Ardmore Road

[ellenkushner]

Ohmigod - my beloved childhood home is on the market! My brother just drove by & stopped in to look. They paved paradise, put up a parkinglot? Well, the backyard, anyway . . . .What's with that patio? Rolling around in the grass was good enough for us! Where is our swingset? Where's the crystal chandelier that made "fairies" dance on the walls of the diningroom (for that matter, where's the diningroom table?)? And why did they wait til after I left to install a bathroom on the 3rd floor next to my bedroom?

Is it too soon to buy it, restore it & turn it into a museum?? (sob) We used to put on plays on the front porch.

ADDED: Nice big photos here.

Comments

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

::sob::

Posts like this make me ache in my heart.

I've not seen my boyhood home since I left a couple months after my 18th birthday. What terrors and transformations have 30+ years wrought?

As a science fiction writer, surely I can find passage back to that other world...

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

May I be permitted to fangirl you mightily for the Klingon Hamlet and Much Ado? I absolutely adore them.

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

oh my! I'm all aflutter.

I don't think I've ever been fangirled on LJ before.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

You deserve it! The Klingon Hamlet is amazing, but I think the Much Ado is somehow more spectacular. I'd love to see a Klingon Titus Andronicus or Julius Caesar, or any of them really...

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

I cannot take credit for the translations. That was accomplished by Nick Nicholas and Andrew Strader (for Hamlet) and Nick Nicholas (for Much Ado About Nothing), with various other hands contributing to editing and grammatical correctness.

My job was to handle the whip and chair, occasionally threaten or cajole, and handle the particulars of book layout and design. Also the publishing.

So, I made it happen, but I didn't do the real work. :)

::we now return control of this blog to its rightful owner::

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Delightful conversations at my dinner parties always welcome!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Yes, for a good 10 years after it went, I refused to drive anywhere near it, lest I catch a glimpse and be undone....

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Oh how lovely! It looks wonderful.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

A freaky shock!

If it's any comfort, it looks like that patio was just done, probably on an ill-founded belief that "it will help sell the house".

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Ahhh.....

[pameladean]

Wow, I'd have put on plays too! Those columns!

P.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Yes - between the back columns and the house was "offstage" - unless we jumped down into the bushes, which tended to annoy my mom.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

That is a very lovely house. (I have to say that the decorating done inside is a touch banal; if one is to be traditional, then revel in it! Hotel rooms are for hotels!) That patio definitely leaves something to be desired. I'd take that out, put in a pergola (I love a pergola, all twined with wisteria and jasmine and such), and *maybe* use some paving stones to ensure a level table underneath... but I agree, the rest ought to be grass. It's simple and lovely and fits better with the rest of the house, not that vaguely suburban McMansion pretension going on back there right now.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Well said!

[wolfsilveroak.livejournal.com]

I'd love to live in that house.}:P

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Ummm...

Wife grew up maybe a mile from there, on Warrington. Graduated Shaker High in 1965 . . .

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oh, my! I think I had friends on Warrington - or a piano teacher or something....! It was a lovely place to grow up. We all rode our bikes through tree-lined streets at all hours.

[junkduck.livejournal.com]

What a gorgeous home! Why not buy it? It's a lovely setting for a retreat!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oh, you wicked temptress!

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Well, why not, really? Around here (Somerville, MA), you can't get a studio condo for that kind of money. :-}

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

It looks like they've kept it well. The Patio looks small and there was grass. I'm sure the grass could be enlarged. :)
Still my Teen year house got a Different City after I left. It was in Van Nuys, CA (a part of LA) and without moving an inch is now in Sherman Oaks, CA (A tonier part of LA). The post office realigned some former city boundaries for delivery purposes. I giggle when I google it. And except for the bushes in front, it looks pretty much the same.
My kid year house went through a major loss of trees when we left. My mom was bummed when she went back to see it once (it was on the market and she was looking at the time). I haven't been back there.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

It is awful when they totally ruin something key. Delia's house - the one she lived in when I met her, not her childhood home - wasa carefully restored Queen Anne Victorian, with William Morris wallpaper in every room (installed by her at considerable expense, with molding painted to match the quirky, period colors). When we drove past it a few years later, we saw that the rooms were now white. *White*! It justabout killed me.