Saturday, January 16, 2010

Across the Road

Across the road from the Little White House was Dunn Funeral Home. Grandmother and Granddaddy lived in the left half. The right half was the funeral home. I think that the piano we all learned to play sat in the central hallway.

(If you look carefully to the left of the funeral home, you can see the garage that was in front of where Mama's current house is. The "concrete pad" was the floor of the garage.)

These pictures must have been taken when the funeral home was new because there are no fish ponds in front. There were two large, rectangular, concrete fish ponds on either side of the walkway. Grandmother had goldfish and lilies in the ponds. Seems to me that the goldfish were HUGE!! Big enough to bite a chunk out of your leg. But then again, I was pretty young.

I spent a fair amount of time here with Maudie. Mama had the flower shop, Daddy was working for Grandmother and Granddaddy, and Maudie played with me. Coloring with her was the best. She made me feel like she had nothing better to do than to be with me. She was wonderful. I wish you all could have known her. Her funeral was the first one in the "new" funeral home in Eddyville. 1962.

Me, Cindy, Mama, Grandmother, Rosemary, and Maudie

This picture was taken in the living room. You'll recognize the birch tree picture on the wall as one of the many Paint-by-Number pictures that Grandmother painted. I believe that's the dining room through the doorway and the kitchen beyond that. The kitchen opened onto a porch and there's a picture somewhere of Uncle Kenneth turning the crank on an ice cream maker and Aunt Katherine in pin curls. She was trying to avoid the camera, but no such luck. Hopefully, that picture will turn up, too.

Mama, me, and Granddaddy

On Easter, we would all go to church and then come here for Easter dinner. While we were at church, the Easter bunny would come and hide our eggs. All of us, all the cousins, would then head out looking for eggs. One Easter, we were playing shadow tag. I jumped on Karen's (cousin) shadow. She jumped backward and.........FELL INTO THE FISHPOND!

Yes, she fell right into the 200 foot deep fishpond with the killer, whale-sized goldfish! All the grownups came running, got Karen out. Truly if she had worn the heavier coat that Aunt Katherine told her to (yes, Karen disobeyed), she may have drowned, or been eaten by the goldfish, or something even worse! I felt that it was my fault that she fell, but she was never mad at me about it. She knew I didn't mean to make her fall into the fishpond.

Dunn Funeral Home always seemed like a mansion to me - actually, it still does. :-)


This picture came from a CD that Mama and Bill had of photographs from Old Kuttawa. It looks as if it was a picture for the newspaper.

2 comments:

  1. Maudie was Rowena's mother? Right? And who is Karen? That is a really cool house. I'm guessing it's not around anymore?

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  2. Shelley - Yep - Maudie is Mary Isabelle Cannon Hayden, Rowena's mother! It's not around, but if you look carefully at the photo, you can see the garage behind it. This is the garage that was in front of your "HeeHee's" current house. The concrete pad at Mama's (HeeHee's) was the floor of the garage. Thanks for reading this blog - am doing it for you and your cousins as much as anyone else :-)

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