Life in Havenwood – The Miracle of Mister Walling

HAVENWOOD TALES ~ BEGINNINGS 

“And as predictable as the cycles of the moon, you felt immensely alive and fortified in his presence, imbued somehow with your own capacity for higher understanding . . .”

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Mister Walling was a world of his own.  And he was different from anyone anywhere I’ve been since the days of Havenwood . . .

Truth be told, I rarely ever saw him. It happened in the course of my living that the journey itself would absorb me more than my quest for truth.  And yet Gabriel White Cloud Walling became an indelible part of my life, as necessary as my dreams and the ground I walked on . . .

He never intimated there was anything out of the ordinary about his appearance.  And I really enjoyed looking at him.

His condition seemed so natural, it never occurred to me to ask if there might have been strange circumstances. Or an accident at birth. Or any other meat-brained question I already knew wasn’t the answer.

And because he conducted himself as a quiet and unassuming, good-humored creature and I’d heard no one complain or say he was odd, it seemed to me, initially, that folks around Havenwood had accepted him for the miracle he was—until I realized that he was never spoken of.

Miracle of Spirit

Photocanvas by D.J. Houston

The best I could track, Mister Walling had lived deep in the same patch of woods past the north shore of Silver Bear Lake for well over half a century before I even met him.

He didn’t seem to me to be what folks could call a bona fide recluse; he just preferred to keep to himself, choosing his people and causes of his own accord.

Hindsight might prove that his legacy lived in the stories he shared with a privy few of each new generation. And that those whose lives he touched would know in their hearts that a visit with Mister Walling promised them, if just for a moment, a freedom from the stream of time—something sacred, eternal and true.

“But the reason he seemed so special to me as a child was that whenever you arrived to him, he already knew why you were there.  Whether you knew why or not . . . ”

   Excerpts from HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

D.J. Houston, Author

Copyright©2006, 2016 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Mystery Novel – Life Journey – Paranormal Intrigue – Visionary Fiction – Inspirations

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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 !!

.

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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Havenwood Tales – McAfee Family Wisdom – Braids, Brains & Daisy Buds

New peek at the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings by Author D.J. Houston

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My brother Timmy was another story . . .

photo by Karen Crowe

Timmy had to wear glasses from the time he was five, after Mama caught him aiming his BB gun at what he claimed was a bird’s nest and he ended up blowing a sizable hole in her garden shed window instead.

He’d have been in trouble either way — Mama’s name was Birdie and she was partial to birds. But other than the whipping she threatened to give him for the BB gun incident, he stayed healthy enough . . .

He did need those glasses, though, if only to make him look smart.

And naturally, he said he didn’t care how I looked, braids or no braids. Never mind those rowdies at the General Store who called me “squaw.” Mama brushed that off me easily enough. . . She said I was a perfect daisy bud . . .

C L I C K  H E R E  for More “Family Wisdom“

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Copyright©2007, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Mystery Novel – Coming of Age – Life Lessons – Humorous Stories – American Literature Treasures

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Halloween Costume Parade – Havenwood School Antics

Update from the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

by D.J. Houston

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Artist, Karen Noles (detail)

Me, I just wanted to keep it simple. And I sure wasn’t wearing a dress . . . 

But my usual braids and overalls didn’t qualify as a costume in Havenwood.

So I got the idea I might use the occasion to honor my Native American ancestors, tied a strip of buckskin around my forehead, stuck two mockingbird feathers in back and said I was an Indian.

At least it was easy.

And as it turned out, I was also glad I’d declined Mama’s offer to borrow her lipstick for war paint …

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CLICK  HERE to Hickey’s Costume Parade 🙂

Magical Mystery – Humorous Stories – America Literature Treasures

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

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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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Native American Stories – American Ancestry – Havenwood Secrets

~ from the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

“Curiosity might kill a cat eventually, but I was incorrigibly willing to risk such things . . .”

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Apparently, the gods of curiosity were destined to call upon me again — only this time to investigate a different class of enigmatic stuff.  But it quite enchanted me.

So off I flew, into what was left of my summer of junk and treasure, to excavate signs of an ancient world — like arrowheads and beads of shell and little, carved hardwood totems.

Sometimes I’d find a rotting weapon handle or a fishing spear or such, washed up in the mud of a creek bank.  And always clay vessels and pottery shards with faded, pigment markings and whatever Native rarities I could scrape from the hills and fields of Havenwood or reclaim from the secret woods that nestled our community. . .

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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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Wisdom from Secrets – Coming of Age – Inspirations

Excerpts from the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

by Author, D.J. Houston

“My mother spoke the wisdom of the Ancestors, secrets from beyond Earth”

My mother’s mother, Meda, left this world before I was born.

