The Front Yard Ten Years Apart

The Depression was taking its toll in this mid-1930s photo of my family's home, the 1766 Daniel and Charity Leete House. The house needs painting and some repairs. The lawns are unkempt, trees overgrown. My then 17-18 year old mother runs from the camera, lol.

 

By 1946, just postwar, some optimism was returning to the family and the country, even though my grandfather had died in '42 on that very lawn. But the house had been painted, the lands re-landscaped, and all the damage from the historic hurricane of 1938 repaired. This is my aunt Hoohoo, then 20 years old.

Inspiration Times Two

"Stonecutters," © Donald M, Leet, 2013. Click to enlarge to full screen. You have to see the incredible detail in this drawing!

M Y   C O L L E C T I O N — This AWESOME graphite/pencil drawing was recently sent to me. Well, honestly, a nicely matted print was sent to me by the artist. The original is winning awards in the art shows Don submits it to! Don first contacted me last year after I published a few ancient photographs of my family's quarry workers. Don's family diverged from our local "Leete" family eons ago, moving to Michigan so long ago they spell the family name without the final "e," and told me he'd like to do a drawing based on one of the photos. We emailed back and forth a bit, he asked about modern day Leete's Island, and what I knew about the past. Then just a few weeks ago he let me know he was done. The drawing was finding critical success and would I like to see it? This was mailed to me just a short time later and I can't wait to have it put in one of my antique frames. One of my great-great grandfathers owned the quarry, which among many famous sites furnished much of the pale pink granite for the base of the Statue of Liberty, and my great-grandfather on the other side is actually in this drawing. He was a sculptor at the quarry and is the lower right sitting with the cap and coat jauntily thrown over his shoulders.

A big "Thank You" to Don. Your work inspires me as much as that old photo inspired you. The artistic spirit goes 'round and 'round!

• The original post is here.

The Bicentennial Fourth of July, Leete's Island

The family home, the Daniel and Charity Leete House, built in 1766. This photo was taken on July 4th, 1976. This is the house my mother and Hoohoo grew up in, having been in their family since the 1860s. We were only the third family to own it until 1985 when it was sold after Hoohoo's husband, my father's brother, committed suicide and secretly, and illegally, sold it out from under us. More on that later. Much later. Probably in my obituary, lol.

I just love this photo! The house is nestled on a hill, and had beautiful, mature plantings and gardens all around it. Hoohoo had it freshly painted dark brown in honor of the Bicentennial, and it never looked better. Notice the 13-star flag, the same one I hang on my porch every 4th of July. My mother and I never really got over the loss of this house. I always thought I would continue the family ownership. It was really difficult to come up with a new life plan after it was sold. I probably would never have gotten the job in Manhattan had things gone differently, and who knows how that would have changed my life. But things happen for a reason, although I am still not exactly sure what that reason is.

The house looks completely different today. All of the trees have been cut down, all of the original windows and doors have been replaced with a different style, the siding is new, the roof is new, and it has been painted bright white. To say it now sticks out of its hilly landscape like a sore thumb, instead of fitting in so elegantly as it does here, would be an understatement. It has been sold twice since my uncle unloaded it for next to nothing. The first 'new' person's last name that lived there was Casey. It was unbelievably ironic, and cruel, for my parents and I to drive by the old homestead and see Casey on the mailbox.

N O T E :  Ten bonus points to anyone that recognized the purpose the black 'ring' around the ancient tree in front of the house. In the early '70s, Gypsy Moth caterpillars invaded Connecticut and devastated the native trees. You could sit outside at night and actually hear them munching the leaves. They were EVERYWHERE! The year after the first infestation, a tar-like goop was sold everywhere around here. You painted it in a ring around the trunks of trees and the caterpillars couldn't climb up any further. You had to go out and scrape them off every few days and then burn them in a coffee can with a bit of gasoline or kerosene. They haven't really been back since. I wonder if anyone knows why their numbers exploded so much in the first place? The end of DDT or something?

