When we entered the house proper, we were confronted by a large dark wooden staircase. Beautiful mahogany paneling lined the staircase walls. To left was small a bar, with actual bottles of liquor still there on the shelves which framed a mirror.
Everything was grey with dust and cobwebs. There was furniture in two parlors, on the right and left, ineffectually protected by moth-eaten dusty sheets.
We walked down a hallway to the left of the stairwell and came to a large kitchen.
There was a gigantic black cast iron stove. There was a large pantry with mason jars of canned goods still there. There were plates left on the large table. Dried vegetables and pork chop bones on the plates were covered with dust. There were mouse tracks in the dust as well as droppings.
We were becoming increasingly frightened by this time as the sun was rapidly sinking. We investigated exiting via the back door of the kitchen, but the back porch had totally rotted off into a pile of grey soft boards seemingly bristled with rusty nails.
There was broken window glass and stones from the porch’s foundation. All of this was about 10 feet below the door as the land in back of the house was lower than in front.
We exited the front door. We never went up the stairs. We hustled back the half mile or so back to the game which had just ended.
I remember going back to the mansion a couple of times during the next few years. There was a collapsing barn in the back, a completely rusted tractor with an equally rusted plow (or some such implement) still attached in the middle of the field. To the right of the mansion, there was a small house of newer construction with windows broken out and a large pine branch crushing part of the roof.
The mansion now had broken windows with smashed furniture and broken glass littering the ground. It had become a hazard. It was burned down sometime in the early 60s.
About 2005 I took a walk to where the mansion used to be. A forest of pine trees took the place of lawns and fields. After much searching, I located the remains of a stone foundation where the mansion used to stand. Very little else remained to validate my memory.
