I have long looked for photos of a house my family lived in when I was growing up. It lingers in my memory as my favorite of all our homes (there were many: Army family), and that’s why I used it as the model for the Boone home in A Coventry Christmas.
While going through some of my mother’s photos, I found two of the house. The summer shot was taken using a Polaroid Swinger–after the picture developed, it had to be coated with some kind of protective liquid film. (Shut up; I’m 35.) Either too much of the liquid or not enough of the liquid apparently yellowed the picture over time.
The winter shot, taken with a mystery camera, is better, but I apologize in advance to my readers who are snow-weary.
The house was two stories, though we only used the first floor, and there was a basement that I never even saw. (I don’t like dark, damp underground places.) The rocks were hand-picked from fields by the original owner (a dentist) and his hired man. The dental office, also covered with rocks, was to the left as you faced the house. I believe his son, who leased us the house, was either a dentist or a doctor, but the dental practice had long been closed by the time we moved in, though all the old dental instruments were still inside. (We managed to find keys to take us inside many of the forbidden places on the property.)
There was a lot of acreage, much of it forested or overgrown, and it was heaven for a child to explore. Hummingbirds hovered outside my bedroom window. Bees hummed inside the walls in the back of the house. We even had a friendly ghost (and maybe an unfriendly one, too, which made my sister not quite as fond of the house as I was).
Anyway, I changed the Boone property into a veterinary practice, leveled the trees (sorry, Todd) for the clinic and large animal treatment facilities, and made it all several decades older. The Boone house will always exist within the pages of my novel. The real house was torn down, the trees felled, the many flowering shrubs and wildflowers vanquished, and a Quincy’s steakhouse built on the property. Now there’s a motel on the site–my sister and I stayed there a few years ago and THEY, unlike the upscale hotels that house me in larger cities, HAD FREE INTERNET.
I’d rather the house was still there…
Military families are such an interesting subculture, and I love reading stuff about it. That Jim Morrison biography No One Gets Out of Here Alive had an interesting discussion about how children of military parents grow up differently in terms of leading a more nomadic existence and one of their parents being gone sometimes for extended periods and what affect this has on them. On a related note, have you ever read Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini?
That sounds like it was a really neat house, especially for a kid. Can you give any details about the ghosts?
Oh, yes, I have read The Great Santini, as well as seen the movie (which Tim HATED) with Robert Duvall and my greatly loved Blythe Danner (who was also in another movie based on a Conroy novel, The Prince of Tides).
Very much of the movie rang true, but I have to say that I lucked out. My father was NOTHING like Bull Meecham, who was based on Conroy’s father.
As for the ghosts, I’ll save them for some future post. =)
What a great old house
It was. Houses remain important to me, I think very much because of this one.
I prefer the winter shot. The house looks taller and grander, for some reason. It must be so weird, to stay in a motel where your house once was.
One of these days, when I’ve got the cash, I’m going to do an overnight in my hometown and take a photo of the house where I was born. I fantasize about knocking on the door and showing the current residents photos of me as a kid in front of, and inside, the house, proving I used to live there, and asking if I can come in and see it from my new height of 5’10”. : )
You are stronger than me. It always breaks my heart to go back to places. They are so changed. I am so changed.
I seem to have trouble with change, huh?
You and me, both. Except my problem is I can’t spare any, right now. Eh-har-har!
But, yeah… I haven’t seen the inside of it since I was a 7-year-old. Maybe I’m better off having it in my head/heart. : )
That’s really cool the way you were able to change it for your book. I was wondering if the loft in the guy’s cabin (can’t remember his name but I’m sure you’ll know the one!) was based on Todd’s? As I was reading the book I though, hey I’ve heard of a cabin with a loft just like that one. 🙂
And guess what? I’m 35 also!!
I’m trying to remember if I knew about Todd’s cabin already when I was writing ACC. My mental image of Grayson’s cabin doesn’t match the photos I’ve seen of Todd’s cabin. However, I knew Todd lived in a cabin long before I saw the photos, so Grayson’s could have been a little like my imaginary pictures of Todd’s place.