Ancient Family Quarry Photos

Quarry workers, dated 1877. Quarry was located at Leete's Island, CT, and was owned and run by my great-great grandfather, John Beattie, my mother's great grandfather on her father's side. I have an obituary of his brother that died a few years after John, saying they trace their lineage back to 12th century Scotland. My friend Nigel that lives in Edinburgh says there is a Beattie Castlle there, lol.

In much worse condition, but about 20 years younger, this is a photo of eagles and other decorative motifs being sculpted at the quarry. My mother's grandfather on her mother's side was a sculptor. He's at the far right, Andrea De Matteo. He came from a long line of artists and opera singers of Italian descent. He carved his own headstone and those of his three wives—he was widowed twice and had a child out of wedlock as well. Such family drama! His daughter, my grandmother, second marriage was to the grandson of the quarry owner, so I'm related to a quarry artisan and the quarry owner. Between all of the marriages and children, legal and illegitimate, there was a 48 YEAR court battle for Beattie's estate, at which time there was virtually nothing left.

These eagles, I believe, ended up in Boston's South Street train station. He also worked on sculptures for Grand Central Station in New York and several other turn-of-the century large-scale constructions.

No date on this photo, but I'm guessing it's the mid 1890s. My great-grandfather the artist is on the lower right, sitting, with the goatee. His last wife, Concetta, was a self-proclaimed clairvoyant and told my then 5-year old mother that a black cloud would hang over her her entire life! Nice woman... My mother believed her too, 'til her dying days. Probably where I get my "waiting for the other shoe to drop" mentality.

The Family Cars 1931. OK, Turn'em Around.

Some of the family cars taken around 1931-32. Notice that instead of just walking around to the back to take the view of the back of the cars, they actually moved the cars around, and put them in the same order! Just a wild guess, but I'd say my grandmother shot the photos, and had the men in the family move the cars to keep the lighting correct. She would have been 'bossy' like that, lol. But then, when the men got back inside, I'm sure she had strawberry shortcake with fresh whipped cream or a lemon meringue pie waiting for them. 

The car on the very left I can't ID; maybe it's a 1930-31 Plymouth or Dodge? The second-from-the-right is a Model A Ford, I'm guessing a 1929. The 2 cars on the right are Buicks, most likely a '23 and a '25. I have a couple of bud vases that my aunt Hoohoo told me were from the Buicks. Notice how low the car on the left is, the newest one most likely. The two Buicks on the right tower over their newer garage-mates. A lot of technical development occurred in automobiles from the early-mid Twenties to the early Thirties.

The two same Buick coupes, this being the '23, with Hoohoo age 5-6 at the wheel,  and . . .

. . .  the slightly newer '25 Buick with Uncle Art at the wheel. Collectible Automobile featured a Buick coupe from this era a few years ago. Rather than a 'standard' interior with 2 seats in the front and a bench seat in the back, these Buicks came with only a real driver's seat in the front. It was accepted practice for the 2-3 passengers to sit in the back seat, with a fold-down front jump seat just for occasional use. In the really early days of automobiles, there was so much more individuality in vehicles. for good and bad.

The Power of Nostalgia in the Digital World

This fragment of a 78 record, Glenn Miller's The Woodchuck Song, 1946, is all I have left of one of my favorite childhood memories. Click on the record to enlarge. Record is superimposed over my painting, "Checkerberry Memories."

R E M E M B R A N C E — I've written in this blog before of my aunt Hoohoo, a tremendous lady that helped me through a most difficult period in my young life. She fostered the young artist in me, showed me the way to create with my head and my hands what I was feeling inside. If you haven't read about Hoohoo, there's a great photo of her and I in 1967 here and a post I wrote about her here. 

I had two rooms all to myself in her beautiful 200+ year old colonial saltbox home in Leete's Island, the Daniel and Charity Leete House. I had a great bedroom, the Red Room, for my overnight stays, and a little room next to it, Art's Room (named for her uncle Art as much as the art we made in it), full of antique toys, a Depression-era Victrola. and paintings and drawings on the walls she had done as a child and young adult. 

