Category Archives: coming of age

by | July 13, 2026 · 6:06 am

Tornado Salvaging

Sharing a few more photos I found scanning.

There are two micro stories in Scrap: Salvaging a Family about the May 13, 1980 tornado in Kalamazoo, Michigan (pp 90-92 in paperback). It’s sort of a transition period in the book where I am now an adult, albeit young, whereas what had come before in the book was focused on coming-of-age. It’s also foreshadowed by an earlier scene of being a kid in the basement during a tornado warning. Scrap is comprised of three parts, and the tornado is the end of part I.

I mention how my father bought up storefronts that nobody else seemed to want and tried to fix them up just enough to rent them as he had little money to invest in remodelling. I describe a wooden “canvas” hanging on the wall of my father’s store:

What I think is that he makes something usable that wasn’t. He doesn’t have the money to make them beautiful. But every once in a while, he recognizes something that is. Inside the luggage store, he’s hung a board that a painter used to clean his brushes. He calls it his Jackson Pollack (sic).

Weirdly, even though I remember looking up the correct spelling of the artist’s name, I still misspelled it in the book. For some reason, I want it to be spelled Pollack instead of Pollock. Maybe it’s because for all its interesting details it’s still a fake. (If you read Scrap you might realize why the theme of “fake” resonates with me).

Dad’s “Jackson Pollock” on the wall

Here are a couple of photos of the tornado that day.

Gilmore Brothers department store–the entire back wall of the 5 story building was blown off

ISB Bank building–all the windows were blown out

27 Comments

Filed under #ScrapSalvagingFamily, coming of age, Family, Family history, flash memoir, Flash Nonfiction, History, hybrid memoir, Memoir, Nonfiction, Scrap:Salvaging a Family

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | July 1, 2026 · 6:00 am

Memory’s Little Nudges

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance,” said Shakespeare’s Ophelia.

I do love rosemary. The scent. And the taste in food.

Speaking of memory, I am fascinated by this quote:

“He who remembers his childhood better
Than others is the winner,
If there are any winners at all.”

from “1924” by Yehuda Amichai

What do you think he means by that?

I wonder if it has to do with learning from our pasts?

Do you think about memory very often?

I think that I do, but sometimes it is because I feel a sense of responsibility for what I haven’t even asked for. For instance, big batches of old family photos keep turning up in my care. I have been scanning the lot of photos from my mother’s house when she moved from the garden home to the “big house” which is the apartment building in her retirement community (now she lives in a different building, in assisted living). Nobody else was going to do this, so I felt responsible for the photos. My grandfather and my father had put a lot of time into taking pictures.

Then yesterday a big box shows up on my porch. My brother sent me all the photo albums that were left over.

Eventually I have to organize all my scans and post them where family members can get them. Or some such.

In the meantime, I do feel some stress over it.

But then I find photos that bring me back to a moment in time. I went on a trip to California with my parents and brother between 7th and 8th grade. My father had quit smoking, and the money he saved went toward the trip. Our goal was to head down to LA to visit my cousins, but we landed in San Francisco for a few days. We found the intersection of Haight and Ashbury where I searched for hippies who were left over from the previous summer’s Summer of Love.

We ran into a filming of the TV show Ironside. I loved that show. Raymond Burr who played Perry Mason for years on TV now played a police chief who was in a wheelchair. One of the stars was Don Galloway. The scene being filmed on the street had Galloway outside and Burr’s stunt double inside a white van. My dad, never shy to ask, got Galloway to pose for a picture with my brother and me. I also got his autograph, but I don’t have that any longer. Can you dig my groovy yellow wrap-style sunglasses?

Of course, when I went back to school after our trip, I was so much more sophisticated than the previous year.  Or so I thought!

Here’s another pic. In this one my brother and I (perhaps age 14) are playing Monopoly with my father at our house we lived at until I was done with junior high. I mentioned the game in Scrap, but game playing had an even bigger part in my childhood than I wrote about in the book. Monopoly was only one of several games, but it was the one most fitting for my father who began, when I was a teen, to collect buildings in real life in much the same way he did when playing the game. Because he didn’t have a lot of money to spend, they were usually older, run-down, in need of some TLC.

