On A Beach in Libertyville
One of the more difficult aspect of sharing my treasures is getting a picture – with an iPhone – to look halfway decent. These paintings, hung in a corner of a basement room, were a challenge. It is hard to grasp exactly how large they are as these images of them do not show the scale. I found them on Market Place in 2020 while I was trying to create a serene space to practice yoga at home during the Covid crisis. While they seemed a perfect solution for me, I really had not considered just how large they are. The canvases are 5 feet tall, with the larger one being 6 feet across. After driving to the woman’s home and realizing there was not a chance in hell they were going in a car, I was able to borrow a friend’s pick-up truck to schlep them home. Installing them in our not fancy cellar was another project, and they are certainly not moving any time soon.
Living in a house built in 1930 in Illinois does not include fancy high-ceiling entertainment areas in the basement. Truth is, we are lucky if it is dry, because the state of the art “sump pump” system available when the house was built was a trough around the perimeter. Inside. With a few drain openings here and there. More “there” than “here” – meaning where the water ends up is not always anywhere near one of the damn holes. On top of that, the floor is a fairly thin coat of concrete over a much older sandy floor. This is noticeable where the ancient furnace was removed which was done when we first bought the property.
We knew the furnace was ghastly and would need to be replaced, but moving in May meant it wasn’t on our to do list immediately (and it was a heck of a long “to-do” list. And we had a baby and two young boys). Until it roared to life early one morning in September and scared the heck out of us. The whole house shook. It seemed there was no “off” switch. Removing that monstrosity took 5 men a full week. It was originally an oil burning beast and had been converted to gas at some point. Since it was red, I called it Marianne (children’s’ story…). The workmen said thing was older than the house, and the verdict was the house was built around it. Quaker Oats had torn down a house on the site in 1930 to build our current home, so likely Marianne was a remnant of that building.
Quaker Oats hired a scientist named Dr. Kent to conduct the research for the chicken feed farm. He relocated his wife and young son, Junior, to Illinois in 1922 from Cornell in NY. For two years they lived in Lake Bluff, until QA purchased a property that would work for the new research facility: a 65-acre property in Libertyville, a mile from the train, with a huge barn and two houses. I suspect the two houses were key, as the farm foreman lived in the cottage, while the Browns were in the main house. How it transpired that Mrs. Kent pitched such a fit that QA agreed to remove a large farm house and replace it with a Colonial Revival per her demands I will never know.
Very early on in our ownership of the property I had tracked down Junior. I only spoke with him once by phone. He answered a number of questions I had, and kept insisting he should dig through all the family papers in his basement. As I was exceedingly anxious to know what was in those papers, I tried to reach him again when I had not heard back. His phone was disconnected and I even went so far as to call the local police station. I don’t remember all the details, but the conclusion was Junior was likely demented and had either passed away, or had been placed in a care facility. I determined he was born in 1920 so he was in his 80s when I spoke with him. He is the one that told me about his mother, and her insistence the home be a New England Salt Box. I also learned she hailed from Michigan, his parents were first cousins, and for some odd reason sent Junior to Switzerland for boarding school. This was corroborated by a local newspaper (library microfiche!) article from some time in the 1940s about him coming home prior to the start of WWII.
So back to my cellar. I have painted the walls and floors, trying to brighten the area and banish the myriad of creepy crawlers (my children have acquired a very specific dislike of massive centipedes. Interestingly they are actually a predator of spiders which is another bane of my house’s existence.). I hired a painter many years ago to spray paint the “ceiling” – all the floor joists and pipes and wires – a dark blue. He did – and when he came upstairs and took off his glasses I laughed hysterically. He literally was blue from hair to shoes with only the area of his glasses showing his skin. Needless-to-say I have never tried to “touch up” the ceiling paint.
And while I have had numerous decorations and large chalk boards on the walls for the kids when the space was a massive rec room, almost all those have moved on in the world. When Covid happened, hubby and I began to spend more time in the cellar, mainly for exercise options. Our children’s teen tv area became the streaming area for “in house” Covid exercise classes. But the space was depressing and dingy. A mirror helped, but I wanted a large piece of art to bright the area. Searching on Marketplace, I came across a woman selling these two canvases of a beach scene. I figured they were vinyl or cloth, but for a super cheap price, I didn’t care.
I was a bit gob smacked that they were actual paintings, done by her uncle (no idea name or date). I recall someone in her family commissioned him to make them for an office room, and she ended up with them. As she didn’t want them, she sold them to me for $40. Both. Once I got them home, the realization that I couldn’t just tack a nail in the wall to hang them up became obvious. First, the walls are concrete. And the canvases are huge. Hubby and I ended up using chain and hooks and hanging them from the ceiling. They are lovely and peaceful and do an amazing job brightening a cellar. So, apologies for the terrible photograph, but as I sat doing some shoulder exercises tonight I couldn’t help but think how being by the ocean has resonated in my life.
As a child, my family lived in a town on Long Island Sound, and we spent days at the beach. As a teen, the beach was a hangout area much like malls were in my children’s teens. My parents retired to a beach town in Florida, living in a community with a private beach a short walk away. My children grew up vacationing there, running after gulls, watching dolphin, collecting shells, and playing in the waves. I am most certainly not a “sit on the beach” type but I made an effort to enjoy the beauty, find peace in the sound of the waves. None of us enjoyed 2020, and the impact of Covid. But having these painting brightening my online yoga classes most certainly helped. As being by an ocean -whether real or painted – does help calm the soul.
