When home is chaos, books are calm. Your experience resonates because it is authentic to reality. My voracious reading habit mirrors yours, minus the many moves. Little did we know we were developing brain muscles that would be our salvation. No matter what you read, it’s worth the effort!
Same experience for me...my father, was also, a carpenter and a good one. He was the brother all his siblings called for building advice and remodeling. My home was chaotic due to my mom and I retreated into books big time. Every place we visited, I had no problem nosing out the 'library' and I am better off for it.
When you’ve got books, you are in another place; and you don’t see the holes in the wall or the sleeping drunk daddy snoring in the chair. My daddy never got around to fixing our house issues either. Thank God, my mama was a school teacher with a stable income.
What a great read! I loved the running theme of the status of holes in your life, of small pleasures mixed with larger chaos, and the constant of books in the constant mobility of settings.
I can definitely relate. I grew up in rural W. Kentucky. Mom married my step-dad when I was 12, and we couch surfed on various family members’ couches for about a year until he got a steady job. We moved into an old trailer at a KOA RV park that had rats underneath.
We finally “upgraded” to an old farmhouse that had been sitting empty and was in major need of repair. My stepdad made a deal with the realtor that we would do the work in exchange for a break on rent. The place had no insulation, and we quickly discovered it went through an entire $90 (in 1981) tank of propane in 1.5 days. I was sleeping under four blankets and my dog, and we had to keep the wood burning stove in the basement (that had a snake in it and I hate snakes) going 24/7. I can remember being outside in the snow at midnight helping my stepdad cut wood for the stove. Getting dressed in front of that open kitchen oven was a very real thing too. Our car heater didn’t work either. That was a really cold winter, and I looked forward to my warm weekend visits at my dad’s where his trailer and trucks had heat.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. These experiences definitely shaped us into the capable women that we are.
Since our house had both a living room stove and a kitchen range (were we rich, then? 🤔), the oven was certainly never opened except when something was going into or out of it. But every winter morning there was no heat in the house until the stove fire was lit, which Dad did (and then went back to bed for half an hour or so!). I used to rush out of our icy bedroom and dress in front of the stove, facing away from whoever was on the other side. Once my butt got a little too close...
Ouch! That farmhouse was the first time my “house” didn’t have wheels. Back then, all mobile homes came with the wheels attached. Now you have to rent them when you move it. lol
Poverty comes in many different guises 😏. In my case we just lived in the middle of nowhere; on my grandfather's homesteaded ranch in the SW CO mountains. My father was born there; my mother followed him from a childhood in Los Angeles(!). Imagine coming from what LA was in 1948 to a place with no neighbors for 20 miles, no utilities; mail twice a week. (The mail carrier would bring an order from the one grocery store in town - hey, we had DoorDash v.0.1!)... We finally got electricity when I was ten, and her parents came to live with us, bringing one of those travel trailers with them, where it became the guest bedroom.
I haven't written anything personal on my own Substack, but perhaps I should. It's a life that most Americans left more than fifty years before my time, but somehow there we were.
I love hearing the individual personal stories. It’s what makes us unique yet can also bring us together. My wife and I bought a small hobby farm ten years ago before I retired, and taking care of it is kinda my full-time job. We raise a big garden and have a small orchard. I’m just the manual labor for her designs. lol. We are trying to learn and stick to regenerative farming principles. We also raise dairy goats that we milk and make goat milk soap and cheese from. While I can milk by hand, I use a milking machine because trying to milk Nigerian Dwarfs with my big hands is a frustrating experience for all of us. We can produce and make jam and even sell chicken and duck eggs. I’m pretty handy with tools and can build things. Funny, but previous generations moved toward wanting things more convenient (moving off of farms, packaged foods, etc) and now some of us are going kind of backward on a couple of things like moving to farms or growing our own stuff using regenerative practices, canning food, making soap, etc. lol. I don’t see us giving up cell phones or cars any time soon, and I’d love to have a tractor. lol
I'm open! My starting point is somewhat in parallel with Jess: like her, I am an activist (of sorts), and the personal meshes to some extent with the professional. My focus till now has been advocacy of my novel and the themes that it embodies; I've tried to keep it limited to that. But the political situation today makes that path unrealistic. This morning I woke up quite angry about the personal threat that the "regime" poses for me, and noticed for the first time how much it is affecting my well-being. I can't keep it bottled up.