So I don’t need rosemary to remember. Just the drudgery of scanning old photos.

Or really anything. Everything reminds me of something before.

ORDER SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY

ORDER SCRAP – AMAZON

34 Comments

Filed under #ScrapSalvagingFamily, coming of age, Family, Family history, Memoir, SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY

Tagged as , , , ,

by | June 24, 2026 · 10:31 am

The Economy of a Poet

Like so many, I feel a real affinity for the poetry of Sylvia Plath. She’s my favorite poet as Shirley Jackson is my favorite prose writer and Remedios Varo is my favorite artist.

For my MFA explication I wrote about the Plath poem “Fever 103.” I still love that poem which so well captures that feeling of having a high fever without really talking about fever or being ill.

For my PhD dissertation, each chapter was focused on one female poet and one type of identity. For my Plath chapter I wrote about performing gender.

Later, when I began to write more poetry, I could feel the influence of Plath’s poetry on me.

Most inspirational for me was how candid and direct her poetry sounds. And under the surface, I suppose, was her search for who her father was and how he connected to her. These features really guided me in writing Scrap: Salvaging a Family. But they also helped in creating this collage for Raw Lit, Issue 9. The Making of a Daddy which relies upon the imagery from two poems Plath wrote about her father: “Daddy” and “The Colossus.”

***

“Spare, precise, and quietly devastating, this is the kind of memoir that stays in the body long after the reading is done.”

That’s what the editorial review at The Book Review calls my memoir.

The Book Revue – 5 Star Review

Here’s another favorite paragraph:

“Her prose has the economy of a poet who knows exactly which word is doing the work and which ones can be cut. She has a remarkable ability to locate enormous emotion inside small, specific objects and moments, a trait that is genuinely rare and that gives the book its distinctive texture.”

ORDER SCRAP IN EBOOK OR PAPERBACK

18 Comments

Filed under #ScrapSalvagingFamily, Art and Music, Book Review, coming of age, ELJ Editions, Family, Family history, flash memoir, Flash Nonfiction, hybrid memoir, Memoir, Nonfiction, Scrap:Salvaging a Family, Writing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | June 18, 2026 · 6:00 am

This Song Socked It to the Hypocrites

When we  look back at our childhoods, there are so many important cultural touchstones of the era. For me, just entering 8th grade, nothing was more ubiquitous than Jeannie C. Riley’s hit “Harper Valley P.T.A.

Riley’s record, her debut, sold over six million copies as a single, and it made her the first woman to top both the Billboard Hot 100 and the U.S. Hot Country Singles charts with the same song.1

Top. That means #1. Nobody else did this until Dolly Parton in 1981 with 9 to 5.1

I’ve known for a long time that my favorite songwriter, Tom T. Hall, wrote the song. He was young, still thinking he was going to a writer, such as a journalist or a novelist.2

Gosh, I love his music–the storytelling, the heart and soul, his bluegrass roots (being from Kentucky y’all).

“Harper Valley P.T.A.” is not on this album. These are many of the songs Tom T Hall recorded.

Hall said that this song ended up being his novel.2

Think of that. He was an amazing observer, like many writers, and what he observed in America showed up in his songs. For instance, in his song “Who’s Gonna Feed Them Hogs,” he captures so well a man who is so tied to his profession (in this case, a hog farmer) and perhaps to denial as well that in the hospital he thinks more about “them hogs” than he does about the fact that doctors think he might not survive.*

Back to the Jeannie C.Riley hit song, written by Hall. Originally it was suggested he write a song reminiscent of the Bobbie Gentry 1967 hit “Ode to Billie Joe.” And that’s how the song sounded when Riley first heard it sung by a demo singer.3

The song became a big hit in part because of Tom T. Hall’s amazing song writing, but finally because Riley added the finishing touch that really moved the song up a level.

