Havenwood Tall Tales ~ Trudie McAfee’s Spring Shenanigans

H E L L O there !! And H A P P Y  S P R I N G !!

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Trudie McAfee here to share the latest with all our wonderful friends and fans of Havenwood Tales!

My author D.J. asked me to write and tell you she’s alive and well and working on HAVENWOOD TALES, and that I am eternally young. But instead, I’ll let you in on what I’ve been up to meanwhile. And please don’t tell D.J. — okay? She might thing I’m being saucy. Let’s just let this be our little secret ; )

I’m SO EXCITED!! You should see all my beautiful Pinterest board pictures!!! There’s books and birds and flowers and Spring, and surprises for Mama and all kinds of things!

You can peek at what Home in Havenwood‘s like, the 1940s, America, My Favorite Things, a Magical Kingdom, Amazing Nature, Native Americans and lots more fantastical stuff, from fancy foods and beautiful quilts to Life Lessons I’m learning (… some the hard way) ; D

Spring has sprung and the race is on to share more Havenwood Tales with you! Thanks very much for being my friend! I hope you enjoy my Pinterest fun, I really like sharing the joy : ))

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Love and Hugs,

Trudie McAfee – Narrator of HAVENWOOD TALES

P.S. I love my Author. I did this for you, Miss D.J. Please don’t be mad.

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Coming of Age – American Tall Tales – Inspiring Stories – Magical Mystery – Heartland America

Copyright©2014 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings Novel by D.J. Houston

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Mystery Novel Valentine from Heartland America

~ from HAVENWOOD TALES by D.J. Houston

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We were loitering over breakfast, contemplating how to dig out, when a clarion cry of “Man alive!” sounded in the yard.

By the time Daddy and Timmy and I could scramble to the front door, ever optimistic Uncle Arthur was tromping in, stomping his snow-caked boots on the rug and rubbing his hands together like two sticks praying to kindle a bonfire, hollering, “Nothing like a little cold snap to clear a fella’s head!”

Behind him, a deep voice grumbled beneath a bundle of woolen mufflers topped by Uncle Chester’s red nose and a brown leather aviator cap with humongous, sheepskin-lined ear flaps . . .

 C L I C K :  “Valentine for Uncle Chester”

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Copyright©2010, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Magical Mystery – Childhood Memories – Inspiring Stories – Heartland America

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Magical Mystery – Inspirations – Uncle Chester’s Music

From the Mystery Novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings by D.J. Houston

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Down on the floor, hidden from view by a heavy crocheted tablecloth, I could hear Uncle Arthur and Daddy in the parlor, whooping and slapping their thighs, swapping Irish tall tales and war buddy stories — good for a smile, but nothing I hadn’t heard before. And then somewhere off in a corner, Uncle Chester started picking country tunes on his guitar.  And that was it: I was mesmerized . . .

I couldn’t say how long I stayed there, listening to his music. Or know my life would be forever changed by the experience . . . But there was nothing to do but close my eyes and bow my head to the moment . . .

C L I C K  for  M O R E

Copyright©2010, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Life Lessons – Coming of Age Story – Mystery – American Literature Treasures

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American Family Life ~ English Christmas Dinner Humor ~ What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Christmas 1946 ~ HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

Secret Reporting after-the-fact (… by Trudie McAfee of Havenwood Tales, but please don’t tell anybody)

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by Norman Rockwell

Being from England and therefore born eccentric, of course it should have been predictable that Aunt Julia would serve weird  food. . .

If the classic English nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence” comes to mind, common sense would have to suspect it contained the remains of four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie — even to a six-year-old like me . . .

C L I C K  for our Wild Celebration 🙂

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Copyright©2010, 2012 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved. 

Holiday Stories, Celebration, Nostalgia – Mystery Novel – Historical Fiction Books

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Hay Rides and a Brother’s Desperation – The New World of Havenwood School

New peeks at HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

by D.J. Houston, Author

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This excerpt is CONTINUED from “Humorous Stories – Baseball Rules – American Tall Tales”  – Missed Part I ? – CLICK HERE

I don’t know who the heck Timmy thought he was fooling . . .

Anybody with an ounce of sense and eyes in their head could figure it out. Ever since the preacher’s niece from Poseyville, ten-year-old Josie May Redding, had blinked at him on a hayride, he’d been praying she was a cradle robber.

The last thing he needed was flirty Miss Josie May thinking he was some kind of sissy babysitter for his dumb little sister.

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Baseball Wisdom and Brotherly Love – American Tall Tales

A Fresh Peek at HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

by D.J. Houston

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Baseball Wisdom . . .

