Heart House

This is the Heart House of Valley Mission Road, near Lake Monroe in south-central Indiana.

I snapped these photos on April 22, 1994. It was early enough in the spring that you could still see through the woods, before Indiana's verdant undergrowth took over.

I started calling it the Heart House the first time I saw it. I know it's difficult to see in this photo, but if you look closely, you can see some gingerbread decoration running along the peak of the roof. Those are tiny hearts punched out of metal, and they extend all the way along the roof.

The first time I saw the house was when I was about 8 years old, probably the summer of 1977. It was on a large tract of 100+ acres that adjoined our own 20 acres. We used to saddle up the horses and go riding there. My dad told me about an old abandoned house that had hearts along the roof, and my child's imagination immediately fired up. I couldn't wait to see it!

Of course, being a kid, it became a favorite stop on our weekend horseback rides. I remember that the house only had three rooms. It must have been built around the turn of the century, surely no later than the 1920's. It didn't have indoor plumbing, that's for sure. It didn't have a proper second floor, but there was a wooden ladder thing built inside that led to a big, dark, rectangular hole in the ceiling. I have no idea if it was just an attic, or maybe sleeping rooms. I remember that one room in the back had been swept clean, and a small table with a couple of chairs were set up. Dad speculated that perhaps transients occasionally camped there.

Another room I remember was what I thought of as the "newspaper room". One room of the house was completely littered with ancient newspapers...not just random pages, but entire newspapers, most still folded up. I snagged one once...I really wish I could remember the year on it. I want to say the 1940s, but I am not sure. I probably still have it packed away somewhere. This is a pic of the newspaper room...the papers were in much worse condition in 1994 than the were in 1977. The ladder to the ceiling hole is in the right side of the photo.

In 1994, I decided to hike back to the abandoned home, to see if it was still there, to see if I would still be able to find it after so many years. It was a special place to me, full of mystery (Who had lived there? Where did they go? What were their lives like?) and cherished memories of summer horseback rides with my mom and dad. I wanted to reconnect with a part of my childhood.

My dog, Sunday, and I parked the truck at the side of the road, and equipped with my point-and-shoot 35mm camera, started off into the woods. I remembered roughly how far back it was, and that you had to turn right off the main trail. I spotted an unusually-shaped tree that I remembered as a landmark from childhood and headed toward it. After about an hour, I still hadn't found the house.

About that time, an older gentleman appeared silently out of the woods. He was probably in his early seventies. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, and faded overalls. He carried a cloth sack in one hand. He called out a halloo, and asked me if I was lost. I told him that I was looking for the abandoned farmhouse.

"Oh, I can show you where it is. It's just right over there," he said, gesturing with his cloth sack. He started off through the woods, and I followed him. I'd literally been within a stone's throw distance, and just hadn't been able to see it through all the saplings that had sprouted up around it over the last 17 years.

The gentleman told me that the people that lived there had raised hogs, and he showed me the ancient remains of the pig pens, which were really just rotted boards barely visible under the dead leaves on the ground. Apparently he had known the family when he was a little boy.

I explained to him who I was, that I had lived on the property bordering this place in a log home my parents had built. His eyes lit up and he said, "Oh, I remember your dad! David was his name?" and I felt quite pleased that he still remembered dad after all those years. He told me what a fine person dad was, which I thought was pretty nice.

I asked him what was in the cloth sack, and he told me that he was out collecting Morel mushrooms. These are a popular delicacy in Indiana (and several other places as well).

After a bit more friendly conversation, the gentleman sort of just silently and mysteriously melted back into the woods. Literally, he was there one moment, and then he was gone...it was a bit spooky. I was grateful to him for helping me find the house, and for his friendly words about my dad. I wished him happy mushroom hunting.

This is where you accessed the trail back to the Heart House from Valley Mission Road. If you were to see this entrance today, you wouldn't recognize it from this photo. It's been turned into a gated community for the obscenely wealthy, divided up and covered in McMansions. The beauty and wildness of the place has been destroyed, paved over and manicured into golf-courses and pristine lawns in front of unaffordable homes.

The Heart House is long gone. I still don't know much more about it than I did when I was 8 years old. I am so glad that I took the time to hike out there and snap a few photos of it. At least there is some kind of record of it, and even if no one else remembers it, I do. I still wonder who built it, who lived there, what they did. How long did they live in their little home in the woods?

The Heart House will always have a special place...in my heart.

P.