 |
1486 Taughannock Boulevard
Tompkins County, New York |
Our
home on Taughannock Boulevard was surrounded by open acres to the north and
west, a small house to the south, and the main road, State Route 89 to the
east. The stately farmhouse,
located six miles north of Ithaca, New York, and two miles south of Taughannock
Point, is where I grew up; an idyllic place to live. The circular driveway
wound around a grassy area where several pear trees and a large snowball bush
grew and filled with white blossoms each spring. A slate sidewalk beckoned
family and friends up onto the wide and welcoming front porch.
This
house had been the apple of my mother’s eye. Never did she dream that she might
live in this lovely home. Through a quirk of fate this house became hers in
1946. The house had been owned by good friends Chuck and Jeanne Lueder. The
Lueders had sold it to Carol’s parents, Maude and Merritt Agard.
Maude’s
dream was to open a tearoom and this house seemed to hold that promise. As they
started renovations, the large estate home owned by the Jones family of
Philadelphia overlooking Taughannock Falls State Park came up for sale. It had
been a tearoom before World War II, and had potential to become one again.
Merritt and Maude knew that if someone bought the property known as Taughannock
Farms Inn, Maude’s tearoom, just two miles south, would have serious
competition. There appeared no other choice but to sell the Boulevard house
plus the Jacksonville Road house in which Carol, Ed and baby Skip were living
in order to purchase Taughannock Farms.
With
the sale of these properties, plus a $3,000 bequest from Merritt’s maiden aunt,
Bertha Agard, Merritt and Maude had enough for a down payment on Taughannock
Farms Inn. Carol and Ed Nunn, now without a home, decided to purchase the house
at 1486 Taughannock Boulevard.
Entering
the front door of our Boulevard home a wide front hall beckoned. A stairway leading
to the second floor was on the right. A wide landing allowed space for a full-length
mirror and a small corner table. To the left was a large double living room
with a stone fireplace. Straight ahead the large farm kitchen provided warmth
in winter, and was a favorite family gathering spot year round. Dad and Grandpa Nunn (Pop) built the
kitchen cabinets from pine boards. There was a screened porch off the kitchen,
too small for a table and chairs, but held a small couch to provide a sitting
area. The kitchen had two large windows around which cabinets were built. Those
windows afforded a view out onto the circular driveway. Years later, my mother
told me she always envisioned a swimming pool within that circle.
Off
the kitchen was a long narrow room that was eventually turned into a TV room.
Another door went into the living room/dining room area. The long narrow TV room also housed our
upright piano. I felt a house was not a home without a piano and a cat!
Off the back room was a
small bedroom where my grandparents, Nana and Pop Nunn stayed while living with
us May through October each year. We grew up in an era when it was common for several
generations to live together in one household.
The
house had three large bedrooms upstairs, one bath, and a large walk-in attic.
Closets were at a premium in this old house, but we made do. The bathroom was small and served the
entire family. With six of us in the house over the summer, I don’t remember a
problem sharing the bathroom; we all took turns.
Our
two screened porches provided summertime living spaces and in the heat of
summer provided cooler sleeping quarters. I bunked down on the side porch, off
the kitchen, and Dad slept on the front porch. Mom suffered through the heat in
the upstairs master bedroom.
There
was a one-car garage and a slate patio off the TV room. From the TV room, we could go out onto
the back patio to the clotheslines that were strung from the back of the house
to the trees at the edge of the yard.
Every
house has its “quirks” and ours certainly did. Houses on the ledge of the lake
did not have a great water supply. We had a tiny well out back that provided
the minimum amount of undrinkable water.
For years we brought jugs of water from the restaurant to provide water
for drinking and cooking. Baths
were taken with barely an inch of water, and laundry was done at the laundromat
in Ithaca. Years later a washer and dryer was purchased to launder the linens
at the Farms. Mom took advantage of those machines to do our laundry.
Since
Mom and Dad feared fire, the house had a number of lightning rods installed
along the roofline. Consequently,
I always felt safe in our house during a storm. Electrical current inside the
house, however, was a problem. You couldn’t plug in an appliance and have
another running off the same circuit or a fuse would blow. Sometimes life at
the Boulevard house was a challenge.
