This evening, I was standing at the neighborhood ice Cream Truck, buying four ice cream sandwiches for me and mine, when an unkempt little girl suddenly appeared by my side. She stood right beside me, dreaming out loud about which ice cream treat she’d buy - if only she had one dollar. The end of her impressive monologue was punctuated with a deep sigh.

My first response was to buy a fifth ice cream sandwich for her, but I hesitated. What if she was diabetic? What if she had lactose intolerance? What if she had some allergy that brought on anaphylactic shock if she ate strawberry/vanilla/chocolate flavored ice cream?

Standing there, beside the ice cream truck, I glimpsed into the future and saw an angry woman berating me for feeding her little girl something that made her deathly ill, and suing me for every dollar I had, and inflicting financial ruin on me and my husband, all because I engaged in a random act of kindness. Thanks to our sue-happy, litigious society and the fear it has bred in all of our hearts and souls, I didn’t buy the little girl an ice cream sandwich.

Think my response was too much? Reading this will change your mind.

A few days ago, I posted about Norfolk and Western’s #1134, an old steam locomotive that’s recently been “cosmetically restored” and moved to downtown Portsmouth.

According to the The Lost Engines of Roanoke website, the old steam locomotive was rescued from the Virginia Scrap Iron and Metal Yard in Roanoke, Virginia where it had been dying a slow-death by rust and kudzu for the last 60 years.

Thanks to Richard Jenkins and his skilled photography, we have some photos of #1134 when she languished in the scrap yard, waiting for death to come. Richard Jenkins is the owner of the “Lost Engines of Roanoke Website.” If you love old steam trains and have a few hours to kill, I heartily recommend his site. http://lostengines.railfan.net/nw1134.shtml

This beautiful old steam engine was pulled from the weeds and restored and moved to a fledgling train museum in downtown Portsmouth. See this post for more information.

Photos below are used with permission from Richard Jenkins (copyright 2008).  Photos are copyright protected and may not be reprinted or republished without permission.

Here’s a current picture of #1134 today, as she sits on the rails again in downtown Portsmouth.

Just a few days ago, Norfolk and Western’s #1134 settled into its new home in downtown Portsmouth.  According to the The Lost Engines of Roanoke website, the old steam locomotive was rescued from the Virginia Scrap Iron and Metal Yard in Roanoke, Virginia where it had been dying a slow-death by rust for the last 60 years. The website also states that #1134 and her siblings (#917, 1118 and 1151)  landed there in in the 1950s, having been relegated to the scrap heap when newer, more modern steam engines were ordered by the railroads.

The Virginian Pilot reports that on Tuesday (May 18, 2010), the 250,000-pound locomotive was back on the tracks again at its new home in Portsmouth. Unfortunately, this shining black beauty is not ready to be run out of town on a rail. She’s had a “cosmetic restoration,” meaning that she’ll never ride the rails again under her own steam.

Nonetheless, it’s wonderful that a handful of visionaries in Portsmouth have worked so tirelessly to preserve a piece of our country’s past. And Norfolk and Western’s #1134 is the capstone in the privately-funded Railroad Museum of Virginia. According to the article in the Pilot, contributions are welcome and can be made to:

The Railroad Museum of Virginia, Inc.
c/o Willard J. Moody Sr. Esq.
500 Crawford St. Suite 300
Portsmouth, VA 23704

It was about 11:45 pm Thursday night when Teddy walked over to my side of the bed and gave me one loud “Woof.” I opened my eyes and said, “What?” (as if she would answer). With an unmistakable intensity, she looked me right in the eye and repeated herself by saying, “Woof!”

Usually when there’s another dog outside, she’ll bark a bit and then settle down. If there’s someone walking down our city sidewalk, she’ll bark a little and then stop. But this was different.

I looked into her eyes for a minute and I swear I heard her say, “Listen, you need to get out of that bed and look outside. This isn’t just a random ‘woof’. This one’s important.”

She did not leave her station at the side of my bed but continued to stare intensely at me. I arose from my soft pink bed and toddled outside to the second-floor balcony just outside my bedroom. I looked outside and saw two highly questionable people studying my car, which was parked on the street. One was especially interested in the license plate. The other was leaning over and looking in the driver’s window.

