. It's one of my favorites and I've posted it before but it never gets old.
How many of you have secretly longed to get away from it all? In fantasy you have even packed your bag, or was it just a red bandana on a stick that carried your toothbrush and one change of clothes? My sister, Anita, confesses she has sometimes thought of escaping to the deep woods of Drummond Island. In fact, she has at present a log cabin under construction on her own Homestead Acres, near the site where she was born.
Countless thousands of people have deserted family and friends arriving at an unknown destination where they begin life all over again under an unknown psudonym. Do they experience the same mistakes and failures that dogged their footsteps in their former life? Unknown multitudes remain faithful at their posts suppressing the recurring dream of what might have been.
In my childhood I knew several colorful characters who lived a hermit-like life. Victor Hilden was not exactly what you would call a hermit. Like Edgar Guest he lived in a house by the side of the road. People speculated about his past, but he kept it all a deep secret. Not only was he a friend to man, but he especially loved all children. He bore a remarkable resemblance to that other friend of children, St. Nicholas: a shock of snow white hair, a handlebar mustache, pink cheeks and a jolly laugh.
Mr. Hilden lived in a shack with no floor and only one room. During the winter the chickens lived inside with him and his horse, John, had an adjoining stable. You can well imagine what a fascinating place this was for the children who visited him! He would take them on a tour of a castle he was building in the woods, his future home – a castle with turrets and balconies and tricky scaffolding that was fun for climbing.
On cold winter days we would sometimes stop at Mr. Hilden’s to warm our hands since we still had almost a half mile to walk home. There was a shortage of chairs and so we sat on his bunk built into the wall. Knowing we were hungry, he would offer us some of his pancakes. They were not like crepe suzettes, but thick and heavy and rather unappetizing. With the chickens and the the earthen floor, the housekeeping was not very sanitary but little children graciously overlook such trifles.
Mr. Hilden never did get to finish his dream castle. During his last illness, my brother stayed with him and was rewarded by becoming the sole owner of John, the way-back, farm horse. We children tried riding him, but John was lazy. He would deliberately walk under a tree to try to brush us off his back with the branches. I wasn’t fond of riding after that but my sister Lily became quite a horse – woman. She had a riding horse of her own during some of the years she lived in Detroit. My husband once had his own riding boots that he wore in parades and cavalry exercises as a student at Michigan State University, in the Reserved Officer Training Corps. It was fun having John take us for sleigh rides, but we didn’t have a fancy cutter on our sleigh like this one in the picture.
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