#36 - Out Back
There are two sides to most things, to stories for example. And then there are our houses, which generally have a front and a back to them. The front is just that - a front. Out front we prune the trees, mow the lawn and plant tulips to make an impression. But is it an honest one?
Out back of the house is where the real story is told. This is the place for secret goings-on, or if not secret, perhaps things best kept hidden. Just why this has to be is hard to tell, but it most likely has to do with the basic need for privacy most of us harbor. “Sneakiness” is a good word, so let’s call it that. Most of us have a streak of it, and out back is as good a place to be sneaky as any, because the house is between us and the rest of the world.
There are many things that convention dictates be hidden from view - the clothesline for example, and the junk pile of stuff heaved over the bank. Wood piles, compost heaps, tool sheds, these are things that are often prominent features in a typical backyard. And the all-important cultch pile, that mound of more or less weather resistant odds and ends that for the handy homeowner are too valuable to throw out because they might be useful sometime - such things as old tires, bricks, scraps of metal and chicken wire, defunct washing machines and the like. My cultch pile has saved me a lot of trips to the hardware store. I've seen cultch piles, though, that appear to have got quite out of hand, not only filling someone’s backyard but winding around to grace the front yard as well, leaving the meaning of “out back” open to interpretation – that, or maybe a very relaxed understanding of “things best kept hidden.”
The backyard of a new home starts simply enough, I suppose. As the family moves in, I can well imagine the mounting collection of crates and lawn furniture and maybe a rusted-out boat trailer that doesn't quite fit into the new setting. "Better put that stuff out back," someone says, and there you have it, a beginning. With time, a greasy old BBQ and a rickety swing set find their way out there too. Eventually, quite a lot’s happening out back. It's a multi-purpose space to keep all sorts of things - out of sight – and where they do things – out of sight – like sunbathing, splitting firewood, fixing up an old jalopy or hanging the deer they shot.
If you stop to think about it, some remarkable things have been loosed on the world from backyards. Take that tool shed, for instance, once it’s metamorphosed into a tinkerer’s workshop. Out through its hallowed doors over the years might emerge shortwave radios, airplanes and home-built boats that have sailed around the world. There have been writers and artists and scientists as well, even famous ones, who’ve made good use of that crummy, little building. All they needed was “four walls and a roof.”
Many childhoods have been spent largely in the backyard too. It is probably safe to assume that at least a few star athletes got their start on its worn turf. One of my favorite boyhood pastimes was building tree houses. They were not especially pretty to look at, bristling with scrap lumber and dangling rope ladders, so they were relegated to the backyard. Nevertheless, more than one of my old friends from those days found his way into the building trades in the years following. As for sandboxes, if the family cat had any manners, there was plenty of inspiration there to produce whole generations of earth-moving engineers.
I was rummaging around out back recently, looking for a piece of scrap iron, and as often happens, I found several items I didn't know I had. In fact, they were things laid there long before I arrived on the scene, an old enamel wash basin and some lead pipe. Pushed up by the frost, they were a sure reminder that years ago someone else had gone out back and tossed them over the stone wall.
In actuality, "out back" might not necessarily be out back at all, but rather the side yard or the dooryard or the barnyard. Wherever it is, it is that essential outdoor work and storage place peculiar to the human habitation, near at hand, yet out of the way. It’s generally strewn with all the trappings and clutter of everyday existence, and it is therefore a rich record of the goings-on of the time. A thousand years from now, perhaps after all surface evidence has been erased, archaeologists will be digging out back to find out who we were and what made us tick. We can only hope they find enough good stuff to make us seem interesting.