The dog followed me out to the balcony and stood out there and barked. I was trying to figure out if I should yell or call the cops, but Teddy’s barking was enough. They immediately stood upright and walked away.

Back in the bedroom, I thanked Teddy and gave her some praise. As I settled back under the covers, I said a little prayer of gratitude for her perspicacity. And I wondered, “How did she know? And how did she know how to get my attention with that little staring maneuver? How could she hear those silent people out there, preparing to mess with my red Camry?”

One of my favorite books is Kinship with All Life and its premise is that dogs are a lot smarter and a lot more intuitive and a lot more attuned to feelings and emotions that we humans can ever understand.

Eighteen months ago, I was so exacerbated and overwhelmed with her bad puppy behavior, I frequently told her that she was about to become a Craig’s List Puppy. I’m glad I kept her!

The morning after the miscreants were messing with my car, I praised Teddy to the moon and stars and put a little something extra in Teddy’s food dish. And that afternoon, she went outside and dug a hole in the middle of my freshly planted St. Augustine grass. Guess she didn’t want me to think she was the World’s Most Perfect Puppy.

Click here to read an interesting article (with many pics) about the Sears Kit Homes in Hampton Roads.

Read more about Teddy here.

Read about Teddy and the little boy here.

When I hear about the millions of gallons of oil spewing from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig, I wince (as do most Americans, I’m sure). When I hear that this enormous flood of oil is headed for America’s shorelines, it makes me want to cry.

Several times in the last six years, I’ve toddled down to Corolla, North Carolina in the off-season to spend a few days at the seashore. It’s quiet, serene and too beautiful for words (hence, the photos below!).

My dear friend Margee allows me to stay in her beautiful summer place in Corolla, soaking in the magical ambiance of a brightly decorated and airy vacation home and taking in the delightful aroma of those salty sea breezes.

I’ve done some of my very best writing by the seaside. In fact two of my books (including The Ugly Woman’s Guide to Internet Dating) were composed (in part) by the sea.  My muse is nature, and there are few things as inspiring as the quiet, beautiful beaches of North Carolina’s outer banks. I hope and pray that America’s shining seas and beautiful seashores survive BP’s horrific oil spills.

What a surprise to find an abundance of Sears Homes in Annapolis Maryland!  It’d be interesting to know how and why this Navy town ended up with so many kit homes.

A picture’s worth a thousand words, so here are a few pictures of my “finds” in Annapolis. Note: All of the homes pictured below were found within the city limits of Annapolis, MD.

BTW, if you enjoy these pictures, please spread the word and email a link to your friends! And join our group on Facebook, “Sears Homes.”

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.  In short, these were houses purchased out of the Sears Roebuck mail-order catalog. They were shipped to the rail station in 12,000 pieces and assembled by the aspiring homeowner. About 70,000 Sears homes were sold from 1908-1940.

To read a recently published article on the Sears Homes of Annapolis, click here.

One of my favorite Sears kit homes is the Sears Dover. This little neo-Tudor is adorable, thoughtfully designed, well-laid out, relatively spacious and just as cute as a button. On the back of the house is a large shed dormer, creating plenty of room on the second floor for an additional two bedrooms and a full bath, giving the house a total of four bedrooms, two baths, large living room, dining room and kitchen.

For the late 1920s/early 30s, that was a good-size house.

Here’s a cutie-pie in Champaign, Illinois. This particular catalog page does not show price, but generally the Dover sold for under $3000. Pretty good deal.

This photo (and the one below) was taken in late February 2010, when I visited my daughter and her family.

To learn more about Sears Homes, click here.

___________

Pictured below is another beautiful Sears Home, The Americus. This house is in Urbana, Illinois. So I guess we’d call it, a fine little Sears House on an Urbana budget?

To see more pictures of Sears Homes, click here.

I wonder if Los Angeles residents like having electricity? If so, they should probably write their councilmen and women. Seems the Los Angeles city council voted to boycott Arizona-based businesses and companies. Funny thing is, Arizon sells Los Angeles about 25% of its electricity.