Timmy kept pacing the front yard like a penned up billy goat, clenching his teeth and slamming a battered baseball back and forth with a stinging hand against his old stitched-up catcher’s mitt while he muttered out loud to himself.

He was obviously suffering his own case of walloping doubts about my having to start going to school.

In the first place, it was his school.  And the idea of his naïve, snot-nosed little sister attending that same school would never fit in with his master plan, even if he had one.  But it was the only school around so he had no choice:

It was high time to lay some ground rules . . .

C L I C K  H E R E  for Questionable Advice 😉

 D.J. Houston, Author

Copyright©2007, 2012 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Funny Stories – Havenwood School – Social Commentary – American Family – Mystery Novel

 

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NEWS FLASH – Trudie McAfee of Havenwood Tales – Now On PINTEREST

HI Everybody! SURPRISE!

It’s me, TRUDIE, your HAVENWOOD TALES Narrator character 🙂

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GUESS WHAT ?!! 

B I G  N E W S  — I’M on PINTEREST at http://pinterest.com/trudiehaven/

And it was a BIG DEAL to get there, too!

I confessed to the folks at Pinterest that I live in the 1940s in Heartland America.  I even admitted to being precocious and said I could see the future.  But they said all I needed was a Facebook or Twitter account, and they’d send me an invitation to join.

Simple, right?  So I asked my author — who is (as you probably know) none other than my friend and confidant, D.J. Houston — to sign me up for Facebook BUT…

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American Tall Tales – Humorous Stories of Bribery and Havenwood School

A favorite from HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

 Author, D.J. Houston

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You can call it bribery if you want to, I don’t care.  Other than the possibility of getting to see pickled brains in a jar, I was looking forward to going to school about as much as slopping hogs for the rest of my life . . .

But I was pretty sure God would forgive me   . . .

–C L I C K  H E R E  for  “SCHOOL RUMOR HUMOR”

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Copyright©2008, 2012 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

American Tall Tales – Humorous Stories – Mystery Novel – Historical Fiction Books

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American Literature Treasures – Inspirations – Mystery of Havenwood School

Inspirations from HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

D.J. Houston, Author

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Art supplies kept mysteriously appearing on my table at school . . .

When I wasn’t reading, I was doing chalk or pencil drawings and watercolor paintings of the birds and flowers and forests I knew.

I even made my first attempt to draw the human face — a silhouette profile of Mister Walling, infused with a golden light.

I was adding the finishing touches when I felt Miss Greenlee’s presence arrive behind me like a soft sigh . . .

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C L I C K  H E R E  for “Art of Dreamers”

Paranormal Mystery – Inspirations – Adventure – American Literature Treasures

Copyright©2009, 2012 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

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Coming of Age – Havenwood School – American Literature Treasures

Excerpts from the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings 

D.J. Houston, Author

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I had the most godawful urge to stick my tongue out at spiteful, old Miss Hickey, the Latin teacher. 

Her mission in life since before she was born had apparently been to hate anything and everything new and different; that much seemed obvious. But I’d figured out enough about human nature to know that it probably wasn’t really me she was mad at . . .

I did put an end to her using me for a firing range, though. Daring, considering she had that willow switch hidden under her desk . . .

C L I C K   H E R E

Mystery Story – Coming of Age Story – Fantasy Fiction – American Tall Tales

Copyright©2012, 2014 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

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Life Journey – Miracles – Havenwood Spring in the Heartland

HAPPY EASTER!  HAPPY SPRING! 

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MANY MIRACLES to you and to all our gifted children coming of age in a new world of friendship and imagination!  May you find every opportunity for freedom and adventure on life’s journey!

THANK YOU to my loyal fans and readers.  The official launch of HAVENWOOD TALES is a much bigger task than I thought!

I wish you much joy and enjoyment from these last, updated excerpts I’ll be sharing with you.

May you ever be SURPRISED 😉

CLICK  HERE:  “Spring in Heartland America”

–   Happily Yours,

Author, D.J. Houston

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American Literature Treasures – Miracles – Life Journey – Adventure – Coming of Age

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Paranormal Mystery – Adventures of Mother Nature – Fire and Storm

A 2-part glimpse at the Dark Side of HAVENWOOD TALES

D.J. Houston, Author

 

Mother Nature does a lot of things right.  But this was most decidedly not one of them . . .

No sooner had a warm spring wind chased the last traces of snow into the forest floor than a lightning storm whipped up off the Ohio River and rumbled over us, like an irate god, without a drop of rain.

