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Edward and his big red ball in the back yard!
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It's fully summer by May in California.
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Edward and his daddy were playing "Splash daddy, and Daddy returns fire
with the Super-Soaker."
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Towards the end of May, the boys kicked me out of the house for a while and
I went to visit Catness in
Boston.
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Among other things, she and I went up to meet up with my parents at my
childhood home in Washington, New Hampshire. This is a picture of the
center of Washington: at left, the church; the school in the middle; and
the town hall on the right. The road is the main drag through town, Route
31.
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This is the heart of downtown Washington: the first town incorporated in
the name of George Washington, birthplace of the Seventh-Day Adventist
Church. There is a bit more to Washington than you see here. Behind me as I
took this picture was what used to be the post office (they've built a new
one now, a half-mile down the road, or so), and the general store (which
used to be the Gaskell's store, but the Gaskells sold it a while back to
some people from out of town.
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Most people who live in Washington, the summer people included, live on one
of the several roads that go out into the woods from the center of town.
My great-grandmother owned a lot of land out by Millen Lake, and when I was
very small (heck, maybe it was even before I was born) she unburdened
herself of it, giving a large part to the park service and five-acre
parcels to all her kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, and the like.
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When I was four years old, my family started building this house on my
mother's land in Washington. What you're looking at in this picture is
really mostly the addition, built several years later. The original house,
on the right, was something like 40 feet square with a loft half that size.
The addition is much larger than the house.
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Here's my mom standing in the kitchen, which is in the addition. The window
over the sink has a scenic vista.
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And this is the other half of the kitchen!
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We always had a big old wood cookstove here. The house had only woodstoves
for heat. There was a tight, long-burning one in the original part of the
house, and in the basement below the addition, a great big stove that threw
a lot of heat. I remember one winter I spent sitting in a rocking chair in
the basement, next to that stove. We spent Christmas there by that stove
once, it was something like 40 below zero Fahrenheit. Cold. There was
probably four feet of snow outside, too.
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For a long time this wall was open, just the studs alongside the stairs.
One day the rest of us were all gone all day, went to Boston or something,
and when we came home my mother had closed up the wall, and put the
diagonally-paneled wall up. Behind that wall are the stairs to the
basement, and the door you can see is the main point of entry for the
house. It's really the back door, however -- the front door goes out onto
the deck which also adjoins the dining area by the kitchen. Or that's how
it ought to be, anyway.
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The main entry area. In between my parents is the wide doorway to the
original part of the house. That used to be a structural exterior wall for
the original house. Well, it still is, it's just there's that big doorway
in it. You can see where the diagonal brace is still there. Good for
whacking your head on if you're a grownup.
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This is what you see standing in that wide doorway. Directly above this
space is the loft which was the sleeping area for all of us at first, and
then later, the room that my sister and I shared.
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The house was never this tidy when I was a kid. Now that I'm a parent I
know why that is.
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This is the other half of the original house's first floor. The
diamond-paned windows are really pretty. If my memory serves me at all, my
father salvaged those with my mom's uncle Jimmy, from a building which was
being demolished.
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Looking from the old house out toward the new, at the main door that goes
to the shed. That's my father on the left, talking to Catness.
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A last look towards the old part of the house.
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