Lady Bird, our Enlish Springer Spaniel who was also part Irish setter, but could have fooled the American Kennel Club judges by sight if not through DNA tests, didn't just wag her tail whenever she saw our neighbor to the east of us. She would wag her whole body. The neighbors came to us when I was ten and the mysteries of a Kharman Ghia in the car park added to the extreme sadness we felt that the former owners, a family from Finland, moved a way from us to a house near the beach.
The family from Finland were the reason we first found Tower Lakes because the dad of the house and our dad worked together. Their dad was a doctor and worked in the medical research side of a company where our dad was a corrosion engineer in the industrial side of the company. Dad would tease the doctor and call him Dr. Dr. because he had an M.D. and a Ph.D.
The first time we walked into the house next door to the one that became our home one Sunday in the 1960s when we were house hunting because our Dad's and Dr. Laakso's company was relocating to Barrington, we had just oohed and ahhhhed our way around the roads of Tower Lakes Every lovely vista we saw yielded to another vista even more beautiful. The lake appeared through the boughs of oak trees, and the little hills and curves of the roads were very charming. To our great surprise, there was a room at the end of the living room in the the doctor's house that faced the lake and had three floor-to-ceiling window walls, each ending in a planter plush with all sorts of tropical plants.
We had never see such a thing and it was so very marvelous we could hardly believe our eyes. The Finnish neighbors have a daughter that is my brother's age and a son who is my sister's age, so we had built-in friends and guides to the strange new world that resembled our city life not in the least. Another son came along later to that family, but he sadly is no longer with us.
So we moved into the house in Tower Lakes on our sister Jennifer's birthday in the summer I turned ten, but we camped out in the house for a month before our furniture got there because Mom had some remodeling and decorating things she needed Dad to do first.
The behemoth of a furnace in the basement was taken out and we had a new heating system based on hot water moving through copper tubing that came into each room at the base of little registers. Dad also tore down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and smashed out a second doorway to the stairs that led to the basement so that you could walk or run around the whole first floor.
He also painted the stuccoed walls and ceiling of the living room and dining room a very muted blanched out creamy orange. The northern wall of the living room had a big stone fireplace, so all the worries I had had for Santa Claus' safety when we lived in a house on the south side of Chicago and the chimney ended in the coal burning furnace.
More to come when I get back from the health club . . .
White Christmas
The family from Finland were the reason we first found Tower Lakes because the dad of the house and our dad worked together. Their dad was a doctor and worked in the medical research side of a company where our dad was a corrosion engineer in the industrial side of the company. Dad would tease the doctor and call him Dr. Dr. because he had an M.D. and a Ph.D.
The first time we walked into the house next door to the one that became our home one Sunday in the 1960s when we were house hunting because our Dad's and Dr. Laakso's company was relocating to Barrington, we had just oohed and ahhhhed our way around the roads of Tower Lakes Every lovely vista we saw yielded to another vista even more beautiful. The lake appeared through the boughs of oak trees, and the little hills and curves of the roads were very charming. To our great surprise, there was a room at the end of the living room in the the doctor's house that faced the lake and had three floor-to-ceiling window walls, each ending in a planter plush with all sorts of tropical plants.
We had never see such a thing and it was so very marvelous we could hardly believe our eyes. The Finnish neighbors have a daughter that is my brother's age and a son who is my sister's age, so we had built-in friends and guides to the strange new world that resembled our city life not in the least. Another son came along later to that family, but he sadly is no longer with us.
So we moved into the house in Tower Lakes on our sister Jennifer's birthday in the summer I turned ten, but we camped out in the house for a month before our furniture got there because Mom had some remodeling and decorating things she needed Dad to do first.
The behemoth of a furnace in the basement was taken out and we had a new heating system based on hot water moving through copper tubing that came into each room at the base of little registers. Dad also tore down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and smashed out a second doorway to the stairs that led to the basement so that you could walk or run around the whole first floor.
He also painted the stuccoed walls and ceiling of the living room and dining room a very muted blanched out creamy orange. The northern wall of the living room had a big stone fireplace, so all the worries I had had for Santa Claus' safety when we lived in a house on the south side of Chicago and the chimney ended in the coal burning furnace.
More to come when I get back from the health club . . .
White Christmas
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