EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2015.
When you’re driving toward downtown Mansfield on Lexington Avenue and get stopped at that light where it meets South Main, and you’re casting your gaze idly around the intersection waiting for traffic to resume, this is the old house that will catch your attention.
She’s rough, she’s seen some years, but what a classic beauty. In 1894 when they took a picture of this house for the Richland County Atlas it was the Danforth home, with a priceless view out over the entire city to the fields beyond.
Sometimes when I walk into a grocery and, going down an aisle, I pass an old woman bent with great age—perhaps a little disheveled, part of her hair loose, maybe dropping things because she shakes—but with her head held erect and proud even as she totters along unsteadily. It is obvious that life and age have worn away her looks and humiliated her, but just from her bearing, her manner, it is easy to see the beauty she once had outside has migrated to the inside of her. The core of her, the essence of who she has always been still shines through the pathos with great dignity.
That is what I think of every time I look at this old house.