If you listen to the song you see that that final line that is repeated twice is what makes you want to jump off your feet, scream, and applaud. It wouldn’t mean anything without Hall’s songwriting, but without Riley’s ending it would have been a fun and thought-provoking song, but not a GINORMOUS international hit.

The song is told in 3rd person. The singer/narrator tells the story of a young single mother who is admonished by the PTA about how she is raising her daughter. “Mrs. Johnson” goes to the PTA meeting and calls the board out as hypocrites. She sums up with my second favorite line of the song: “Well, this is just a little Peyton Place and you’re all Harper Valley hypocrites!“

Side note: Peyton Place was very popular, starting as a novel by Grace Metalious, based on true events, focusing on all the covered up sins, crimes, and vices of a small town–as well as the gossip. Sadly, Metalious died of cirrhosis of the liver at age 39. Look up the Peyton Place “franchise” if you don’t know much about it.

Back to the ending of “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” repeated twice, that is written by Riley.

Originally, the song lyrics stayed in the 3rd person POV, calling Mrs. Johnson “that mama.”3

But Riley moved to the 1st person in that ending, thus surprising the listener with the idea that the teen daughter was the one proudly sharing her mama’s story. She also added a very popular up-to-date touch by using the term “socked it to,” made popular by the TV program Laugh-in. 3 Thus:

The day my mama socked it to the Harper Valley P.T.A.

The day my mama socked it to the Harper Valley P.T.A.

By repeating that last line, the listener has the chance to really absorb that this kid is so proud of her mom for standing up to the hypocrites.

With that ending and the mini skirt Hall wrote into a song based on his own childhood observation (he was born in 1936), the song became emblematic of MY 1960s childhood. This song is an anthem for my generation.

In this way, this song presented an inspiring role model. Can you dig it?

***

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Valley_PTA

2 https://theboot.com/jeannie-c-riley-harper-valley-pta-lyrics/

3 https://americansongwriter.com/why-jeannie-c-riley-hated-her-1968-one-hit-wonder-and-how-she-was-finally-convinced-to-record-it/

*Bonus video: “Who’s Gonna Feed Them Hogs”

15 Comments

Filed under Art and Music, coming of age, Music, Storytelling, Writing

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | June 8, 2026 · 3:41 pm

A Fedora Stand and Antique Photographs

Anthony Avina has published a guest post on his blog. I wrote about the time period of my memoir Scrap: Salvaging a Family and included anecdotes and photographs (antique or nearly so) not found in the book. Fedora stand explanation is found in the guest post!

GUEST POST BY LUANNE

I hope you enjoy reading about some of what didn’t make it into the book itself.

###

Perry’s ashes were hand delivered to us by the cremation company. I cleared off a shelf to store them, his photo, and the picture book I used to read him every day when he was in the shelter.

Lily now lives alone on the kitchen side of the house with Sloopy Anne on the bedroom side. I wonder if Lily now regrets being so mean to Sloops because she’s suffering from loneliness and grief. I had to take her to the vet yesterday (yes, she has an urgent care open on Sundays) and get her fluids and Gabapentin because she wasn’t eating or pooping. She’s doing a little better with much TLC from the Gardener and me.

It’s my turn to sleep on the couch with her tonight because last night was the Gardener’s turn.

 

 

27 Comments

Filed under #poetswithcats, #ScrapSalvagingFamily, Book Review, Cats and Other Animals, coming of age, ELJ Editions, Family, Family history, flash memoir, Flash Nonfiction, hybrid memoir, Memoir, Nonfiction, SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

by | May 18, 2026 · 6:00 am

Best Friends!!!

Once my memoir was published I felt free to think over my life again, mind unfettered by writing about it, and it occurred to me how important female friends have been to me.