I promise to put a post about this on my Substack "soon". (I can't write things like that quickly - I have to revise anything I write a dozen times at least...) Please let me know what you think of it!
It’s one of my intentions for this year to write some stories. Although it’ll be more like writing down some of the stories, before they get forgotten.
What an engaging story and such great writing! I hope a book is on your to do list when you aren't desperately trying to save Missouri from itself. Hoping you had something more stable with your mom. Meanwhile, you are a great example of choosing to shape your own life as an adult.
Such a marvelous memory of your father. Thank you for telling it. My dad was an electrician, and I know exactly the situation you described. Everyone else’s house in my small town worked; ours? Not so much. 😁
My father was a TV repairman, and for two years in the mid to late 60’s, we had no television. That’s when I fell in love with Broadway music because of the albums in our home. Good trade off.
You were a strong, resilient kid. A survivor. And now a great writer and storyteller. We are lucky you love democracy and fight for it and us. Happy New Year.
Oh mine too! I am infuriated by that type of crime. They'll get pennies on the dollar for copper pipe but in doing so they have destroyed a house! And stealing someone's tools! My husband's a mechanic and I worry about the tools he doesn't keep at our house. I live in fear of their being stolen, not so much for the loss of revenue, but because he'd feel absolutely crushed.
My daddy was a farmer, and trespassers would come out to the farm, which was several miles from our house, and steal whatever they could carry. They often siphoned gas out of the tractors.
I love how you have caramelized those memories, some that likely did not feel as good at the time, yet are part of what makes you a powerful voice and advocate for people from rural America.
Also, I love the feral Gen X reference as it accurately describes what I have embraced a little too often! 🤣
It will be a great chapter to a future book of essays!
Put a foot note in for the oven being on in winter and the blue porch paint. The NYT bestseller list readers won’t automatically know.😉
I think developing the essay a bit about metaphors of working class’s homes with holes in wall might be neat.
It also might neat to talk about the ways those houses have influenced your own homes and decor and projects.
(Neat? Sorry for lame writing. Promise that I’d write all these comments for feedback in a purple pen and not red if I were your HS comp and Rhetoric teacher!)
The essay about your father dying a MAGA would be a great follow to this one. The former is one of my favorites of yours. Maybe repost it for those who haven't read it?
As a 70 yr old carpenter who still working I loved your story. Fortunately I met a woman with a good job late in life! Lots of us die with tool belts on.
Very interesting. Life is so full of people’s stories, and everyone has a story. People are complex, and life is complicated for many of us. I love the reference to the porch celing as “ haint blue.” There are houses in my town with the same porch ceiling, and since it is an old town in Maine, the housing stock is old with lots of front porches. Ah yes, Stephen King. I have read most of his books, but he is quite prolific. I have come across him twice. Seems to be an all right guy.
Wow! What a compelling narrative. It makes me think, among other things, how little we ever know about, or understand, our neighbors. Thanks. Much to think about.
Your story brought back memories of my childhood. My dad was a dry land farmer in west Texas who rented farm land which included old farm homes. We lived in houses with no running water, no electricity and no indoor plumbing. My parents had lost everything during the depression and were homeless with a baby boy (oldest brother) so they never bought anything on credit other than farm land. They had a good enough crop year in 1950 that they could afford to build a house, as long as it wasn’t over $5,000. We lived in the garage while my carpenter uncle and farmer neighbors with skills built our first home with all the fixings except whole house heating (propane space heaters). Multiple quilts and blankets kept us warm in the winter. We didn’t get to read much because there was always some kind of work that had to be done. There were six of us kids and we all turned out alright. Neighbors said that the reason why none of us ever got in trouble was because dad never gave us any free time to get in trouble.
When home is chaos, books are calm. Your experience resonates because it is authentic to reality. My voracious reading habit mirrors yours, minus the many moves. Little did we know we were developing brain muscles that would be our salvation. No matter what you read, it’s worth the effort!
Yes! I thought I was just eccentric, LOL!
Same experience for me...my father, was also, a carpenter and a good one. He was the brother all his siblings called for building advice and remodeling. My home was chaotic due to my mom and I retreated into books big time. Every place we visited, I had no problem nosing out the 'library' and I am better off for it.
My takeaway...when you've got books...it doesn't matter if there are holes in the wall.
