About the Home | Inside Yankee
A small woodshed stands attached to the north side of our house. Its floor is dirt, and because the shed is not tightly sealed, I often share it with several chipmunks who leave empty black walnut shells strewn around as if they are at a ballpark. One recent morning I saw what looked like an […]
A small woodshed stands attached to the north side of our house. Its floor is dirt, and because the shed is not tightly sealed, I often share it with several chipmunks who leave empty black walnut shells strewn around as if they are at a ballpark. One recent morning I saw what looked like an old shoe sticking up from the floor where I had just tossed aside the wood. In fact, it was not a shoe, but rather the sole of what I believe to have been a work boot. Our house dates back nearly 200 years, and while I do not know the age of the shed, I imagine many feet have trod where mine have over the years. I unearthed the old leather sole, now just barely more than threadbare leather matted with soil. If I were ever to write about this house by the river, I might begin with that time-rotted sole and wonder about its own wanderings about the yard.
That is the thing with putting together an issue devoted to home: It is more than walls and a roof; houses always come with stories. As Roland Merullo writes in “The Meaning of Home” [p. 18], “A house … is a living creature.” He finds his intimate relationship with his old Cape to be “a lot like marriage. There’s the constancy, the decades of daily closeness, but it never really stays the same, and sometimes utterly surprises you.”
Inside this issue you will find stories that show how homes connect lives, past and present. Dana Paradis and her husband found their historic Cape the way many have before them: They fell in love with New England on vacation and wanted a place of their own. After several years of looking, they discovered it. The c. 1775 house had just come on the market, and as Paradis tells writer Kate Whouley, “We drove up Friday early for a Saturday appointment, and as we crossed the bridge, we could see a rainbow over the Outer Cape.” [“Old House, New Life,” p. 26]
Rowan Jacobsen remembers the first time he walked in the woods behind his Vermont farmhouse: “The Maples and the Robins and the Birches had been here for generations. This is how we do it, they seemed to be saying. The house itself had seen 175 summers. We just tried to fit in.” [“The Ephemerals,” p. 90]
Wherever we live, our homes and gardens give us a desire to put down roots, to fit in, often where others before us have as well. This issue is for everyone who cares for these “living creatures,” these places we call home.
Mel Alleneditor@yankeemagazine.com
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
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