Then the fire broke out at Jasper Peterson’s Salvage Yard, threatening to burn the whole place to the ground and a century of trash and treasure with it . . .

There was no time to brace myself!

–C L I C K   H E R E

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Mystery Novel – Intrigue – Paranormal Stories –  Adventure – American Literature

Copyright©2008, 2012 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

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Mystery Christmas Dinner – Heartland America Style

. . . He called her his Lily of Liverpool.  She called him her Yankee Doodle.

She liked to say she married him because he made her laugh.  And that with so much opportunity and freedom in America, surely she belonged here, too.

Ladened with crates of Julia’s family heirlooms and decidedly English furniture, they set sail on a passenger ship in the spring of ’46, arrived by train from Boston and bought the old, abandoned Butler place in Rainbolt Hollow, ghosts and all . . .

CLICK to READ

“English Christmas Dinner in America“

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Excerpts from the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

Copyright©2010, 2012 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

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Christmas Decorations and Dirt – Holiday Story Treasures

For THANKSGIVING STORY “PILGRIMS & INDIANS” – Click Here 🙂

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Havenwood School Holiday Inspirations

If I had to choose just one December for the world, this one would certainly do . . .

Except for the scent of a pine wreath hanging over the radiator, our winter classroom smelled pretty much like wet wool and lunch pails, rubber erasers, finger paints and little boys with dirt behind their ears.

CLICK HERE to December 1946 😉

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From the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings by D.J. Houston

Copyright©2008, 2011 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

American Tall Tales – Mystery Novel – Humorous Stories – Nostalgic Stories

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Thanksgiving Humor – Eight Hundred Pounds of Vegetables

PILGRIMS and INDIANS

~ Thanksgiving 1946 ~

Maybe my next big break in life would be on the stage.  Maybe it wouldn’t.  But it promised to be a hallmark moment for Havenwood . . .

To entertain our parents, siblings, other family, friends of family, friends and family of their friends, teachers, older students and their entourages and anyone else we could recruit, my classmates and I scrunched together on a platform stage in the school cafeteria —  under a huge, hanging, paper mache’ cornucopia stuffed with eight hundred pounds of real vegetables — and put on a Thanksgiving play . . .

CLICK HERE to Attend the Play 😉

~ Excerpts from the coming novel HAVENWOOD Tales Beginnings

Funny Holiday Stories – Fantasy Fiction – Historical Fiction Books – American Tall Tales

Copyright©2010, 2012 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

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Funny Thanksgiving Story – The Havenwood School Thanksgiving Play

PILGRIMS and INDIANS

~ Thanksgiving 1946 ~

Maybe my next big break in life would be on the stage. Maybe it wouldn’t.

But it promised to be a hallmark moment for Havenwood.

On the Friday night before Thanksgiving, to entertain our parents, siblings, other family, friends of family, friends and family of their friends plus teachers, older students and their entourages and anyone else we could recruit, my classmates and I scrunched together on a platform stage in the school cafeteria — under a huge, hanging, paper mache’ cornucopia stuffed with eight hundred pounds of real vegetables — and put on a Thanksgiving play.

The invitations read:

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You Are Cordially Invited

To Attend

The First Annual Thanksgiving Play

Havenwood School Cafeteria

Fourth Friday of November

The Year Nineteen Hundred Forty-Six

Seven O’Clock in the Evening

~

I was cast as a Pilgrim woman cradling a baby doll that was swaddled in an itchy Indian trading blanket.

I even conceded to wear a Puritan dress with a huge, white, stifling collar and a bonnet tied under my chin, just to please Miss Greenlee. It was completely out of character for me, of course, but at least I didn’t have to pretend to have a husband.

I wished she’d just let me play Squanto, though. Nobody else came close to looking like him. And thanks to Miss Greenlee’s research, we’d grasped the sense of honor it must have taken for Squanto to persuade all the tribes to help the Pilgrims, considering how he’d been tricked away to Spain to be sold into slavery and then had to escape, and finally returned to America only to find his own people gone.

But his was another story . . .

Nobody played Squanto, we just said good things about him. So I sucked it up, tucked my braids inside my bonnet and held my tongue . . .

Clifford Buck wore some beaded moccasins and his granddaddy’s fringed-sleeve buckskin jacket, beating a ceremonial tom-tom while the audience gathered, to pay his tribute to Squanto and the Indians. I was grateful to see that.

Little Betsy Alcorn played a Pilgrim child standing next to a lanky farm boy named Percy Miller, who was happily dressed as a minister, collar and all.

