Hi and welcome to the spring issue of TRUNK!!
The first issue ended up being a stack of unrelated stuff with no directions or explanations. I didn't like this format and wanted to hold your hand a bit so I changed it completely.
I wrote some notes throughout the last few months to use for this issue. It turned out to be a rambling of sorts, but for some it may be entertaining. This is the first portion of this issue. The second section of TRUNK is a collection of collages that I made with the theme of Bog Lyffe. Woodland mushrooms and pitcher plants interact with the creatures of the bog. The last portion of goodies in the TRUNK is called D3, short for Digital Decrepit Dwellings. I went and found run-dow n cabins, shacks, and barns in my area and took digital photos of them. I ran the photos through Adobe Streamline and changed the photos to a morph of digital and photographic image. I couldn't stop thinking about what types of folks lived in these buildings and so I ended up making up the stories of their lives for you.
Enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Thanks for visiting the TRUNK. Come back at the end of summer. You never know what treats I will have prepared for you.
There never was a time I wasn't afraid of the loggers. As a child I would frequently play in the woods with my moss dolls. The loggermen never warned Mama when they were going to be working close. One day I was out pretty far from the cabin and alone playing near the creek. I knew the loggermen were working somewhere nearby but I was getting my feet wet in the cool froth of the waterfall and only heard the rippling of the water. Suddenly I heard a loud splitting sound and then the shuddering moan of the ground below me as a large timber fell. The loggermen pointed and laughed as I ran tripping over roots and rocks on the way back home. From that day on, I vowed to hate the loggermen and love the trees. As I grew older, I found there were other reasons to not trust these swarthy men. I always hid in the cabin when they were working. I made sure that they couldn't see me. I watched them silently with hatred.
Mr. and Mrs. Blancher lived in the neighborhood too. Years ago, Mrs. Blancher was the schoolmarm in the school at the vly. She was a great teacher but she had a sickness of some type that made her have seizures. One day in the middle of teaching class, she screamed with terror, holding her hands over her ears and ran yelling out the door of the school never to hear again. She was forced to leave her teaching position and in sorrow never worked again. She loved her schooldays though and refused to live in their normal little house after that. Unfortunately, Mr. Blancher had to tear down their cabin and build a small replica of a schoolhouse for Mrs. Blancher to live in before she would rest. She always came to school functions, except for band concerts, to watch the progress of her long lost students,.
Bessie and Beatrice were the darnedest women I have yet to meet. These 2 spinsters were cowboy wannabees and nicknamed themselves the B&B sisters. They called their house a ranch, their pasture a corral and their dogs were dogies. They had a branding iron made up with the B&B ranch logo and wore 10 gallon cowboy hats unless they went to town, which was a rare occurrence. Local men weren't man enough for these two ladies and they were quite snobbish towards the woman of the town, too. Too proud to ask for help, they lived in their back room for 2 years with no heat rather than ask the local menfolk for assistance. One day we heard they left their ranch for Seattle, hoping to be bought and sold as brides in a logger camp. Their cabin still stands to this day with ghastly saddles and cobwebs hanging from the rafters.
Fresh out of college and newly married, the VanDamms were full of excitement when they got to our little town. They were going to start a family and have children. Karl VanDamm's father had left him a chunk of land on top of the mountain. It was quite far from the rest of us and most folks didn't get out that way much. Everything began simple enough but the longer that Helga was away from people the weirder she got. At first she cured her lack of friendship by purchasing fabrics and making clothes for herself. Then it was curtains and re-upholstering the furniture. This didn't satisfy her appetite and eventually she was using the mail order catalogs to purchase other things for herself, perfume, hair ornaments and of course, more fabric. Karl was engrossed in his correspondence studies and had no idea of the depth of his wifes' indulgences although he did notice his house looked better and better and she wasn't looking too bad either. Finally it all came crashing down when the bank told Karl he would have to sell some of his land to pay for the debts that had piled up. He approached Helga about it and she broke down bitterly and cried with no tears. After that night, she never spoke again, her private world effectively crumbled. Karl was forced to institutionalize her and ended up selling the rest of the property to pay for her healthcare.
Not too far down the road lived Ethel Montgomery. She and I were best friends when we were really young. Ethel was older than me by 3 years, but back in those days, friends were few and far between and you took what you could get. She showed me how to make daisy chains and sunflower bonnets. We were inseparable for many youthful years. But Ethel was older, and eventually the gap in our ages made a gap in our friendship. I was mature for my age and began noticing boys right along with Ethel. A new boy called Zeke had come to our school this season and I was thinking about him too much. When I was 11, Ethel turned 14 and things changed for us. Teenagers simply didn't associate with 11-year-olds and Ethel started to be mean to me. I took this pretty hard and still kept trying to go and hang out with her in the schoolyard. Ethel was more interested in boys than friends at this point, but so was I and so I persisted. One time I went out on recess looking for her and for the life of me I couldn't find her. I figured she must have wondered down to the creek or something and even though it was against the rules, I found myself wondering away to find Ethel. What if she was in trouble? As I ambled down the path, I heard funny moaning noises and I saw a bit of a white flash in the bushes. I lifted up a large branch to see what was happening just in time to see Ethel's fanny in the air before she dropped it on top of Zeke. Upset, I ran back to school and never wanted to play with Ethel again. She ended up with typhoid fever and she died by the time she turned 20.
