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Who knew such a small, humble structure could cause so many headaches?
Photo: Kristin Catherwood |
When it came time to choose which buildings we wanted to
measure, I originally had my heart set on documenting one of the fishing boats
used in Keels. When that was no longer possible, I decided I wanted to measure
a root cellar. Another student wanted to do the root cellar as well, and it
came down to a knock-down, drag-out, nail-biter of a draw. I drew #1 out of the hat, while the other
student who wanted to measure root cellars got #2. I carried my sense of
victory around for the next day or so, until we arrived at the cellar in
question and I realised what a nightmare it was going to be to measure. I had
thought measuring individual 2X4 studs in stores was bad, but that was a walk
in the park compared to trying to figure out how to accurately measure a building
which is composed in large part of a big pile of dirt overgrown with grass and
trees enclosed by four uneven walls of vertical boards.
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| Me, in a posture of defeat while trying to draw the cellar. Photo: Edward Millar |
Thankfully, my teammates, Erin and Ed, knew what they were
doing, because I certainly didn’t. Perched on a board wrapped in an old potato
sack atop a prickly juniper bush, I had never felt like a bigger loser as I
tried to do basic math to figure out how to get the lines to meet on the
drawing board. I was definitely regretting that #1 I picked out of the hat by
the end of the day. However, several frustrating hours later, I had a drawing
of a root cellar, and it even looked semi-presentable. Despite the difficulty
of documenting the building, I am now very glad that I did get the chance to do
it. I was finding measuring buildings the most challenging aspect of the field
school so far, and I still don’t feel like a “natural” by any means, but after
the crash course presented by the root cellar, I feel much more confident about
my ability to measure buildings, so much so that I’m considering writing my
thesis on a topic that would include a lot of measuring of difficult buildings.
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| The final result. Photo: Kristin Catherwood |
And through all the frustration, I had a lot of fun working
with Ed and Erin, and I can only hope they did, too. With a bit of good humour
and an acceptance of less-than-comfortable working conditions, spending the day
outside measuring an old building is actually a wonderful way to learn, all the
while doing the important work of documenting a historical artifact.
I also feel that the root cellar, by definition a humble
building, is an archetypal example of vernacular architecture. We have been
learning here in Keels the importance of vernacular architecture in that it
reveals much about a culture’s ideals, beliefs, means, and desires at a given
time. Dr. Pocius refers to vernacular buildings as “fossilized thoughts.” Root
cellars are buildings that hold the produce necessary to feed a family through
the winter. If one digs a little deeper, more questions are raised. Why was
this root cellar built above ground, while others were subterranean? What kind of vegetables did it hold? Where
did the vegetables come from? If grown locally, who did the gardening, and
where? Why aren’t there many gardens around anymore?
In a way, “rooting around” in a root cellar is a sort of
metaphor for fieldwork in Folklore. We dig around in unexpected places. People
may wonder why we’re so interested in that old fish store, or that house which
is "just an ordinary house". But we want to dig deeper, to show that “old things”
and “ordinary things” are very important, that they tell us a great deal about
a certain place, a certain time, a certain way of living. They tell us about
people, and what was important to them. And after a bit of rooting around, it’s
inevitable that we can find something extraordinary.
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From the road, one would have no idea that such an extraordinary structure exists in this grassy hollow. This root cellar, built by the Fitzgerald family more than a century ago, evokes a sense of the medieval in modern Keels.
Photo: Kristin Catherwood |
