Winona Vanlandingham

Chesnut Hill: the Early Years Winona Vanlandingham

This book is a collection of short stories, poetry and recipes gleaned from the "Growing Up Years" of the nineteen-thirties, forties and fifties, on Chesnut Hill. I was born in the big old white clapboard house where we lived. It was a large, airy, cool house in summer...and in winter! When frigid temperatures came; and they did, even though it was Florida, and the wind whistled around the corners, we gathered around a cozy wood fire sipping hot chocolate and later slept warmly, bundled under 'fourteen or so' handmade quilts. It was altogether a perfectly lovely place to spend a childhood ! Daddy was a Rural Mail Carrier and mama stayed home to 'cope' with our frequent, wild adventures. We children, presented a constant challenge. We weren't exactly bad... just very creative...and we didn't have TV to divert our attention. As a result, we came up with lots of 'fun' things to occupy our time. For instance, we went wading in a lime rock sink hole one summer and caught ourselves a baby alligator which we hauled home in a washtub full of water. We thought he'd make a cute "pet"! But, can you believe that our daddy didn't agree? His reaction was something like, " Where there's a baby gator...there's a mama gator!" We were just country kids, in an environment where we were allowed to stretch our imaginations although we did have certain rules. We were not rich in material things and mostly had to "make do" with what we had but we were a pretty ingenuous bunch of kids. Come and travel back in time, to the days of my sojourn as a very precocious inquisitive child. Experience the poignant nostalgia of the sad and happy times our family lived on Chesnut Hill!