Writer Alanna Nash ponders whether she can leave her family’s piece of the South behind.
I WANT TO TELL YOU A LOVE STORY. It’s about a husband and a wife, the wish they held for their daughter, and the home that they all loved as much as each other. ¶ My father, Allan, one of 10 children, started out life unimaginably poor on a hard scrabble piece of ground in West Tennessee. My mother’s beginnings were equally meager, growing up in the shadow of the Smokies in East Tennessee.
They met during World War II, when my father was building the bomb in Oak Ridge, and my mother, Emily Kay, was working in retail in Knoxville. She was exquisitely poised and beautiful. He was elegant and movie star handsome. Their attraction was instant.
During the war, my mother moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to represent the Revlon line at an exclusive women’s dress shop. My father, smitten, followed her there. They lived in separate rooming houses downtown. ¶ In 1947, they married, and shortly afterward, began looking for an apartment. On a Sunday drive, they meandered through Cherokee Park, laid out in 1891 by the father of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted. At the “poor end of the street,” as my mother liked to say, they happened upon a stunning 5,000-square-foot Southern brick Colonial that had just been constructed.
The home’s architect, Edgar Archer, had designed and built a number of government and commercial buildings throughout the state. The Alta Vista Road property, his private residence, was his crowning achievement. He fashioned a stained glass fan over the door, installed copper gutters and downspouts, and filled the home with Italianate tile and chandeliers to please his wife, Marguerite, who hailed from the old country. As a final touch, he added a pink marble fireplace in the basement.
To my mother, the house represented everything she had ever aspired to in life, or ever would. It was the stuff of fantasy.
Denne historien er fra January 2017-utgaven av Southern Living.
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Denne historien er fra January 2017-utgaven av Southern Living.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Forging a Legacy - A Fredericksburg, Texas, couple is creating a new class of heirloom cast-iron cookware
When Jay Mallinckrodt pitched the idea of crafting cast-iron cookware to his wife and business partner, Heather, in 2020, she was hesitant. I immediately said no, she recalls with a laugh. But I finally agreed as long as we made something that we would actually want to use ourselves. Like many others during the initial throes of the pandemic, their multigenerational family operation, Heartland Enterprises (which specializes in machining parts for jet engines and gas and oil equipment), was seeing a lull. “No one was flying; no one was drilling, says Jay. So we had time to try something different.
A Butterfly Haven - In the Texas Hill Country, a conservationist is helping monarchs adjust to the changing world
Twenty-four years ago, Monika Maeckle bought a small property on the Llano River in Central Texas as an escape from fast-paced San Antonio. A journalist and marketing professional by trade, she didn't at first realize the value of the location on which she and her husband would later build their ranch. She also had no idea how this decision would eventually transform her life.One October evening a few years later, a friend invited Maeckle to their nearby house, which sat on a watershed with several large cypresses. All these butterflies dropped from the sky and started to gravitate toward the trees, she recalls. Stronger people who could swing a big 12-foot-long pole began trying to capture them, and we waited. By the end of the evening, we'd tagged a couple hundred butterflies, and I left there enchanted.
Oktober Feast!
While I respect your right to serve spooky food in October, you won't find any gory grub at my house this month. Instead, I'm hosting a gathering that's inspired by biergartens across the pond. The focus of the menu is a fondue made with Gruyère cheese and crisp Riesling-like beer-cheese dip but more elevated. It's served with a smorgasbord of dippers such as smoked sausage, grapes, apples, and a few amped-up store-bought snacks, like Mustard-Glazed Pretzel Bites and Smoked Paprika Potato Chips. (Just one taste, and you'll want to add this spice to every bag you open.) Pour yourself a Cider Shandy, and get ready for a good time. Prost, y'all!
The Roast With the Most
Embrace the changing seasons with a cozy pork supper
Roll With It
Company's coming? Bake a batch of these apple-stuffed delights
VIRGINIA PASTORAL
IN MIDDLEBURG, THE COMMONWEALTH'S MOST STORIED SMALL TOWN, OCTOBER WELCOMES A HOST OF TREASURED TRADITIONS
TAKING ROOT
Turn the season's freshest veggies-beets, parsnips, sweet potatoes, carrots-into colorful fall sides
THE FAMILY PLACE
When it came time for a young Georgia couple to make an 1800s farmhouse their own, they took it apart piece by piece-then rebuilt it into a home ready to welcome the next generation
Loving Life in Fayetteville
This Northwest Arkansas college town is easy to love and hard to leave
The Road That Raised Me
This lesser-known drive offers the most breathtaking views in the Smoky Mountains