Beach Tale: "A Ghost Story"

<<note...this story was previously posted on this blog on Halloween, 2011, but it is one of my favorites so I'm dusting it off for a repost today!  For those of you who haven't read it yet, this is a TRUE ghost story from where we used to live, Newport, RI.>>

       

The time…1673

The Place…a 100 acre farm in Portsmouth, RI (currently the site of The Valley Inn, pictured on the left.)

          The situation…Thomas Cornell, a farmer aged 46, had a lot of hungry mouths to feed.  He was the father of four sons from his first marriage, two children (with a third on the way) from his second marriage to Sarah, plus his widowed mother Rebecca, age 73.  All nine people lived under one very tiny roof.  And, while Thomas did all the work, Rebecca owned the farm and thus controlled things. 

Beach Tale: Let's Get Physical!!!

Sorry, I couldn't find a G-rated version of Olivia Newton John's "Let's Get Physical" video, so you're going to have to sing the song to yourself, as it is the audio background to today's post.  Okay, all together now, "Let's get physical, physical.  I wanna get physical..."

A reminder of where we left things two weeks ago:

The questions everyone has been asking is, "How did you come to have a truckload of boxes and what did we plan to do with them?" 
          I have procrastinated about writing this particular episode in our “little” construction project, because it brings back painful memories.  I don’t mean mental pain or emotional pain or spiritual pain.  I mean physical pain!  The type that the mere thought of lifting your little pinky brings tears to your eyes.   

          Oh wait, there I go again getting ahead of myself. 

Beach Tale: Hot Hot Hot

          For those of you new to this blog, I am sharing the trials and tribulations of our home improvement project to finish off the unfinished room over the garage ourselves.  It’s been a fairly easy journey so far as our role has pretty much been limited to scheduling sub-contractors and making sure the doors were unlocked so they could do their work.  But we were about to enter into the true “do-it-yourself” phase of this undertaking, and things were about to get hot.  And I don’t mean that in the romantic sense.  I mean in the end-of-summer-in-southern-Virginia-working-inside-a-small-space-with-no-a/c hot.  Here’s my video theme song for this segment: 

Beach Tale: "Color Me Indecisive"

          Time to add some COLOR to the place!  So today’s installment is brought to you by Cindy Lauper’s “True Colors.”  Take a listen:

          The next phase of our “little project” involved tiling the bathroom, painting the interior and selecting a floor.  In that order.  And what do these three things have in common?  They all required decisions relating to color.  I had been avoiding making the biggest decision of all, but now the time was at hand. I needed to dream up a “color scheme” for the project. Something that would connect each of the four spaces with the other without overpowering the tenant. Something bold yet subtle.  Something timeless yet contemporary.  Something that screamed “beach house” yet whispered “my house.”   Rather a tall order for a neophyte decorator like myself.