I’m not one to generally enjoy hanging out with a group of women unless I am actual friends with each of them. Once there is anyone else in the (small) group who I don’t know it becomes more difficult for me. I’ve written before about being a Highly Sensitive Person. Maybe it’s just introversion. Or social anxiety. My ADHD. Or maybe I’m on the spectrum–there are certainly enough autism “tests” available online that would put me there. (Seriously, I think this is really unfair to people with real autism). Anyway, I prefer my friends one on one. That way I can focus on that person and not feel sidetracked and overstimulated by too much going on.

I had a best friend in first grade. Her name was Michelle, and we were both the best readers in our class. She was fun and smart and had an older sister so Michelle was a little old for her age. She even had a Chatty Cathy doll that talked. Or was it a Betsy Wetsy who wet her pants? We got split up in third grade, and I made two new friends, but I wasn’t close to them as I was to Michelle, whereas it appeared to me that Michelle went on to make lots of best friends in her class.

After we moved, I met Jill. We both loved to read mysteries and Gene Stratton Porter books which were wonderful for the approach to nature, but had some virulent racism in them. Nobody was monitoring our reading! We played in the woods and collected what we found. Jill not only was in my fourth grade class, but she was in my Sunday School class as well.

But then we moved again. The friend I met that first week in the new house was the girl next door. She is the first friend who shows up in Scrap. She is one of the only characters in the book where I changed her name and called her Ellen. The reason I did that is because Ellen died at age nineteen of ovarian cancer. Her stepbrother is also in the book, and he also died too young. I don’t know why I made this decision, but somehow I know it’s because of Ellen’s death. Although by the time she passed, we had already moved away again and had gone to different high schools. Ellen attended my wedding, but we were no longer close. I ended up seeing her a few weeks before she died, when she was looking for a suitcase to take back and forth to the hospital. Then I went to the visitation at the funeral home, a very distressing event.

Ellen’s sarcasm and sharp wit helped me get through some difficult 10-12 year old times with my father. She spoke up to my father, something he was not used to. And she was a bit of a wiseacre. But in the years we were apart, Ellen changed completely and became what I thought of at the time as a goody-goody, dressing very modestly (in the early 70s!), carrying a tiny mom-style purse on her forearm. But did this happen because of the cancer? I have her senior picture still, taken before she got sick. In it, she’s beautiful, her long brown hair thick and wavy, her eyes sparkling.

Best friends take on the world!

The next best friend that shows up in Scrap is Randi. We are still friends although we live in different states. Randi and I were in all our classes together all through junior high because our school was “tracked” and there was only one class of our track. Randi and I became inseparable and pulled off some pretty weird capers, even after I had moved to a different high school, such as secretly driving 150 miles away to see a boy I had a crush on who had moved. If my parents had known!!! But they didn’t. Randi was always there for any silliness I could concoct and always had my back. I couldn’t have gotten through those years without her.

All of my female friends have been important to my development as a person and also as a writer. They have been a saving grace of my life.

This leads me to this: I had a LOT of help writing this book. Any book that takes 18 years to come to fruition has either sat there doing nothing most of the time or has been kicked around and around and around. Scrap is the latter. So many people–friends and strangers–have had a hand in Scrap that when I thought of writing a thank you to go in the book, I had one panic attack after another. What if I forgot someone at the time I was writing it? After all, memories come to us in fits and starts. They don’t rest at the front of our minds all the time. Not enough room!

Finally, I decided to skip the public thank you because it was too overwhelming. But if you helped me with this book don’t think for one moment that I don’t think of you often and of the help you gave me.

And thank you if you read it recently or are reading it now. You can’t imagine how much it means to me to share this story that’s been brewing for many decades!!!

PURCHASE SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY

###

A few recent links:

My guest post about the process of writing Scrap at True Book Addict

True Book Addict

A review of Scrap and several excerpts from the book at Storyteller Poetry Review

Storyteller Poetry Review

A new ekphrastic microstory at The Hoolet’s Nook (nothing to do with Scrap)

The Umbrella at The Hoolet’s Nook

This link is the photograph that inspired the story.