Yes❤️
When you’ve got books, you are in another place; and you don’t see the holes in the wall or the sleeping drunk daddy snoring in the chair. My daddy never got around to fixing our house issues either. Thank God, my mama was a school teacher with a stable income.
What a great read! I loved the running theme of the status of holes in your life, of small pleasures mixed with larger chaos, and the constant of books in the constant mobility of settings.
Love your story. No wonder you have developed such a unique view of the world. Your experiences rival those related by John Steinbeck
Steinbeck on a good day might have come up with a story like that.
I can definitely relate. I grew up in rural W. Kentucky. Mom married my step-dad when I was 12, and we couch surfed on various family members’ couches for about a year until he got a steady job. We moved into an old trailer at a KOA RV park that had rats underneath.
We finally “upgraded” to an old farmhouse that had been sitting empty and was in major need of repair. My stepdad made a deal with the realtor that we would do the work in exchange for a break on rent. The place had no insulation, and we quickly discovered it went through an entire $90 (in 1981) tank of propane in 1.5 days. I was sleeping under four blankets and my dog, and we had to keep the wood burning stove in the basement (that had a snake in it and I hate snakes) going 24/7. I can remember being outside in the snow at midnight helping my stepdad cut wood for the stove. Getting dressed in front of that open kitchen oven was a very real thing too. Our car heater didn’t work either. That was a really cold winter, and I looked forward to my warm weekend visits at my dad’s where his trailer and trucks had heat.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. These experiences definitely shaped us into the capable women that we are.
Since our house had both a living room stove and a kitchen range (were we rich, then? 🤔), the oven was certainly never opened except when something was going into or out of it. But every winter morning there was no heat in the house until the stove fire was lit, which Dad did (and then went back to bed for half an hour or so!). I used to rush out of our icy bedroom and dress in front of the stove, facing away from whoever was on the other side. Once my butt got a little too close...
Ouch! That farmhouse was the first time my “house” didn’t have wheels. Back then, all mobile homes came with the wheels attached. Now you have to rent them when you move it. lol
Poverty comes in many different guises 😏. In my case we just lived in the middle of nowhere; on my grandfather's homesteaded ranch in the SW CO mountains. My father was born there; my mother followed him from a childhood in Los Angeles(!). Imagine coming from what LA was in 1948 to a place with no neighbors for 20 miles, no utilities; mail twice a week. (The mail carrier would bring an order from the one grocery store in town - hey, we had DoorDash v.0.1!)... We finally got electricity when I was ten, and her parents came to live with us, bringing one of those travel trailers with them, where it became the guest bedroom.
I haven't written anything personal on my own Substack, but perhaps I should. It's a life that most Americans left more than fifty years before my time, but somehow there we were.
I love hearing the individual personal stories. It’s what makes us unique yet can also bring us together. My wife and I bought a small hobby farm ten years ago before I retired, and taking care of it is kinda my full-time job. We raise a big garden and have a small orchard. I’m just the manual labor for her designs. lol. We are trying to learn and stick to regenerative farming principles. We also raise dairy goats that we milk and make goat milk soap and cheese from. While I can milk by hand, I use a milking machine because trying to milk Nigerian Dwarfs with my big hands is a frustrating experience for all of us. We can produce and make jam and even sell chicken and duck eggs. I’m pretty handy with tools and can build things. Funny, but previous generations moved toward wanting things more convenient (moving off of farms, packaged foods, etc) and now some of us are going kind of backward on a couple of things like moving to farms or growing our own stuff using regenerative practices, canning food, making soap, etc. lol. I don’t see us giving up cell phones or cars any time soon, and I’d love to have a tractor. lol
What I wanted to write - case of posting before finished writing - was a bit of encouragement: please do write some of your personal stories.
If there’s a few of us, maybe we can group them together? Maybe have a theme, which we can use as a starting point?
I'm open! My starting point is somewhat in parallel with Jess: like her, I am an activist (of sorts), and the personal meshes to some extent with the professional. My focus till now has been advocacy of my novel and the themes that it embodies; I've tried to keep it limited to that. But the political situation today makes that path unrealistic. This morning I woke up quite angry about the personal threat that the "regime" poses for me, and noticed for the first time how much it is affecting my well-being. I can't keep it bottled up.