The nights I would spend with her we'd inevitably end up in the little room cranking the Victrola by hand, and playing old 78s of her younger life. We listened to Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, The Andrews Sisters, The Ink Spots, Glenn Miller. We'd sing and try to Jitterbug, well quietly Jitterbug as the old home's 1766 beams shook like a tiny kitten in cold bathwater if we moved around too heavily, lol. We'd look through old magazines and books, she pointing out the old dresses and fashions and me pointing out the old cars and trying to guess what they were. She'd show me how to draw cats,and birds and houses, and anything else that would pop into my head. "How do you draw the sky, Hoohoo?" I was full of questions for her, she had endless patience, and endless affection for her little wide-eyed nephew. I really don't think I would have made it to my teens without her. Hoohoo stepped up when I needed new karma in my life.

One of the songs that highly amused the 8-year old me to pieces was Glenn Miller's The Woodchuck Song. It was silly, it was fun, it was full of that fabulous forties harmonies, and we'd play it over and over, reveling in the scratches and the 'waviness' of those recordings and the player. I learned all the words by heart, and we'd even sing it walking around the yard sometimes. Even though I have all of her 78s to this day, more than 250 or so, and the vast majority are in playable-to-mint condition still in their jackets, the Woodchuck Song's early shellac-resin disk cracked decades ago. It was one that I always put out on my shelves, and through one move or another, one crazy friend or another, or one all-nighter or another, it ended up in fragments. For the past 25 years all I've had is the one small piece scanned and posted above. I hadn't heard the recording in at least 35 years until last night.

Looking at the fragment on my shelf last night, it occurred to me I might be able to find the song online. I checked Youtube, and, seriously, within 5 clicks of my mouse, I was listening to the familiar notes of Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Band swing like they never stopped. The lyrics came flooding back to me:

     How much wood, would a woodchuck chuck, 

           if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

     How many cats would a cat nip nip, 

           if it nipped at a cat if it could?

     Just how high would a horsefly fly. 

           if a horsefly could fly high? 

     How many fish would a fish fry fry,

           if it had any fish it could fry?

     You're a whiz at tricky phrases,

           A walkie-talkie on a street,

     Put away those silly phrases,

          They mean nothing to me.

     How much wood, would a woodchuck chuck, 

          May be hard to say it's true,

     Let's have fun, Try an easy one, 

     Say, I—Love—You.

To hear the entire song, including the second verse, please click over to the YouTube recording here. Its swing-era saxophone, the licks and curls of the trumpets and the rest of the band, the phrasing of the singers, it all just knocks my socks off every time, lol. THAT was singing and THAT was music, and THAT was Hoohoo. I'm 8 years old again, smiling and swaying, my mind a million miles away from my life. At the risk of sounding 100 years older than I am, it's amazing, almost miraculous to me that all of these memories, all of these emotions, are available at the click of a mouse, a push of a button, a link to a site. The digital world we live in can be cold and sterile, it can cause untold grief in the hands of the unscrupulous, and yet, it's also a tool we can connect, and reconnect, with the outside world and with ourselves. Talk about yin-yang! 

My digital piece, Gloria's Loss, incorporating a Glenn Miller album,  the Depression-era sign for my great-uncle Art's beach store, and one of my self-portraits, The Day Judy Garland Died, among other collectibles.

My upstairs foyer today, showing some of the vintage toys and games from my room at Hoohoo's home. The Victrola is downstairs, although not currently in working condition.

Paper Bag Dreams, one of my pieces, utilizing the fragments of a very fragile charcoal drawing done by Hoohoo in the early 1930s on a brown paper bag. That's a school photo of the young artist at just about the same age she created this Depression-era dreamscape of a colonial home, a lake with a sailboat and evergreen trees all around it. A little girl's dreams realized on her mother's reality—Black Friday's stock market crash and resulting Depression affected every member of the family. Cut-up brown paper shopping bags replaced drawing pads for the budding artist.

Pastoral Photo of the Day

A friend of the family meeting the pet sheep and her offspring, ca 1946. Click the image to see the cuteness! I like the ancient outbuilding in the left of the background; I'd love to work with those old boards today.