And all this because of Arizons’s SB 1070.  Arizona’s SB 1070 seems like a pretty straightforward new law really. If you’re not here legally, you have to get legal or go home to your own country.

There’s a reason they’re called “Illegal aliens.” It’s because they’ve entered into this country through illegal means,  typically by crossing an unsecured border in the dark of night.

However, the Los Angeles city council has now voted on and approved a boycott of Arizona and Arizona-based companies. As a small business owner, it’s a puzzle to me how one United States city can purposefully try to inflict financial harm on their fellow countrymen, because their neighbors tried to defend and protect their own property.

If I moved out of my home and put it up for sale, and then I learned that a squatter had moved into my empty home, I’m going to call the police and report an intruder. According to Los Angeles city council, I should suffer punitive damages for trying to protect my own property from illegal occupants. Or as a blogger quipped, “Calling an illegal alien an undocumented immigrant is like calling a burgular an univited house guest.”

As I said, it all seems pretty straightforward to me. And apparently, it seems pretty straightforward to Gary Pierce, too. Read the letter he sent to the Los Angeles city council.

Dear Mayor Villaraigosa,

I was dismayed to learn that the Los Angeles City Council voted to boycott Arizona and Arizona-based companies - a vote you strongly supported - to show opposition to SB 1070 (Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act).

You explained your support of the boycott as follows: “While we recognize that as neighbors, we share resources and ties with the State of Arizona that may be difficult to sever, our goal is not to hurt the local economy of Los Angeles, but to impact the economy of Arizona.  Our intent is to use our dollars - or the withholding of our dollars - to send a message.” (emphasis added)

I received your message; please receive mine.  As a state-wide elected member of the Arizona Corporation Commission overseeing Arizona’s electric and water utilities, I too am keenly aware of the “resources and ties” we share with the City of Los Angeles. In fact, approximately twenty-five percent of the electricity consumed in Los Angeles is generated by power plants in Arizona.

If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation. I am confident that Arizona’s utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands. If, however, you find that the City Council lacks the strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycott Arizona power, please reconsider the wisdom of attempting to harm Arizona’s economy.

People of goodwill can disagree over the merits of SB 1070. A state-wide economic boycott of Arizona is not a message sent in goodwill.

Sincerely,

Commissioner Gary Pierce

Read more here.

When I was in the Chicago area this Spring, I spent a few days with my friend Rebecca Hunter. After tooling around town looking at lots and lots of Sears Homes, we sat down in her beautiful dining room and made a list of the Sears Homes that neither one of us had ever seen.

It’s been my experience that the 60 most popular Sears Homes represented about 90% of their sales. Over and over again, we see the same designs, the Mitchells and Lynnhavens and Gladstones and Craftons and Argyles, etc. Sears offered 370 designs of Sears Homes, and of those 370 designs, there are 108 designs that neither Rebecca nor I have ever seen. This is quite remarkable, as the two of us have seen something approaching 10,000 Sears Homes. That’s a lot of Sears Homes.

Dale Wolicki says that it’s likely that some of these designs were never sold or built. In other words, they never went beyond being pictures in a catalog. He’s probably right.

For those Sears Homes aficionados, here is the list of Sears Homes that neither Rebecca or I have ever seen:

Adams

Adeline

Alden

Almo

Amhert

Amhurst

Amsterdam

Arcadia

Atlanta

Bayside

Branford

Bristol

Cambria

Canton

Carlton

Chesterfield

Chicora

Cleveland

Coateshead

Colebrook

Corning

Corrington

Croydon

Dartmouth

Durham

Estes

Fairfield

Fulton

Gainsboro

Glen View

Hamptshire

Harmony

Harmony

Hopeland

Kenfield

Laurel

Lenox

Letona

Lorne

Malden

Marquette

Melrose

Milford

Millerton

Model # 141

Model #104

Model #107

Model #116

Model #122

Model #130

Model #134

Model #136

Model #139

Model #143

Model #157

Model #158

Model #159

Model #165

Model #166

Model #175

Model #176

Model #177

Model #182

Model #183

Model #191

Model #195

Model #198

Model #199

Model #202

Model #204

Model #216

Model #228

Model #241

Model #264P159a

Model #264P206

Model #264P207

Model #264P243

Model #264P252

Model #36

Model #59

Model #64

Model #70

Model #C2001

Nantucket

Natoma

Nipigon

Norwich

Oxford

Pennsgrove

Portsmouth

Seagrove

Sheffield

Sherwood

Silverdale

Spaulding

Springwood

Stone Ridge

Sunny Dell

Tarryton

Torrington

Trenton

Valley

Vanita

Verndale

Vinemont

Wareham

Warren

Webster

Below are some photos of Sears Homes from my recent trip to Illinois:

After years of hard work, Dale Patrick Wolicki and I are finishing up our book on Wardway Homes. Yes, Montgomery Ward sold kit homes through mail order, and heretofore, there’s been a dearth of information on this topic.

The story of Wardway Homes is quite intriguing but digging up the documents and the details on this topic has been challenging. For many years, Dale has been collecting catalogs, clippings, magazine articles and ephemera on Wardway Homes and without him, this book never would have been written.

Look for “The Mail-order Homes of Montgomery Ward” to appear sometime in late June or early July 2010. It’ll be a dandy book, heavy laden with awesome photographs and vintage images from their early 20th Century catalogs.

Sounds so good I can hardly wait to read it myself!

Yes, Sears sold barns as well as houses. These barns came in “kits” filled with pre-cut lumber, nails, roofing, doors and everything that you needed. Here’s a barn in central Illinois. The photo was taken in 2010, but it could have been shot in the 1930s. This is one of my favorite pictures.

Just out of frame is a Sears Gladstone, a fine little Sears house!

For more information on Sears Barns, look for Rebecca Hunter’s Book of Barns. Click here to buy.

Every now and then, I wake up out of a dead sleep and think, “Oh my gosh, what have I done?  I can’t paint a fine old house pink!” But then when I come back to consciousness I realize that I really, really like the color pink and when all is said and done, this house will look wonderful. The pink is very pale and now that 30% of the house is painted, it really does look wonderful.

Years ago, my dear friend Rebecca said, “Who says that red and pink don’t match? Who says that I can’t wear certain colors with other colors? And I realized that I’m old enough to decide what colors I do like, and what colors I don’t like and to decide what colors look good with what colors.”

Seems like a simple thing, but that little statement really made an impact.

Who said I can’t paint my 1925 Colonial Revival pink with black shutters? I am old enough to decide if I want a pink house, and I do! And every day, my old house looks better and better.

I think it’s smiling. 

When I learned that I was going to be writing a new book on the Sears Homes of Illinois, I called Cairo Historian Richard Kearney and asked if he could spend a day with me when I traveled to Southern Illinois.  I needed his help to find a few more Sears Homes near the site of the old mill in Cairo. Richard readily agreed to help out, which was a huge blessing, for I could not have done this without him! He and I spent an entire day traipsing around Olmstead, Tamms, Mounds City, Urbandale and many other little towns near his home in Cairo.

As we drove along bucolic country roads (some of which didn’t even show up on my GPS!), Richard was the perfect tour guide, providing an amazing bit of color about the region and its fascinating history.

A few hours into our fun day, we came to Mounds, home of this interesting old Glendale. Yes, it’s in rough shape but it is (or was) a fine old Sears Glendale. Obviously, the house has been vacant for years and years. As is evident from the photo (see below), the front porch is long gone, so I asked Richard, “Hey, you want to go around back and get inside?”

Richard, who could best be described as the consummate gentlemen with a pinch of adventurer and a heaping helping of intrigued historian, replied without a moment’s thought.

“Sounds like fun!”

So off we went, eagerly traipsing into the back yard, preparing to enter a vacant house in a run-down section of this economically depressed city. The basement windows were missing and as we walked past them, I thought I saw something move in the dark, scary basement.

“Must be a raccoon,” I thought to myself.