She was a full-blood Shawnee Indian, the daughter of my great-grandparents whose keen eyes still watched over us from a tintype photograph high on our living room mantle.

Inherently proud of my Native American heritage, I felt honored to be part of a ritual she had once shared with my mother on that giant rock, overlooking the stream in the hidden woods . . .

CLICK HERE for SECRETS

Paranormal Stories – Mystery Novel – Coming of Age Story – Intrigue

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

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Paranormal Mystery – Havenwood Tales Enchantment

A peek at the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings by D.J. Houston

“I had shifted time across a line that wasn’t there, into a place of such enchantment I could only gasp and close my eyes as the feeling of arriving somewhere I had always hoped for, having no idea what I would find, engulfed my world . . .”

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The scent of warm bark gripped my nostrils, anchoring me, reminding me to breathe . . .

I gathered up my gumption and with the dauntless faith of youth, strode purposefully across the clearing, assuring myself that a cool drink of water from the pristine creek running back of the cabin should be reason enough to knock on the door for permission.

It was not until I reached the stairs leading up to the porch deck that doubt began to enter my calculations . . .

CLICK HERE to READ MORE  . . .

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Excerpts from the coming novel HAVENWOOD Tales Beginnings

Copyright©2006, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Paranormal Mystery Story – Native Americans – Inspirations – Secrets of Gifted Children

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Mystery Story Intrigue – Freedom, Inspirations and Wisdom – Havenwood School

PART II of  the excerpt from HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings– “Spring in Heartland America”

Missed PART I ? – CLICK HERE

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I must say, 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 just didn’t know who.

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. But it was easy!

One day, I hung outside her classroom door with my arms stacked full of fresh library books till she sniffed me out. And when she huffed over to shoot me the daggers, I just gave her my goofiest grin.

Now, nobody EVER smiled at Miss Hickey. So after both her eyes popped out of her head and rolled on the floor like gumballs (. . . that’s how I saw it, anyway), needless to say, she never bothered to glare at me again. Blame it on the power of imagination, if you like.  But, hey — Mission accomplished.

In that glorious Spring before I turned seven, little could suppress my urge to learn. I had given myself free rein.

With reading treasures I culled from Havenwood School’s library and the books of her own Miss Greenlee loaned me — books filled with beautiful illustrations and intriguing photographs that could tell their stories without even needing words — the whole new world Mama promised me when I first started school was mine to explore every day.

Through books, I could marvel at masterful statues in London and Greece, canal boats in Venice, four seasons in Paris; explore Ireland’s pastoral sheep farms, and scamper with wild goats in the Scottish Highlands.

Aboriginal Dreamtime

I could wonder at the linear depictions of skinny Egyptian queens and kings and track the hieroglyphic stories of their lives. I could listen to Dreamtime Story spirits of Australia’s Aboriginal people, and feel the throbbing rhythms of African Zulu warriors dancing the hunt as their pictures came alive for me. And I could dream of my life’s journey carrying me across the vast oceans of earth, to make friends with fascinating people in foreign lands.

Through books, I became enthralled with the art and culture of my Native American ancestors, and amazed by the genius of Renaissance Men in America. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, witty Samuel Clemens with his pen name, Mark Twain, all spoke to me. 

And I would later come to know the Founding Fathers of my nation, and realize–after the dark years that followed my own generation’s folly–how much the character of these great men and others of their ilk helped shape a Neo-Renaissance awakening.

And in my youth, their foresight, will and wisdom inspired me to believe in my ability to help in this world, and fueled my determination to visit my friend Mister Walling again, even if it had to be a secret . . .

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C O N T I N U E D  – C L I C K  for Surprising Part III

Author D. J. Houston

Copyright©2011, 2014 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Magical Mystery – Social Commentary – Coming of Age Story – American Literature Treasures

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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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Wisdom from Mystery – The Truth About Monsters

“When people are willing to look at evil deeds for what they are and forbid them, then evil can’t hide anymore.”

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CONTINUED from Life Lessons – Truth and Autumn Dreams

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“Your grandmother Meda used to bring me to this place when I was a very young girl.  We could talk about anything here.”

My mother’s mother, Meda, left this world before I was born.  She was a full-blood Shawnee Indian, the daughter of my majestic great-grandparents whose keen eyes still watched over us from their tintype photograph high on our living room mantle.

Instinctively proud of my Native American heritage, I felt honored to be part of a ritual she had once shared with my mother on that giant rock overlooking the stream in the hidden woods . . .

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Halloween Costume Parade – circa 1940s Celebration – Havenwood School

“My mates and I poured out the door and scattered into the blustery autumn wind like a flock of well-dressed scarecrows . . .”