Clayton Cox played a turkey posted next to the cornucopia. He’d been stuffed into a burlap sack filled with tissue paper, and had a red-beaked mask on his face and tree twigs sticking out the back for an avante-garde tail feather look. Since he couldn’t see with his mask on, his not-so-secret admirer, the Indian Princess Prissy Schwartz, kept inching closer to center stage, trying to get next to Clayton despite his bulky costume.

Other classmates wore more Pilgrim and Indian costumes. And Miss Greenlee had even let Bobby Blackstone and Teddy MacDougal be Indian braves, so long as they agreed to wear pants, left their tomahawks at home and checked their war cries at the door . . .

And when the lights were dimmed, we knew we’d waited nervously and long enough.

It was SHOWTIME !! 

As we streamed single-file onto the stage, the whole place erupted in cheers and applause, so when I crossed through the glare of the spotlight, I forgave Miss Greenlee completely for not casting me in such a prominent role as Squanto.

Since she hadn’t let Bobby and Teddy wear war paint, none of our Indians looked particularly savage, and I didn’t see any old veterans in the audience to get riled up about it if they had. I figured the churchgoers could favor the Pilgrims, regardless, and nobody would be reluctant to bow their heads for the Thanksgiving prayer. Surely family and friends would still like us, no matter what happened.

Prissy and Minister Percy served as the narrators. Others had their lines. All I had to do was to not drop my baby doll, say “Dear Lord, we appreciate all the help these fine Indians give us,” on cue, and remember to smile at the end when Bobby and Teddy started dancing to Clifford Buck’s tom-tom.

We were good to go . . .

Most of the vegetables stayed in the cornucopia. The cornucopia stayed more or less where it was, except for when blind turkey Clayton got his tail feathers caught in the rope while he was wiggling around trying to scratch himself.

But the audience finally quit gasping and holding their breath as soon as the cornucopia stopped swaying, and nobody ran from the stage. Nobody got hurt and nobody sued, nor would they have thought to back then. And hardly anyone forgot their lines — if they did, Miss G was right there in the wings to remind them before they ever had a chance to feel embarrassed.

The show was a hit! Our Thanksgiving play would be remembered, hands down, as the highlight of Havenwood School’s Novembers for years to come.

And as teachers go, I wasn’t the only one who wondered that night if Miss Lucinda Greenlee might be the best kept secret in America.

~

From HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings 

Magical Mystery by D.J. Houston

Copyright©2010, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Funny Stories – Social Commentary – Historical Fiction – American Literature Treasures

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Heartland America Warning – School Rumor Humor

D.J. Houston, Author

Hello Friends!

What a Summer it’s been for America!  Not to mention this extraordinary 21st Century on Earth.

As for our tale of Havenwood, I can only reveal that — following a summer of brave adventures, some startling misadventure and plentiful mystery after Trudie Beth McAfee’s precocious encounter with Gabriel White Cloud Walling — the era of her childhood freedom threatened to become an empty memory, as time drew near for. . .  the inevitable — SCHOOL.

Here’s some FUN for you (circa 1946)  🙂  Enjoy!

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Holiday Stories and Celebrations – ST. PATRICK’S DAY – Luck O’ The Irish

Luck O’ The Irish To Ye from Havenwood Tales!! 

HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY!

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‘Tis said that Saint Patrick’s Day brings out the Irish in everyone 😉

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A holiday originating in Ireland over a thousand years ago, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in many countries around the world each March 17th.

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And since Havenwood Tales’ young narrator, Trudie Beth McAfee, hails from English and IRISH ancestry. as well as Native American, I’d be remiss not to share some Irish adventure and wisdom with you 🙂

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Halloween Art – School Nostalgia – Funny Stories

Sometime around mid-October, with lots of spookiness and a hint of mirth in her playful voice, Miss Greenlee made a terribly important-sounding announcement.

“Halloween is coming! It’s Halloween! We must prepare!”

Naturally, none of us farm-country kids who’d come up during the war years had ever even celebrated Halloween. We didn’t have a clue where to start. But Miss Greenlee’s exuberance was, as always, contagious as the pox, and the whole class went saucer-eyed.

My own ideas were limited.

On Halloween night the year before, Mama and some of her women friends from the Sand & Gravel plant drove Timmy and me to a harvest festival on a farm way out in the boonies.

We played at dodging shadows and bobbed for apples floating in a big washtub along with some other kids, while the grownups traded pumpkins and baskets of corn and nuts and such around a roaring bonfire in the dark. But other than sensing somebody watching me from behind a tree and the hair on my arms standing up, it was pretty uneventful.