THE UMBRELLA PHOTOGRAPH

###

Tour Schedule for Scrap: Salvaging a Family (memoir in flash):

March 21: Joy Neal Kidney (review)

March 23: Liz Gauffreau, (review)

March 24: Marie Ann Bailey, (review)

March 25: John W. Howell, (excerpt)

March 30: Miriam Hurdle, (companion story)

March 31: Review Tales (review)

April 2: the bookworm (review)

April 9: Ashley’s Books, Cozy Home Delight (review)

April 13: What’s That Book About (guest post)

April 15: Tabi Thoughts(review)

April 23: Lavender Orchids (review)

April 27: The Reading Bud (review)

May 4: Chelsea’s Books (review)

May 4: Smorgasbord (excerpt)

May 6: Brotman Blog (review)

May 7: The Reading Bud (interview)

May 14: True Book Addict (guest post)

May 15: Storyteller Poetry Review (review and excerpts)

May 19: True Book Addict (review)

May 21: The Book Connection (review)

May 26: Author Anthony Avina (review)

May 28: Author Anthony Avina (guest post)

Follow the tour with the hashtag #ScrapSalvagingFamily

###

36 Comments

Filed under #ScrapSalvagingFamily, Book Review, coming of age, ELJ Editions, Family, Family history, flash memoir, flash nonfiction, Flash Nonfiction, hybrid memoir, Memoir, Memoir writing theory, Nonfiction, Scrap:Salvaging a Family

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | May 12, 2026 · 2:45 pm

Memoir Finalist!

Just a quick update post.

YAY!!!

Sorry if I split your eardrums ;). Scrap: Salvaging a Family is a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

I think it’s very interesting that another of the memoir finalists is Deborah Sosin’s book Escape Velocity. She wrote it in 70 70-word memoir pieces. So that makes two finalist books that were heavily influenced by flash/micro writing. It would be interesting to look at memoirs from previous years and see if flash or micro popped up in that field. I kind of doubt there was much.

Just ordered Deborah’s book!

Remember that if you want to order an ebook of Scrap, it needs to be through the publisher, not Amazon. You can get a paperback either place.

SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY AT ELJ EDITIONS

If you’re up for an interview of me, there is one at The Reading Bud.

LUANNE CASTLE INTERVIEW AT THE READING BUD

closeup of a blue retro typewriter and the word memoir written with it in a yellowish foil

Leave a comment

Filed under #ScrapSalvagingFamily, Book Award, coming of age, ELJ Editions, Family, Family history, flash memoir, Flash Nonfiction, flash nonfiction, hybrid memoir, Interview, Memoir, Nonfiction, SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY, Scrap:Salvaging a Family

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | May 6, 2026 · 6:19 am

Genealogy Sort Of in Scrap

My friend Amy at Brotman Blog who writes engaging and well-researched historical novels has written a fabulous review of Scrap: Salvaging a Family. While you’re over at her blog, check out her in-depth, thorough, and fascinating blog posts constructed through her genealogical research.

Here is an excerpt of Amy’s review:

Have you ever picked up a book, not knowing what to expect, and become so wrapped up in the story and the writing that you just don’t want to put it down? That was my experience  reading Luanne Castle’s newest book Scrap: Salvaging a Family. From the first page until I finished it, I was spellbound.

The link can be found here:

AMY’S BROTMAN BLOG

Amy and I met many years ago on WordPress through her Brotman Blog and my family history blog, The Family Kalamazoo. At the time I began that blog, I had already been doing a lot of genealogical research on my mother’s family. It was fun because my grandfather had given me a large collection of old family photos and also because Dutch records are possibly the easiest ones in the world to research.

It was not at all so easy to research my father’s family. I had no information about my father’s father until Dad finally told me where I could find his name and profession (this is all in Scrap and a lot more interesting haha). Then I could really start to research in earnest. I describe what I know in my memoir. I ended up taking a DNA test to try to match family of my father’s father. Read the book 😉 to see how that went.

