Linda Rochester writes about her life in Clay County, Alabama

Linda Rochester - A Love Affair with Place: An excerpt from her story Gnostic Nightmare - Spook House

The Pace House in Ashland, AL

The house is old-one of the oldest still standing in Clay County. They say it was a school house-that it was standing before the Civil War. There is evidence of this fact even though the Clay County history books don't recall the fact. Cleve Pace found a blackboard in the one closet in the house over a century later. Lena Mae, a niece, remembers being told that all of the schools were sold after the Civil War because there was no money to run them. Who bought the house? Dredzile Pace died in 1853 so it couldn't have been him. Was it Grandpa? Or did Melita buy it? If Melita bought the house then who would she have bought it from? Ashland wasn't a town before the war, and Clay County wasn't a county-that didn't happen until 1866. Clay County was formed out of the shoulder of Talladega, the feet of Cleburn, and the side of Randolph. We know of course that the Pace's were here when Clay became a County, maybe that's why Melita saved the tax assessment from 1867. Anyway, if the Pace house was a school before the Civil War, the house came first, then the Paces, the churches, the County, and the Courthouse. What we know for sure is that the Paces were present at the dawn of a new era in their new a new dwelling that looked old when it was new. The house is situated within easy walking distance of the town square when it was finally built. Most of the Paces settled around the house and when they died they relocated to the City Cemetery until finally, the house was all that was left.

A house has a time making it beyond its day for one reason or another. Fire, storms, neglect, and the wrecking bar: a house has to be sturdy to survive over a hundred years since there's always something waiting to take a house down. The Pace house is still standing and that's because it was a hardy house: a house with a history.

Toy Ballard remembers the house as it was in the early 1900's. "The house had only two rooms back then. There was no porch, no kitchen, and no back rooms. The front of the house is just the same as it always was. The bedrooms upstairs were added after the house was built in the space between the roof and the floor. It was a tall house so that the heat could rise in the winter time." Toy said. "Never had a coat of paint. The porch was added when I was a little boy. All of them sat out on that porch in the evenings. I'll sure never forget that."

I saw the same house nearly forty years after Toy first laid eyes on it, except that it had additions by then. A number of rooms went along the front and an equal number stretched across the back. There was an upstairs with some bedrooms for all the children--boys on the left and girls on the right-- and a kitchen had been added on off the back stoop. The additions look tacked on, but even the additions look ancient. The house wasn't a nice house, but somehow it didn't seem to be a shack either. It didn't look like a sad house or even a happy one. It really looked like it belonged to another world. The front porch was the distinctive quality of the house, if it had one. The porch stretched from one corner of the house to the other and a long row of rockers lined it like the benches in the Courthouse. Ghosts rocked in the chairs by the time I came along. Only Aunt Lena and Aunt Rosie were left by then. The house was sold after they died.

There is something strange about the house even now. It stands on the edge of town for everyone to see, though no one notices it. Like Pace's lake.

The lake just disappeared into thin air when it closed. Everyone around Ashland had memories of the lake when the Paces ran it, and now in spite of the fact that it sits in the same spot, it has been swallowed up by the kudzoo, or the weeds, or the trees.

The house, like the lake sits there, in full sight, yet gone to the eye. Snuffed out by a world that doesn't know to look for it.

From "Gnostic Nightmare", 2004

Photographs © 2009 Jennifer Alam