As for the idea of trick-or-treating on Halloween, it usually got too cold at night by late October for kids to be running around outside begging candy from Havenwood folks. Nobody had kept extra candy during the war and the habit stuck, and the houses were too far apart for any big hauls if they had any.

But in that freer world of 1946, nothing said we couldn’t celebrate at school . . .

Spiders, Bats and Hump-Backed Cats

With the able tutelage of Miss Greenlee, our gang launched into the spirit of things and learned as we went along.

After a titillating, quick study of the history of Halloween in the Old Country, we created a host of orange and black construction paper silhouettes for decorations, American style. Hairy spiders, hump-backed cats, witches on brooms and flying bats and toothy jack-o-lanterns got traced and cut and tacked around the classroom walls to leer at anyone who dared to look.

The boys from Shop Class brought in a ladder and hung some from the ceiling, dangling from lengths of feed sack string that let the creatures sway and swirl whenever a draft blew in under the door.

And there were times when they moved all on their own – I know it’s true, I saw it happen with my own eyes. And I wasn’t the only one.

Tales about the figures moving on their own, however, were classified as top secret, and could only be embellished amongst ourselves. That was the rule.

So our whole class had to swear a pact of secrecy. We swore in the Shop Class boys and Miss Greenlee, too, for good measure. And with abundant giggles, loud shushes and plenty of bad acting, we pretended the source of all those spooky decorations was surely “a mystery.”

“Gee, they were just here when we got here.”

“We have no idea.”

“Honest.”

And so the story went for any outsider who might inquire, especially the older kids who thought we were cute and would drop by before their classes to play along. And our impishness and those innocent thrills only fueled further collusion, as the camaraderie between us swelled like a fearsome juggernaut.

The Halloween Muse

The Halloween Muse had sequestered our lives and rendered us unstoppable — a force to be reckoned with.

We kept cranking out spooky artwork until we ran out of the whole semester’s supply of construction paper.  Without skipping a beat, Miss Greenlee assigned us to gather up all the fabric scraps we could scavenge and bring them to school. And from every description of colorful cloth, we proceeded to cut out strange-looking trees shapes, people and animals and their various habitats, gluing them onto long panels of brown butcher paper with homemade flour and water paste.

Prissy ran the glue factory crew at a table hidden in the trees behind our building, keeping us well supplied with buckets of yeasty-smelling paste. And while others cut and I designed, the old hardwood floor of the classroom protested our messy business in grumpy silence.

Hand-painted touches were added to make the whole scene look more Halloweeny with hoot owls, ghosts and gravestones. Sketches of skeletons, scary skulls and three pairs of glaring wolf eyes, courtesy of the hooligans Bobby Blackstone and Teddy MacDougal, completed the work. And panel by panel, the kaleidoscope final mural depicting our very own Halloween Village — our masterpiece — was spread across the windows, wrapped around the walls and covered both sides of the door.

We were beyond elated! Life was a Halloween party!

The rest of the school would have killed to know what we were up to. And predictably, the whole happy scenario infuriated the dickens out of dreadful old Miss Hickey.

~

From the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

by D.J. Houston, Author

Copyright©2008, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

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American Tall Tales – Magical Mystery – Funny Stories – Nostalgia – Fantasy Fiction

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Humorous Stories – Baseball Rules – American Tall Tales

From the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

by D.J. Houston

Baseball Wisdom . . .

Timmy was pacing the front yard like a penned up billy goat with his teeth clenched, slamming a battered baseball back and forth with a stinging hand against his stitched-up catcher’s mitt while he muttered out loud to himself.

He was suffering his own walloping case of doubts about my having to go to school.

In the first place, it was his school. And the idea of his naïve, snot-nosed little sister attending that same school would never fit in with his master plan, if he had one. But it was the only school around, so he had no choice:

It was time to lay some ground rules.

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Family Wisdom – Funny Stories – Uncles, Brothers, Braids and Brains

Excerpts from the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings by Author D.J. Houston

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Irish Family Wisdom in Heartland America

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The rest of my family never fretted about my looks in the least.

Unabashedly partial to all things Irish (or even part Irish, like me), my daddy’s brothers, Arthur and Chester, held an opposite view, in fact.

And while humble, homespun Uncle Chester might offer, “You’re cute as a button, darlin’,” regardless of how much dirt I had on my face, and Uncle Arthur might declare with typical exuberance, “Tis a pure perfect lass I’m beholdin’ here!” most any time he saw me, they both insisted I had Mama’s “cheery smile” and “wise, hazel eyes like your Irish daddy.”

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