Halloween was due on a Thursday in 1946.

As school was dismissing on Wednesday, Miss Greenlee made another one of her famous announcements – only this time with an added caveat that would change life as I knew it before nightfall the next day.

The innocuous sounding part was, “Anyone who would like to wear a costume to school tomorrow for Halloween may do so.”

That in itself was enough to conjure a roomful of mixed emotions. But the caveat was the kicker.

“You will please design your costume by yourself.”

And that was the rule. No cheating.

Miss Greenlee wasn’t forbidding us to scroll forward in time a few decades and buy costumes from store aisles that didn’t exist yet. She was just saying we couldn’t let anyone else make creative decisions for us. And we only had a few hours to decide.

We’d already spent the week swapping ghost stories on the playground, thinking we’d have some orange cookies and punch on Thursday and call it a Halloween. So you can imagine, on such short notice, how many straw-hatted farmers toting buckets and rakes and sheet-clad ghosts and high-heeled, beaded ladies stumbling over their mothers’ dresses were likely to show up for the “Extras” cast on Halloween morning.

But refreshingly, most of Miss Greenlee’s students managed to notch up their level of costume design to suit the “Supporting Role” category . . .

Villains and War Paint

Bobby Blackstone and Teddy MacDougal played villains, of course. They’d rubbed coal all over their faces and wrapped themselves together in a big. black funeral parlor awning.

They wouldn’t have said how they came by the awning, so nobody bothered to ask. But they were more than prompt to accommodate anyone cheeky enough to sneak a peek at them, baring their teeth and hissing in campy, Bela Lugosi voices, “We are the vicious two-headed spider and we’ve come to eat you up!”

Me, I just wanted to keep it simple.  And I sure wasn’t wearing a dress . . .

I had my fantasies about turning into a butterfly, but that wasn’t happening yet. Not according to the mirror, at least. My stubborn habit of dressing like a “tomboy” (as the gossips put it) wouldn’t permit such a delicate appearance in public on my part, anyway.

But the usual braids and overalls didn’t qualify as costume in Havenwood. So I got the idea I might use the occasion to honor my Native American ancestors, tied a strip of buckskin around my forehead, two mockingbird feathers in back and said I was an Indian. At least it was easy.

And as it turned out, I was also glad I’d declined Mama’s offer to borrow her lipstick for war paint. Katy Winthrop’s cheek rouge was enough for one day . . .

When I guessed correctly that Katy’s cheeks were meant to look like big red cherries to compliment the plastic fruit piled on her head, you’d think she’d just won the lottery, the way she squealed and carried on to thank me. But I must say, for a shy, plain girl who sat in the back of the classroom and kept to herself, I had to admire her daring on that headdress.

In my opinion, Katy was clearly the star of the show. And since Miss Greenlee’s other rule was that nobody could make fun of your costume, I figured she’d be safe in that respect.

Righteous Miss Hickey, however, was so offended by the blasphemy of such a thing as anyone ever wearing a costume (let alone to school) that when Mister Attabee gave us permission to stage a costume parade over lunch time, you could practically see locomotive smoke shooting from Hickey’s ears.

As we single-filed, smiling and waving in our disguises, past the open doors of the cafeteria and classrooms along the hall, older students whistled and cheered and teachers waved back and applauded.

Quilt by Susan Propst

Some played like they were afraid; others looked duly impressed, especially with Blackstone and MacDougal’s two-headed whatever-it-was. Even the weird science teacher, Mister Salamander, raised his eyeballs off the jar of brains on his desk long enough to refocus on mad-cow Clayton and the Siamese spider twins.

But all Miss Hickey could do was sputter and fume and claw at her breast, like she was being murdered by the very brazenness of it all. And I’m sorry, but that was downright entertaining . . .

All told looking back, it was a day to remember . . .

And when the final bell rang to end it, my mates and I poured out the door and scattered into the blustery autumn wind like a flock of well-dressed scarecrows, clutching our spooky artwork to share with home and family.

~

Excerpts from HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

by D.J. Houston

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MORE HALLOWEEN MEMORIES at “Halloween Art – School Nostalgia“

Copyright©2007, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

America Literature Treasures – Holiday Stories – Inspiring Stories – Visionary Fiction

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Victory for America – Home and War

A peek at the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings by Author, D.J. Houston

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Family Secrets . . .

I was only just getting to know my father then.  Or at least what he’d become.

He’d been away to war so long, I’d even begun to wonder if I’d only imagined the times when the uniformed man in the picture frame on Mama’s dressing table lingered next to my crib to play with me by the light of a tiny nursery lamp, tickling my toes and fingers until we laughed out loud at each other.

As the years blended one to the next, the promise of his constant presence in my life dwindled to little more than a mist of wishful thinking, if I thought of him at all.

