More Driving Doors #ThursdayDoors

Here are some more proofs that I can’t hold a camera steady in a moving car, even with somebody else driving. Most of these come from “Mansion Row” in New Albany, Indiana.

One of my cousins used to live in one of these houses. I don’t think it was this one.

This is from outside Mansion Row. I love the form and the detail, but it’s a little too yellow to suit me. To each his own.

No door here, but I’ve been trying to snappie this for Dan for-like-EVer.

Thursday doors is under the direction of Dan Antion, photographer extraordinaire and critter daddy. Visit his site, enjoy his wonderful photographs, follow his directions, and enter a world of doors.

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: A mansion.

MA

About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

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One thought on “More Driving Doors #ThursdayDoors

  1. Michael Hodges

    March 24, 2022 at 8:04am

    I remember a mansion on a hill.

    My stepmother and I were out driving, and as we passed this beautiful house, she wistfully remarked that she once knew the man who lived there. The notes in her voice caught me, perhaps more than the information itself.

    “We were in school together as kids,” she told me, “and all us girls used to make fun of him because he spit a little when he talked.”

    I drove quietly, just listening.

    “We were kids, and you know how kids are,” she went on. Her gaze never turned toward me as though in a conversation. Instead it stayed on that mansion until we rounded a hill and it passed from sight, and then her eyes turned inward, toward soul and memory. “And I’m sure he couldn’t help it, but we laughed at him.

    “He was smart . . . but none of us would date him or take him seriously. It wasn’t even that bad, you know? He only spit a little.”

    Her voice was genuinely sad now, and in that way the speed of thought has of racing past us, I thought of my own life with my father’s semi-ignorant brutality, his dark narcissism; and I wondered about her life in a way I really hadn’t before.

    I had my thoughts, and she was still chewing on her own regretful emotional cud. “We were mean, I think. And I’m sure once he grew up enough to do something about it, he probably had that fixed. But we were mean.”

    I don’t know how long we drove before she spoke again. Long enough for me to think of the times I’d seen my parents fight. Long enough for it to occur to me that I only ever saw them kiss once, when I was still young enough that adult-on-adult affection was strange to me. Long enough for it to occur to me that despite her own instances of taking hostilities out on me, she had come around somewhat, switched to defending me.

    Long enough for me to wonder what her own life with that man was like. To wonder what she saw in her own mind at this moment, driving past a mansion on a hill.

    “And now he’s there, and I’m here, and that’s that,” she said. And then she was quiet for a very long time.

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    • Author
      • Michael Hodges

        March 27, 2022 at 11:34am

        I write what I write, so often from things etched in memory, or things haunting the passages of memory but chewed again and again like an old buffalo hide by an old squaw and rewritten with the considerations of age.

        Something yesterday made me think of another tale of my stepmother, a much more distasteful, socially unacceptable one, because people are made up of good and bad. Perhaps even of “good and bad alike,” as the country vernacular would put it. And stories are made up of details, so many details. How does one know a person? Truly?

        I’ve been thinking the scene I shared above might make a good short story, fleshed out with some fiction.

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  2. Dan Antion

    March 24, 2022 at 4:54pm

    Great doors and I love that crane! I agree with you on the yellow.

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply
  3. jazzytower

    March 24, 2022 at 9:27pm

    I like the style of these buildings. Love brick houses. Thanks for sharing.

    Pat

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    • Author

      Marian Allen

      March 28, 2022 at 9:20am

      There’s a whole street of ’em. Louisville, across the river, is also full of gorgeous homes, most of them apartments now. River towns!

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  4. Cheryl

    March 29, 2022 at 10:35am

    A crane.. a crane! I agree about the yellow but all these doors are smiling.

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  5. slfinnell

    March 30, 2022 at 10:16am

    My neighbor painted his house That yellow. Ug! I have to look on the bright side (pun intended) that I have a landmark to direct people to my home.

    Permalink  ⋅ Reply

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