My paternal grandfather is well represented in Scrap as a thread of the book really is my “search” for the man. Before he passed away, my father’s twin, my Uncle Frank, gave me a photo of their father that I had never known existed. This image has been colorized by an artist and shows me why my hair began to turn gray when I was 26 . . . .

Tour Schedule:

March 21: Joy Neal Kidney (review)

March 23: Liz Gauffreau, (review)

March 24: Marie Ann Bailey, (review)

March 25: John W. Howell, (excerpt)

March 30: Miriam Hurdle, (companion story)

March 31: Review Tales (review)

April 2: the bookworm (review)

April 9: Ashley’s Books, Cozy Home Delight (review)

April 13: What’s That Book About (guest post)

April 15: Tabi Thoughts(review)

April 23: Lavender Orchids (review)

April 27: The Reading Bud (review)

May 4: Chelsea’s Books (review)

May 4: Smorgasbord (excerpt)

May 6: Brotman Blog (review)

May 7: The Reading Bud (interview)

May 14: True Book Addict (guest post)

May 19: True Book Addict (review)

May 21: The Book Connection (review)

May 26: Author Anthony Avina (review)

May 28: Author Anthony Avina (guest post)

Follow the tour with the hashtag #ScrapSalvagingFamily

11 Comments

Filed under #ScrapSalvagingFamily, Book Review, coming of age, ELJ Editions, Family, Family history, flash memoir, Flash Nonfiction, flash nonfiction, hybrid memoir, Memoir, Nonfiction, SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY, Scrap:Salvaging a Family

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | April 27, 2026 · 7:49 am

The Biggest Historical Event of My Childhood

Lavender Orchids has published a review on Instagram. Here is the start of it:

###

A copy of the newspaper we received at our home about President Kennedy’s assassination

 

President Kennedy’s assassination was the biggest news of my childhood and happened when I was in third grade. It’s the one event that touched the lives of every child. In my case, we got let out of school early, but didn’t know why. I remember waiting outside for the school bus, wondering what in the world was going on.

On the bus, we got the scoop from the oldest boys on the bus, the older twin brothers of my friend Vivian. They had a transistor radio and were listening to the news. I could see from their excited faces that they loved being the ones to share the awful news with our tender little minds and hearts. After all, they were in SIXTH grade.

At one point in Scrap: Salvaging a Family, I tell the story of what happened when I got home that day, as well as what happened to me on the day of President Kennedy’s funeral.

Tour Schedule:

March 21: Joy Neal Kidney (review)

March 23: Liz Gauffreau, (review)

March 24: Marie Ann Bailey, (review)

March 25: John W. Howell, (excerpt)

March 30: Miriam Hurdle, (companion story)

March 31: Review Tales (review)

April 2: the bookworm (review)

April 9: Ashley’s Books, Cozy Home Delight (review)

April 13: What’s That Book About (guest post)

April 15: Tabi Thoughts(review)

April 23: Lavender Orchids (review)–on Instagram

April ?: The Reading Bud (review)

May 4: Chelsea’s Books (review)

May 4: Smorgasbord (excerpt)

May 6: Brotman Blog (review)

May 7: The Reading Bud (interview)

May 14: True Book Addict (guest post)

May 19: True Book Addict (review)

May 21: The Book Connection (review)

Follow the tour with the hashtag #ScrapSalvagingFamily

44 Comments

Filed under #ScrapSalvagingFamily, Book Review, coming of age, ELJ Editions, Family, Family history, flash memoir, Flash Nonfiction, History, hybrid memoir, Memoir, Nonfiction, SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | April 23, 2026 · 10:58 am

The Little House in Scrap

The website Women Writers, Women’s Books has featured an article I wrote about the process of writing Scrap: Salvaging a Family. Here is a quote:

At least two, if not three, versions of this traditional chapter memoir were completed. By me apparently. But it didn’t feel as if I wrote them. Because I felt strongly that I wanted the distillation of image and experience. Creating chapters meant writing filler language. That felt inauthentic to me.