Hard to say after all this time; about ten percent of reality gets mixed in with about ten percent of other art, added to about eighty percent sheer imagination–by the time it’s all blended, I’m not sure what came from where.
This uncertainty is true especially when one has turned 35 many times (hopefully, you’re on your first!).
Interesting how ideas all get mixed up into a story, it’s really very cool. I’ve been saving the last bit of ACC for my bus trips home from the city from uni, just one a week. It’s kind of a long and sometimes lonely trip, but when I get on the bus and open ACC it’s as if my friends are waiting for me.
And sadly I’m not on my first lap of being 35, something more like 6, but who’s counting?
but who’s counting?
Certainly not me!
such a cute little house! old pictures just add to the charm of it all. 🙂
i anxiously await the ghost post!
Uh-oh–sounds like a new Weekly Feature someone should do: “Ghost Post: Relate a True Life Ghost Story That Happened to You.”
oohhhh
complete with creepy background music while you’re reading!
I know that feeling. Or at least I remember it when I went to see my parents old farm house in North Carolina and found it in ruins with a dead possum in the road in front. It killed me. But the memories…I moved around a lot, too, as a child, so I have memories in several houses, but this one, this one was for change and hope. They had cows. They had a huge garden. My mother canned things there.
If I ever write a novel, I am sure I would use our old house. It’s so much a part of me.
I love these photos. The post really made me think of home, when I was growing up, too. Thank you for that. It’s a good feeling that goes well with my coffee.
OMG, I love that home! I’m a sucker for stone exteriors. This one, though, is almost castle-like.
My parents still live in the house I grew up in. They are the original owners of the 1959 home. I can trace my life by various changes and upgrades they’ve made.
The bushes along one side of the house were planted when I was in elementary school. We kids could run zig-zag patterns down the line of them. One of those bushes served as first base in kickball. Now? They are a single hedge.
The best climbing tree in the world was in our backyard. It had to be cut down when I was in college. I may have cried at the time, as I remembered it as my only escape from my brother when he wanted to torment me. The tree they planted to replace it is only now big enough to climb. And I want to.
When my folks eventually move, I will cry. I can’t imagine anyone else in my house.
I envy you a little. I can only imagine having a house with a lifetime of memories dating from childhood. I think that’s why I put houses like that in fiction–to try to give myself that thing I missed out on.
Although there are definitely advantages to moving around, too. And I do have great memories of being a little girl at my grandfather’s with him and–yes, Mark!–Jane Jane.
You and I are both fortunate in that we remember happy childhoods. Imagine living in the same house all your life and looking back at it with only misery.
and–yes, Mark!–Jane Jane.
Oh, but you pain me. I still can’t believe my epic poem Jane-Jane’s Hand won’t see publication, since you preempted its title.
What you and your literary cronies don’t suspect, though, is my newest pulp fiction bestseller, Tom, Mendocino Redwoods, is hitting drugstore counters, soon…. Wait, hold on, somebody’s tapping my shoulder….
Okay, nevermind. Damn you.
P.S. Happy birthday, Becky. Are you taking Hump Day Happy off, in honor? : )
Yes. I hope the world is still happy, or as happy as it can be without one of 14,000 things to be happy about.
You crack me up.
Oh, wow — how could you not draw inspiration from that property? It sounds absolutely idyllic!
Isn’t it gratifying to think that you can give those kinds of experiences and memories to your childREN? (I’m happy about your news.) One day, they’ll be blogging about their childhood home. =)
it was so pretty. It’s gone? How sad. Really, really…
How was your birthday?
My birthday… Enh. The good parts: Tom, Tim, Lynne, Rhonda, Lindsey. Also cards and flowers and calls from friends and family.
But it’s kind of hard to feel celebratory. I’m flat. I think I need Hibiscus to come and do an aura fluffing.
Um. I’m pretty sure that courtyard (pool behind Tim?), is in the hotel where Rhonda and I stayed when we kidnapped our other Becky for a weekend in NOLA. LOVED that hotel. 🙂
Hello
I’m new here, just wanted to say hello and introduce myself.
Re: Hello
Hello, and you’re always welcome here. =)