Richard took the lead and I was close on his heels, eager to get inside the old Sears House. As he rounded the bend and entered the backyard, a ferocious and large pitbull lunged at us, barking and spitting and snarling, and with teeth bared. Almost like a cartoon caricature, the lunging beast struggled to snap at Richard’s face but was held back by a very large chain.  Richard came to such a fast stop that I almost ran right into his back. We both took a few steps backward and one of us (I’m not sure who) said, “We need to get out of here, right NOW.”

In retrospect, I don’t know what was going on at that very deserted-looking house, but I do know that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I *felt* danger. Richard and I turned and ran back to my car and took off.  As we were trotting back to my car, I remember thinking about that old song, “The things we do for love…”

“Like walking into an abandoned, vacant house in the middle of a not-so-good section of town…”

Thinking about this in the calm of my pretty pink bedroom in Norfolk, Virginia, I’ve no idea why there was a vicious, angry pit bull tied up on a huge chain in the back of a long-time vacant house. I’ve no idea who or what I glimpsed in that basement. However, I’m glad that both Richard and I lived to tell the tale!

Next time you read a book on Sears Houses, remember, history has a price! 

In 1995, I took a job as a freelance writer to help pay the bills. In 1999, I took a steady job as a writer and editor to help pay the bills. In 2002, I wrote a book on Sears Homes and worked hard to promote and sell that book. Within two weeks of that book’s publication, my marriage ended and I really needed to sell some books to help pay the bills.

From 2002 to 2010, I wrote and published another five books and wrote dozens of articles, too. You see, I really needed to make some money to help pay the bills.

Today, after much effort and consternation and fingernail nibbling, I finished writing my 7th book, tentatively titled, “The Sears Homes of Illinois.” I’m very pleased with the end result and hope and pray that my editor will be similarly pleased. Hopefully, he’ll never find out my dirty little secret.

I’m not a real writer.

I have an image that writing comes easy to real writers. When you’re a real writer, words flow effortlessly from your literary mind to your clean, pretty paper. None of this agonizing over each and every word. None of this reaching for the thesaurus because you can not recall THE perfect word that will work in that empty space in that already goofy-sounding sentence.

I write books about old houses, and I find that type of writing excruciatingly difficult. I can’t imagine trying to write a fictional account of something. I take historical facts and real-life experience and distill it down to a few thousand words. That sounds so simple and easy. But it’s not. For me.

And yet today, as I wrote the final chapter of The Sears Homes of Illinois, I had one of those delightful moments of inspiration and the words flowed and the words worked and I ended up writing five paragraphs in five hours and those five paragraphs represented some of the best writing I have ever done. When my husband came home, I made him sit down and pay attention while I read him those five paragraphs. He agreed that it was some of my best writing.

I love what Elizabeth Gilbert (a real writer) said about the creative process:  “If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to be glimpsed for just one moment, then ole. If not, dance anyhow. Have the sheer determination and stubbornness to keep showing up do your part anyhow.”

In my 15-year career as a writer, creating articles and books has always felt like an enormous and laborious effort, but Ms. Gilbert is right. Having the “sheer determination and stubbornness to keep showing up” represents at least 85% of the battle.

Today I was in court, watching my 70th first date do his thing. It was really only a hearing, but it went on for three hours and it was quite interesting. Mr. 70th First Date (aka my husband) is a lawyer and today, after many days of preparation, was his day in court.

He objected to several things that were said by the adversarial counsel, and that was my favorite part of the experience. He sounded so authoritative and competent and well-versed in the law, and it was fun to watch him jump up out of his chair and say, “I object.”

Just like Perry Mason.

He was all dressed up in his “going to court” clothes, which also happens to be the black suit he wore to our wedding 3.5 years ago. Standing before the judge looking all lawyerly and smart, my mind drifted a bit and I thought about all those guys I dated through the years and all those guys that ditched me through the years.

Thank heavens they ditched me. I was a lost soul after my divorce and didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to see that I deserved better than those not-so-nice guys that I was drawn to. Took me five years, but my self-esteem eventually became healthy again.

There are some days - like today - that I still wonder how I scored such a smart, honest, interesting and well-educated guy.  (And there are some days that I wonder why on earth I married someone who is so tough to live with!) But today was one of the good days. It was a lot of fun to watch him at work and watch him perform under pressure.

And he looks so darn cute in that black suit.