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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HELLO! HAPPY 2014!!
When I wasn’t reading, I was doing chalk or pencil drawings and watercolor paintings of the birds and flowers and forests I knew.
The scent of warm bark gripped my nostrils, anchoring me, reminding me to breathe . . .
I must say, I had the most godawful urge to stick my tongue out at spiteful old 
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 
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.
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.
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.
American Tall Tales – Magical Mystery – Funny Stories – Nostalgia – Fantasy Fiction
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.
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.
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 . . .
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 
Havenwood Tales 
Mystery Novel Memoir – World War II – Heartland America
Posted in America, tagged America, Coming of Age Story, Freedom, Heartland America, Historical Fiction Books, Mystery Novel, Secrets, Social Commentary, World War 2 Veterans, WW II on May 24, 2012| 13 Comments »
Excerpts from HAVENWOOD TALES Beginnings
by D.J. Houston
~ Honoring My Father on Memorial Day ~
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My first pearl appeared the summer I turned six, not long after Daddy and Uncle Arthur returned from the Second World War . . .
Yet no one could begin to grasp the consequences; it was too impossible to confront that such a thing as an atom bomb could ever happen in the first place.
Even after the war, top-secret scientists kept right on with the military to convince each other, time and again, that bombs do, indeed explode, while regular Joe civilian had no clue of such experiments. And anyone who might have been aware felt powerless to stop them. So they did nothing.
Post-WW II Heartland America
Families were reunited with their military loved ones the world over, and did what they could to reorient them to whatever became of their lost years at home.
Most made the transition; all were scarred. But I’d like to think it was easier for the battle-weary to recover in a place like Havenwood . . .
Not that play wasn’t fun and important to youth back then; if anything, a crippling Great Depression with a Second World War on its heels had led Americans of every age to value their freedoms and pleasures more than ever.
But work is its own reward. If you don’t believe me, ask someone who has none. And with more choices that come to a freer people, we could enjoy work more than ever, too.
All the kids I knew did chores, before and after school. And those who had already proven themselves as volunteers for war efforts on the home front had a long leg up when it came to getting hired for the paying jobs.
With no TV screens to spectate at for hours on end, and decades yet before the advent of ubiquitous shopping mall arcades, video games, and personal phones and computers, young people tended to play hands-on at the game of growing up.
They practiced the real deal with real people, in an insular world without internet . . .
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Author, D.J. Houston
Copyright©2007, 2014 D.J. Houston. All Rights Reserved.
Historical Fiction – Memoir Novels – Life Journey – Coming of Age – Social Commentary
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