Sometimes folks in these parts could act downright irregular. Take Millicent Foible for instance. She seemed like a normal woman. She lived in the largest cabin in our woods. She dressed well and wore perfumes that she had sent over from France. She knew how to speak formally and sometimes she helped the schoolmarm at the schoolhouse. She was a member of the church and she considered it her second home. She was very pious and extremely religious and rarely spoke without quoting the bible once or twice. She didn't believe in sex at all, even to have children. When suitors would come over her home to visit, Millie would let them know that she believed in virgin births. And they would never return. Her father kicked her out of his household in embarrassment and for the rest of her life she lived in the corn crib.
Little Johnny Astor was just the kid next door. He was smart but a daredevil at heart. His father wanted him to become a doctor, but Johnny had other dreams. He always loved to play with fire and at an early age took care of the woodstove for the family. When he was a young boy, he went to a local fair and the magician took him under his wing. Monroe the Magnificent he called himself...and he swallowed flaming swords and threw knives at pretty spinning girls. Johnny grew up with dreams of becoming a carnival magician. When he was a teen and could realize this dream, his father tried to send him to New York City to go to medical school. Little Johnny left for a couple of years and when he came back, we was calling himself Johnny America and waving a magic wand. His father kicked him out of the house and took away his chances of inheriting the family fortune thinking his son was a bum. Johnny managed to get married and have a son he named Nicholas, but his wife died in childbirth. He hired a nanny to take care of Nickie when he was gone with the carnival. One time while performing in the Afton Fair he received a telegram to return home immediately. Upon returning, he discovered that his only son had set the house on fire and burned it down, killing the nanny and destroying the house.
Then there was Luella. Luella Greebes was another neighbor of mine. She lived in a tiny shack of a house in the woods with her brother John Greebes. Sad lot they were. Their parents liked to get drunk too much and they were too drunk to work. One day their ma and pa were out hunting and drinking the whiskey and got into a big fight and their pa just up and shot their ma and then himself. They were young, maybe 10 and 12. There was no family around to take care of them. They just lived on together for years the brother and sister. Luella died of a fever and John left the mountains when she died. Grief got to him.
She was a very prim and proper woman, my Aunt Maude. She lived in a beautiful Victorian home on the outskirts of town. They say it was haunted with the ghosts of 2 towheaded children that died in the attic of massive bee stings. They were allergic and the doctor didnt' get around in time to help them. Aunt Maude never had children of her own or a husband. She was too proper to get a man. She spoke with the ghost children all the time and served them dinner. At Christmastime she bought them gifts.
Timothy Hurder was a man who moved up to our woods from New Hampshire. They say he was in the Army when he was younger and lost his brothers in the war. He was a sad man and rarely had anything to say to anyone. He wanted to be as far away from people as possible. If he couldn't be with his own family, he didn't want to be with anyone else. Living away from people took it's toll on him. He became bitter and found himself quite alone. During a winter snowstorm, my cousin Jonathan got stuck near Mr. Hurders' camp. It was brutal that night and Jonathan knew he couldn't fix the carriage by himself. He decided to walk up to Timothy's to spend the night, since it wasn't too far away. After walking the mile to his camp in the raging snowstorm, he found no sympathy at the other end. He knocked and knocked fand finally Mr.Hurder answered and told him that he had no room for him. Cousin Johnathan ended up walking back to the broken down carriage and spending the night there. The next day my Uncle Bob went looking for him and found him still in the carriage unable to walk due to a few frostbitten toes. In the end, Mr. Hurder got what he deserved. When he saw that his cabin would not withstand another winter, he asked the townspeople for help to re-build it. No one volunteered and Mr. Hurder left and was never seen in these parts again.
The gang meant everything to me in those days. They were my family when times were tough. I can remember getting drunk with the girls at the end of a long day at the lakeside. Back then the girls were a goal. We used to bet on which one would give up a kiss and a feel first. Little Janey was always the winner. Her lips of honey we all loved to taste. If we were lucky we would get her honey pie.
Offsides to the trail rests a green tar paper cabin. It is set far back from sight and nestled in a grove of pines. Ginny lived there. She didn't like fires in the house and was fiendish about it. Her husband Horace died with his parents cabin in a bad fire and she was out there all alone trying to make ends meet. She kept a couple of woodstoves outside and tended them all the while making maple syrup. Don't know how she kept warm in the winter. She didn't have much. Never did get much help from her folks, cheap they were. Poor Ginny died out there when a tree landed on her cabin. Froze to death. They didn't find her till spring.