Chesnut Hill

This book is a collection of short stories, poetry and recipes gleaned from the Growing Up Years of the nineteen-thirties, forties and fifties, on Chesnut Hill. I was born in the big old white clapboard house where we lived. It was a large, airy, cool house in summerand in winter! When frigid temperatures came; and they did, even though it was Florida, and the wind whistled around the corners, we gathered around a cozy wood fire sipping hot chocolate and later slept warmly, bundled under fourteen or so handmade quilts. It was altogether a perfectly lovely place to spend a childhood !

Daddy was a Rural Mail Carrier and mama stayed home to cope with our frequent, wild adventures.

We children, presented a constant challenge. We werent exactly bad just very creativeand we didnt have TV to divert our attention. As a result, we came up with lots of fun things to occupy our time. For instance, we went wading in a lime rock sink hole one summer and caught ourselves a baby alligator which we hauled home in a washtub full of water. We thought hed make a cute pet! But, can you believe that our daddy didnt agree? His reaction was something like, Where theres a baby gatortheres a mama gator!

We were just country kids, in an environment where we were allowed to stretch our imaginations although we did have certain rules. We were not rich in material things and mostly had to make do with what we had but we were a pretty ingenuous bunch of kids.

Come and travel back in time, to the days of my sojourn as a very   precocious inquisitive child. Experience the poignant nostalgia of the sad and happy times our family lived on Chesnut Hill!