HALLOWEEN TREATS from the novel
HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings by D.J. Houston
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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 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 . . .
Continued at Halloween School Nostalgia
Copyright©2008, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.
Mystery Novel Intrigue – 1940s – Storytelling – Paranormal Stories
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Then he told me the story of a loyal Irish setter named Buddy. And how, when he was a boy, Buddy laid down one day and never got up.
Mother Nature does a lot of things right — but this was most decidedly not one of them.
My father’s camaraderie with his able-bodied, Irish-minded brothers was always a source of luck and light to the McAfee clan.
Copyright©2007, 2013 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.
Hello, Hello! And HAPPY 2013!
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.
Mister Walling was a world of his own. And he was different from anyone anywhere I’ve been since the days of Havenwood.
A peek at 
The scent of warm bark gripped my nostrils, anchoring me, reminding me to breathe . . .
Warned by a tipsy Aunt Julia that they must let their dinner settle before any sledding or they’d suffer life-threatening stomach cramps, Timmy and the cousins made a sugar-headed dash for the yard, where they managed to keep themselves occupied sailing well-aimed snowballs at Aunt Julia’s fat cats. At least until she caught them in the act, confiscated their slingshots and shooed them, sleds and all, off to the hill.
For all its endless sunny days and amazing Milky Way nights, the magic of that last, abiding summer of my freedom before the era of my schooling years began was too often lost in longing to see Mister Walling.
Havenwood Tales 
Life in Havenwood – The Miracle of Mister Walling
Posted in Inspirations, Wisdom, Mystery, Intrigue, tagged American Literature Treasures, Author D.J. Houston, Inspiring Stories, Life Journey, Miracles, Mystery Novel, Native American Stories, Paranormal Stories, Social Commentary, Spirits & Ghosts, Visionary Fiction on June 17, 2016| 2 Comments »
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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