Envelopes with foreign stamps and the feelings that broke in Mama’s voice when she read passages from his letters to Timmy and me helped keep Daddy alive for us.  The scene I caught of Timmy in front of the chiffarobe, sniffling and blowing his nose on his sleeve while he tried on Daddy’s hats, made its mark, too.

But our father was home now, home to all he’d fought for.  And I was letting the strength of his quiet nature spread around me like calm on a morning pond.

He reminded me of a sycamore tree with his tall, lean build and sturdy limbs.  His skin was white when he rolled up his sleeves to wash his hands in the wintertime.  And his hair was as shiny black as a raven’s wing, only curly . . .

He had a sort of handsome face, I thought, with a strong jaw and a high forehead like Timmy’s.  His eyes were the hazel, Irish eyes my own eyes echoed.  But I was just beginning to see him as something more than a stranger who’d been smart enough to marry my mother.  And she said the war left him with troublesome things on his mind.

I figured he wasn’t ready for me to tell him about Mister Walling.

As for Mama, she must have been quite a catch for anyone.

She was a pretty, plump brunette with light bronze skin and dark violet eyes, who liked to wear aprons with big pockets and her shoes as seldom as possible — a rare free spirit, inclined to practice the time-honored values of her Native American mother over those of her English father.

And while I knew she would hear with her heart whatever I had to say without belittling my reality, some innate, protective instinct prevented me from giving her reason to have to mention Mister Walling, or suffer undue concerns about my comings and goings.

WW II Victory, Freedom and Apple pie. . .

My sweet, brave mother had found balance in her life and I didn’t want to upset it.

She was grateful to be home in her own big kitchen, cooking and baking . . .  with all the sugar and spices and herbs she needed or wanted — away from the hard times she’d endured at the Sand & Gravel plant after Daddy went to war and the money ran low, when rationing of everything from milk to nylon stockings was in full swing and we could no longer survive on barter from our Victory Garden yield alone.

But those times were behind us now. . .

Timmy and the boys at school didn’t have to collect used paper and metal and rubber for the war production scrap piles anymore.  And I didn’t have to stay with that overbearing woman who smelled like pork cracklings and made me call her “Aunt Millie,” while Mama worked long hours at the plant with too many ladies who wished their men were home.

And freedom reigned!

FATHER’S DAY TRIBUTE:  C L I C K  H E R E

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Excerpts from the novel HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

D. J. Houston, Author

Copyright©2006, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Historical Fiction Books – Mystery Novel – World War II Veterans – Social Commentary

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Life in Havenwood – The Miracle of Mister Walling

HAVENWOOD TALES ~ BEGINNINGS 

“And as predictable as the cycles of the moon, you felt very alive and fortified in his presence, imbued somehow with your own capacity for higher understanding  . . .”

–

Mister Walling was, pure and simple, a world of his own.  And he was different from anyone anywhere I’ve been since the days of Havenwood.

Truth be told, I rarely ever saw him. It happened in the course of my living that the journey itself absorbed me more than my quest for truth.  And yet Gabriel White Cloud Walling became an indelible part of my life, as necessary as my dreams and the ground I walked on . . . . .

He never intimated there was anything out of the ordinary about his appearance. And I really enjoyed looking at him.

His condition seemed so natural, it never occurred to me to ask if there might have been strange circumstances. Or an accident at birth. Or any other meat-brained question I already knew wasn’t the answer. And because he conducted himself as a quiet and unassuming, good-natured creature and I’d heard no one complain or say he was odd, it seemed to me, initially, that folks around Havenwood had accepted him for the miracle he was — until I realized that he was never spoken of.

Miracle of Spirit

Photocanvas by D.J. Houston

Yet the best I could track, Mister Walling had lived deep in the same patch of woods past the north shore of Silver Bear Lake above Havenwood for well over half a century before I even met him. And he didn’t seem to me to be what folks would call a bona fide recluse; he just preferred to keep to himself, choosing his people and causes of his own accord.

His value sprang from the stories he shared with a privy few of each new generation. And those he touched knew in their hearts that a visit with Mister Walling promised, if just for a moment, a freedom from the stream of time — something sacred, eternal and true.

I think another reason he was so special was the fact that whenever you arrived to him, he already knew why your were there, whether you knew why or not.

And as predictable as the cycles of the moon, you felt very alive and fortified in his presence, imbued somehow with your own capacity for higher understanding—if not of what had happened, then surely of things to come . . .

Excerpts from the opening of HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings

D.J. Houston, Author

Copyright©2006, 2014 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.

Mystery Novel – Life Journey – Paranormal Intrigue – Visionary Fiction – Inspirations

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