The Process of Writing SCRAP

###

 

In Scrap I wrote about the playhouse my father built for me. In 2020,  Twist in Time magazine published my story, “The Changing House,” about the little house. Their website is down, so I suspect the magazine is defunct. The first half of the story is about building the playhouse, which is very similar to the story in Scrap. But the second half of the story follows the little house on its path as long as I knew it.

###

The kids couldn’t wait to play inside the playhouse. Near the ceiling, the rafters formed long wooden pockets where we stored secret agent supplies like decoder rings and invisibility raincoats and private notes listing the boys we liked. Eventually, those things became irretrievable as the wasps set up nests.

We discovered that during the summer, the little house was too hot. We’d haul the child-sized table and chairs out onto the grass. In the winter, the air was as frigid inside as it was outside, but the snow and ice couldn’t get in, so we’d sit in our snow pants and stocking caps and play Candyland. Our fingers froze as we pushed our tokens, but then we’d pull our hands back up into the sleeves of our jackets until it was our turn again.

Eventually, we lost interest in the playhouse and started walking up to the plaza to buy candy and try on lipsticks. The house still stood at the back lot line, an ignored remnant of my childhood, until one fall when we discovered a new use for the little building.

We held sleepovers on Friday nights in the house, away from Mom’s prying eyes. One Friday, my next-door neighbor invited her brother’s friends. Before the boys showed up, we swigged the Grand Marnier I’d pinched from Dad’s bar in the basement. For a few minutes, my neighbor’s brother and I made out on top of my sleeping bag, but the boys didn’t stay long. After they mumbled their goodbyes, we practiced making each other pass out by squeezing our diaphragms. The tender skin on my upper lip burned from the neighbor boy’s stubble. That was one of the last nights we spent in the playhouse.

When we moved away from my favorite neighborhood, Dad strapped the house onto a flatbed truck and hauled it to our newly-purchased rundown summer cottage. My mother christened my playhouse, “The Changing House,” bestowing on it a new identity. Inside we stored stretched out bathing suits, Styrofoam floaties, and boat cushions. Daddy long legs set up residence in there, too, wrapping everything in webs so that when we wanted to use something, we had to make sure our hands were dry enough to wipe them clean or the silk would adhere to our skin until we ran, screaming and shaking our hands, off the dock and plunged into the lake.

One night when I came in from a moonlight swim, I caught my twelve-year-old brother in the little house making out with the fourteen-year-old neighbor girl. Apparently, she didn’t mind that he looked nine, while she could be mistaken for sixteen. My brother grinned when I opened the door on them.

Years later, my father moved the little house—now entirely brindle brown, the crescent moon long ago painted over–across the street, into the woods, where he used it as a storage shed. My brother built my parents a lovely home on the site of the old cottage. After my father’s death, my mother sold the lake property. Last time I drove by, the little house was gone. I imagine the new owners carted it to the junkyard where somebody scavenged it for usable parts.

Tour Schedule:

March 21: Joy Neal Kidney (review)

March 23: Liz Gauffreau, (review)

March 24: Marie Ann Bailey, (review)

March 25: John W. Howell, (excerpt)

March 30: Miriam Hurdle, (companion story)

March 31: Review Tales (review)

April 2: the bookworm (review)

April 9: Ashley’s Books, Cozy Home Delight (review)

April 13: What’s That Book About (guest post)

April 15: Tabi Thoughts(review)

April 23: Lavender Orchids (review)

April 27: The Reading Bud (review)

May 4: Chelsea’s Books (review)

May 4: Smorgasbord (excerpt)

May 6: Brotman Blog (review)

May 7: The Reading Bud (interview)

May 14: True Book Addict (guest post)

May 19: True Book Addict (review)

May 21: The Book Connection (review)

Follow the tour with the hashtag #ScrapSalvagingFamily

28 Comments

Filed under #ScrapSalvagingFamily, Book Review, coming of age, ELJ Editions, Family, Family history, flash memoir, Flash Nonfiction, hybrid memoir, Memoir, Nonfiction, SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY, Scrap:Salvaging a Family

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,