The Woods Behind

In earlier posts I've mentioned the wooded areas near our Yarmouth house where my siblings and I played. If we kept walking East through the woods, we came to a clearing which overlooked the Royal River. I have found an old, and I mean old, photo of one of our dogs, Major, sitting and staring at the river. Here it is:

I love this photo. Eventually, 

we were cut off from our woodland playground when the State put in a new section of I-95 right in the middle of it. I have photos showing that monstrosity in the process of coming to life.

This one shows Nicky, my younger brother with Major. We used to wander the area on the weekends when the construction crew wasn't working. I can still picture us standing on the completed road before it was opened and being amazed.

After the highway was finished and our father took us for a ride, we had difficulty believing it was the same place, until we looked through the trees and saw the back of our house. We had mixed feelings about the change in our playground, but mostly kept our thoughts to ourselves.

My Love of Writing

I grew up in the 1950's in Maine, and many scenes from my childhood have been included in my book. Some of these descriptions of growing up in Yarmouth, Maine can be found in my previous blog, Memoirs of a scared little girl.

Those of us who lived in that time period are part of the Baby Boomers generation, and many of us are still around, retired but active. I have three sisters and a brother still here on earth, and many former classmates. The time period right after WWII and into the 1960's was full of many changes. My memories of life then are mostly happy. The happy ones happened when I was with my family. The unhappy memories were usually related to school, even though I loved school. To me it was an exciting place because I loved to learn new things and school provided me with that opportunity.

The first time I remember actually enjoying writing was the time when my 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Winslow, asked us to write a descriptive paragraph. I thought about it while sitting on my bed, looking out of the window. My  bedroom was on the second floor and faced the tree across the street. This tree actually had a name, Herbie, and was the oldest elm tree in Yarmouth. Most of the other elm trees which lined Main Street had been lost to Elm disease some time in the 1950's.

I stared at that tree with its bare branches outlined against the blue sky and wished I were skilled enough to paint it. I thought it was beautiful. Later, still trying to think of a subject for my paragraph, that tree appeared in my mind in all its glory. I knew I had found my subject. If I couldn't describe it with paints, I would describe it with words. I wrote it, turned it in and received a grade of A with glowing comments from my teacher.

That paragraph was the beginning of my love of writing from the heart.

The Yarmouth house where I spent my growing up years. The 2nd floor on the left front is where my room was. Below my room is the front entry to the house. Across the street is the yard where Herbie grew.

By Susan Davis Cummings

While finishing up my book, I realized my lead character or hero of the story seems to be loosely based on me. Interesting. I didn't plan it that way, but I guess it makes sense. Not so much my personality, but my childhood experiences exist in my story of Noah Drinkwater and his Deanes Island life.

As I'm writing descriptions of certain scenes or buildings, I have pictures in my mind of ones I've seen or know. The Aleynby house is roughly based on the house I lived in during my school years in Yarmouth. It's a little bigger but the downstairs layout is almost an exact  copy. The room at the back next to the kitchen is where my Grandfather Drinkwater stayed when he lived with us. In Murder Is Always Evil it is Abby's room. My real house has no sewing room, which I added to give Abby a larger area as her own domain.

We had woods behind our house which eventually led to an inlet or tributary of the Royal River. During the winter months when the leaves were gone from the trees, we could see the mouth of the river from our house. We lived on a street called East Main Street and our house is on the top of a hill, a short ways from the bridge which crossed the Royal River and connected East Main St. with Main St. and Pleasant St. The house is still there. It was a wonderful place to grow up.
   

Looking up East Main St. towards our house on the right just beyond the white house.