Last House on the Road: Excursions into a Rural Past (The Concord Library) - Hardcover

Jager, Ronald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807070629 ISBN 13: 9780807070628

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 1994

Synopsis

A celebration of the past and its links with the present chronicles the reclaiming of an abandoned eighteenth-century farmhouse in New Hampshire, as the house's history is uncovered and the connections between the routines of past and present become clear.

About this title

About the Author

Ronald Jager is a former professor of philosophy at Yale University.

Reviews

Beyond the abandoned farmhouse, the road petered into woods-just the place the author and his wife, Grace, were seeking. As they reclaimed the 200-year-old house in Washington, N.H., they felt a continuity with previous owners who had lived and farmed there. Here Jager (Eighty Acres: Elegy for a Family Farm) explores the landscape and the New England rural past. He restores the original hearthstone of his house, which was removed during late-19th century "improvements." He moves from past to present, with portraits of daily life in the town-a church fair, town meeting, presidential primary, deer hunting-and captures the essence of New England small-town life. Some chapters were originally published in Harper's, the New York Times, Country Life and other journals.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The reclamation of an 18th-century New Hampshire farmstead over the past 25 years provides an enchanting ``natural sequel'' to Eighty Acres, the author's popular 1990 memoir of growing up on a Michigan farm. Jager, a former Yale philosophy professor, and his wife bought the Cape Codstyle farmhouse and 100 acres near Washington, N.H., in 1966. Though they did not move in full-time until the late 1970s, renovation began almost immediately, as did Jager's research into the place and the surrounding community. They christened the spread ``Lovellwood,'' after the mountain that looms over the property. The house had been abandoned for years, and the woods were beginning to reclaim pastures and meadows, while some sections simply lay fallow. Jager learned that Ebenezer Wood, a Revolutionary War Minuteman, was the ``original settler'' on the place in 1780, or '81. When he began work on the interior, he discovered Wood's original framing--``built to last forever''--of pine, spruce, and hemlock beams, held together by oak treenails, or trunnels, as they were called. He exposed those beams, removing layers of wallpaper and cow-hair- and horsehair-bound plaster. Jager also discovered (while mowing the lawn) the original hearthstones Wood had chiseled from the local granite. They had been ``ditched'' by the Powers family, who'd bought the place in 1857, when they remodeled at the turn of the century. While the refurbishing of the house is the central topic, Jager also offers a look at contemporary country living and rural New England politics. He strings together several lovely natural history pieces, such as his eloquent proclamation on his love for the woods; his fond, reasoned farewell to deer hunting; and his cornucopian description of the forest's encroachment on a lush meadow he's trying to save. A joy: like getting a letter from a modern-day Thoreau, one who takes sensual pleasure in writing, and has his feet planted firmly on the soil. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In an increasingly popular essay formula, the writer places a particular thing in its contexts. In Verlyn Klinkenborg's most impressive The Last Fine Time (1992), all themes converged upon Klinkenborg's father-in-law's home in Buffalo, New York. For Jager, the convergence point is a "farmhouse, parked in the middle of a hundred acres, more or less, of retired farmland" in New Hampshire that he and his wife bought 30 years ago. Jager's scope is less ambitious than Klinkenborg's but by no means meager. He relays a great deal about American history; about New England, its differences from the Midwest, and its ecology, institutions (e.g., church fairs), architectural styles and construction techniques, and local politics; about desperately lost motorists; about the families who lived in the 200-year-old house; and about the topics of New England conversation. His book may not be as evocative as Klinkenborg's, yet Jager tells us exactly as much about the minutiae of his house as we want to know--indeed, much more than we might have thought we wanted to know before we picked up the book. He succeeds at encouraging us to believe that our own dwellings are as fascinating as the last house on the road. Roland Wulbert

Jager (Eighty Acres, Beacon, 1992) and his wife dreamed of finding an abandoned house and bringing it back to life. They found the answer to that dream in a late 18th-century farm house located at the "end of the road" in Washington, New Hampshire. When the Jagers purchased it in the 1960s, they became only the third family to reside there. Jager, a former professor of philosophy at Yale, writes about the history of the house and his growing feelings of connection with its past residents, the surrounding woods, and the citizens of Washington over the last 25 years. His philosophy background and interest in history is evident in his musings about such things as the original well in the house's cellar, the role of democracy in Washington's annual town meetings, and the relationship between humans and nature as reflected in his experiences with the house and surrounding countryside. A thoughtful book for general readers.
Linda McEwan, Elgin Community Coll., Ill.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807070629
• ISBN 13: 9780807070628
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 270