The
house was heated by a coal furnace. It was exciting when the coal truck came
and put its chute through the basement window. We could hear the coal rattling down the chute and into the
coal bin. The coal bin was actually just a section of the basement that was
blocked off with plywood under the small cellar window just across from the
furnace. During the cold weather Dad went down at regular intervals to shovel coal
into the furnace. In later years
the furnace was switched over to propane, so Dad didn’t have to feed it any
longer.
During
the 1950s a small silver metal box sat next to the front door. Twice a week the Dairy Lea milkman left
milk products ordered from a list left in the box. My mother or Grandmother Nunn (Nana) ordered milk, butter
and cottage cheese. Unless they were planning to bake something special, they
didn’t need to order cream as a small amount floated at the top of each glass
bottle of milk.
Our
black wall telephone was located behind the door in the dining room. We were on
a party line, so you had to listen for the ring to know whether it was for you
or not. We used it
infrequently. During the 1950s the
phone was moved into the kitchen, but since our line came from Ithaca and the
Farms phone was from Trumansburg, it was a long distance call to cover those
four miles. Eventually we had two phones; one for family use and the other
somehow hooked into the restaurant’s line so it could be answered at our house.
My
room held a double bed, bookcase, dresser and dressing table. The very small
walk-in closet connected to my parents’ closet off their room. The room faced
south with three large double-hung windows, giving me views of the south, east
and west. I developed a fondness for daisies, so my room was wallpapered in light
lavender wallpaper filled with bouquets of daisies.
One
of my household chores was to dust. If that was not bad enough, I had to dust
between all the spokes on the stairway banister. That meant individually going
between each one with a dust rag – what a slow and tedious job that was!!
When
I was older I loved to mow the lawn. That was helpful for my parents since they
had one day off a week – Wednesday – and that day they spent doing chores and
mowing the huge yard – by hand, of course. No riding lawnmowers in those
days! I tried to mow as much as I
could on Tuesdays so they wouldn’t have to spend their whole day off mowing. Every spring I cleared the brush off
the front bank that went down to the road. That made the house look so much
better and I know my parents really appreciated that job done.
In
the early years Mom washed clothes in the wringer washer that she set up in the
back room, and filled with water from the kitchen. After the clothes went
through the agitation cycle, she took them out one by one and put them through
the wringer at the top to squeeze the water out. We were warned not to get our fingers anywhere near the
wringer. The clothes were then placed in a laundry basket and taken out to the
clothesline to be hung up. There
they would swing in the gentle breezes and capture the fresh smell of sunshine.
Watching
my mother wash the white sheer curtains that hung at our windows was always an
experience. Once or twice a year
she took all the sheer curtains down to wash them in the wringer washer. Then
these torturous looking wooden frames with nails sticking out all around were
assembled in the kitchen. The freshly washed curtains were stretched across
these frames, attached to the nails to dry. We could hardly move in the kitchen
and back room area when the curtains were drying; we also had to be very
careful not to get “stuck” by a nail. That hurt!
We
ate our meals as a family at the kitchen table. The table sat in the center of
the large farmhouse kitchen. The kitchen had a gas range that always had a dish
of bacon fat on top. Bacon fat was what we used to grease frying pans with
before cooking and for numerous other uses. The kitchen was also the spot where
Nana did the ironing. She set up her ironing board, always being careful nothing
else nearby was drawing electricity so she wouldn’t blow a fuse. As she ironed, she sang – Tura lura,
lura…and other Irish tunes. Those melodies floated through the house.
I
have wonderful memories of my growing up years in the Boulevard house. As I look
back on my childhood, sometimes it is hard to determine what my earliest
memories really are. Favorite family stories are repeated over and over that
chronicle those early years, and sometimes these stories pinpoint your
identity. I have been told I was a climber – they were forever pulling me off
the tables at the Farms. Another story was that on my first birthday – before I
could walk – I crawled from the family picnic area at the state park right into
the lake. It seemed I, too, was
drawn to the water by the hand of the Great Spirit.