I promise to put a post about this on my Substack "soon". (I can't write things like that quickly - I have to revise anything I write a dozen times at least...) Please let me know what you think of it!
It’s one of my intentions for this year to write some stories. Although it’ll be more like writing down some of the stories, before they get forgotten.
Same for me!
What an engaging story and such great writing! I hope a book is on your to do list when you aren't desperately trying to save Missouri from itself. Hoping you had something more stable with your mom. Meanwhile, you are a great example of choosing to shape your own life as an adult.
Such a marvelous memory of your father. Thank you for telling it. My dad was an electrician, and I know exactly the situation you described. Everyone else’s house in my small town worked; ours? Not so much. 😁
I feel that
Thank you, friend
There’s a saying: ‘cobbler’s children go unshod’.
Clearly a fairly widespread phenomenon …
Clearly!
My father was a TV repairman, and for two years in the mid to late 60’s, we had no television. That’s when I fell in love with Broadway music because of the albums in our home. Good trade off.
Very good!
My ex was a mechanic who rarely fixed my car and left many projects "almost finished".
Something about the cobbler's children all going barefoot....
You were a strong, resilient kid. A survivor. And now a great writer and storyteller. We are lucky you love democracy and fight for it and us. Happy New Year.
Thank you, friend
The cat’s hiss is my favorite part!!
My least fav part is imagining your dad’s horror discovering the stolen pipes and fridge. I hope he said a slew of curses mixed with colloquialisms.
Oh mine too! I am infuriated by that type of crime. They'll get pennies on the dollar for copper pipe but in doing so they have destroyed a house! And stealing someone's tools! My husband's a mechanic and I worry about the tools he doesn't keep at our house. I live in fear of their being stolen, not so much for the loss of revenue, but because he'd feel absolutely crushed.
My daddy was a farmer, and trespassers would come out to the farm, which was several miles from our house, and steal whatever they could carry. They often siphoned gas out of the tractors.
I love how you have caramelized those memories, some that likely did not feel as good at the time, yet are part of what makes you a powerful voice and advocate for people from rural America.
Also, I love the feral Gen X reference as it accurately describes what I have embraced a little too often! 🤣
‘Caramelized’ — just so — 🙂
It will be a great chapter to a future book of essays!
Put a foot note in for the oven being on in winter and the blue porch paint. The NYT bestseller list readers won’t automatically know.😉
I think developing the essay a bit about metaphors of working class’s homes with holes in wall might be neat.
It also might neat to talk about the ways those houses have influenced your own homes and decor and projects.
(Neat? Sorry for lame writing. Promise that I’d write all these comments for feedback in a purple pen and not red if I were your HS comp and Rhetoric teacher!)
❤️
The essay about your father dying a MAGA would be a great follow to this one. The former is one of my favorites of yours. Maybe repost it for those who haven't read it?
As a 70 yr old carpenter who still working I loved your story. Fortunately I met a woman with a good job late in life! Lots of us die with tool belts on.
Very interesting. Life is so full of people’s stories, and everyone has a story. People are complex, and life is complicated for many of us. I love the reference to the porch celing as “ haint blue.” There are houses in my town with the same porch ceiling, and since it is an old town in Maine, the housing stock is old with lots of front porches. Ah yes, Stephen King. I have read most of his books, but he is quite prolific. I have come across him twice. Seems to be an all right guy.
Wow! What a compelling narrative. It makes me think, among other things, how little we ever know about, or understand, our neighbors. Thanks. Much to think about.
So well told. A masterpiece in how to make the personal communal. Thank you.
Oh, what a beautiful sentence!
Your story brought back memories of my childhood. My dad was a dry land farmer in west Texas who rented farm land which included old farm homes. We lived in houses with no running water, no electricity and no indoor plumbing. My parents had lost everything during the depression and were homeless with a baby boy (oldest brother) so they never bought anything on credit other than farm land. They had a good enough crop year in 1950 that they could afford to build a house, as long as it wasn’t over $5,000. We lived in the garage while my carpenter uncle and farmer neighbors with skills built our first home with all the fixings except whole house heating (propane space heaters). Multiple quilts and blankets kept us warm in the winter. We didn’t get to read much because there was always some kind of work that had to be done. There were six of us kids and we all turned out alright. Neighbors said that the reason why none of us ever got in trouble was because dad never gave us any free time to get in trouble.