The Brown Road Chronicles

Well, because Ralph Brown lived there of course.  We live in an area where we are surrounded by properties that are still actively farmed, and farmed by families that have been in the area for years.  Several of the roads around us are named after residents of the area, many of whom still live in the old homes that have housed generations of their families.  Heikes Road, Lowe Road, to name just a couple… and of course Brown Road.

Our old farm house has a different story.  She was built, we believe, roughly 120+ years ago around the early 1890’s.  From what I can tell the property was once part of a much larger parcel that at one point was cut down to just the three small acres we currently own.  Our house has also been the residence of many familes over the recent decades.  Quite some time ago I spent a  day at the county courthouse building doing a little research on the property transfers that our place had gone through.  We have lived there now for roughly 15-16 years and are the longest residents since the 1970’s.  I don’t have an answer to why that is, I can only speculate that circumstances for many of the families for many years forced the residents to move on.  The folks we purchased the home from back in 1995 claimed that they had seen and experienced several instances of a ghost in the home, an elderly woman dressed in late 1800’s, early 1900’s clothing and at least in one instance, sitting at their kitchen table.  They called her Maggie and although that could surely be a reason for high turnover of a property, we have never seen or met Maggie.  So I guess the 25 or so years of families moving in and out was just an anomoly in the 120+ years of our home’s existance!

But before all that, there was Ralph Brown.  I have done some research on our house and have dug up some interesting tidbits of it’s history.  But I have not been able to find any information on Mr. Brown!  I do know several neighbors that knew him and remember him, and clearly he and his family resided in our home long enough to have the road named after them!  He is also buried down the road in the local cemetery (see image below), but other than that my research on the family has dug up nothing of any significance.  I have asked all the neighbors if they have any old photographs of the Brown’s or photos of the home when they lived there, but have come up empty.  I do know they are not the family that built the home and there is a fascinating history of the family that came before the Brown’s, the folks that I believe built our home, which I will delve into in another post.

Rest in peace Mr. and Mrs. Brown

Until then, I still revel in the idea that we live on Brown Road, named after this elusive character named Ralph Brown.  As time permits, I’ll keep digging, trying to find some information about this fellow and his family who were the caretakers of our old home for so many years.  Now we are the caretakers and are making our own history.  Perhaps someday we’ll live there long enough that they change the road’s name to “Warner Road”!

Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don’t remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must have thought you’d always be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you’re nowhere to be found

Jackson Browne penned some of the most beautiful and profound lyrics ever written in the song For a Dancer, a song that he wrote about a dear friend of his who passed away too early in life, and a song that is not only a personal favorite of mine, but clearly a favorite of a large number of Jackson’s loyal fans.

 I don’t know what happens when people die
Can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It’s like a song I can hear playing right in my ear
That I can’t sing
I can’t help listening
And I can’t help feeling stupid standing ’round
Crying as they ease you down
’cause I know that you’d rather we were dancing
Dancing our sorrow away
(right on dancing)
No matter what fate chooses to play
(there’s nothing you can do about it anyway)

As you get older in life, unfortunately, you are forced to think more and more about the cycle of life and death and where you currently reside in that process.  As parents and the older generations of your family move on, you seemingly get closer and closer to the roots (or leaves depending on how you draw it) of your family tree.  I don’t particularly like that!  It’s comforting to me to have that umbrella of older more experienced folks hovering over me, even if they are not really significantly involved in my day-to-day life anymore.

 Just do the steps that you’ve been shown
By everyone you’ve ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours
Another’s steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone

I read a beautiful tribute today to a passed loved one, written by a friend of mine, Chris, and posted on Facebook.  In this tribute Chris speaks of an older brother, Jay, who was lost to a freak traffic accident twenty-five years ago.  Chris’ brother was only 22 years old at the time.  One can only imagine how devastating that must be to a family to lose someone in the prime of their life, but Chris talked about memories and keeping his brother’s spirit alive.  Chris also talked about hearing the lyrics from a John Mayer song for the first time on the most recent anniversary of his brother’s death:

“When you’re dreaming with a broken heart, then waking up can be the hardest part.”

Chris says, “Dreams about Jay are treasured.  And like the song says, when they happen, waking up is the hardest part.  For each time I dreamed about him, I never wanted it to end.”

I understand that feeling.

I lost my mother to cancer in 2002 when she was only sixty years young.  A brutally aggressive brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme, had taken her from us just seven months and two brain surgeries after her initial diagnosis.  We held a nice reception at the Swan Hotel Bar in Lambertville, New Jersey, after her funeral services and in good family fashion had a lot of fun, a few too many drinks and for a short time we were able to forget about the ceremony we had all just cried through.  Towards the end of the reception I remember standing outside the bar with a few of us and a close family friend, Jon, talked about dreams he would have about his mother, who had passed several years earlier, and how those dreams always seemed to correspond with something that was going on in his life at the time.

 Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
(the world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

I dreamed about my Mom a lot after her passing.  Although I am not a spiritual person, I always believed that was her way of trying to communicate with me and let me know everything was going to be okay.  When I had problems or stressors in my life I would have dreams that included my Mom that would somehow help me find the answers to whatever was plaguing me.  Like Chris, I treasured those dreams.  It was so real at the time and I too never wanted it to end.  Of course they always do, and waking up I would always crave the memories and try to piece together the scattered images that quickly fade when one wakes from a deep sleep.

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
But you’ll never know 

I see Mom in my dreams much less frequently anymore.  That makes me sad, but one cannot control what goes on in one’s mind when the lights are out and the REM sleep takes over.  Although I have lots of photographs of my Mom to remind me how she looked, I have a hard time now remembering what her voice sounded like.  It’s all just a function of time, of course.  As another close friend said to me around the time of my Mom’s death, “it gets easier every day.”  I hate to think it gets easier because it makes me think I am forgetting, but in reality it does.  I believe our loved ones (especially my Mom) wouldn’t want us sitting around mourning them for eternity.  They would want us to keep them alive in spirit and in memories and in photographs, but they would also want us to move on, to continue enjoying our beautiful lives and to make the most of every living day, both when we are awake… and in our dreams.