In the summer and fall of 2020, I camped on the veranda of the house where I was born, in Madison Co., Arkansas. I've written about the time but haven't published the essay yet.
The old canning factory at the Dunaway Place, now owned by my family. Ray Crabtree (left) and Everett Dunaway (Crabtree was a cousin on Mary's side & lived in Kansas) pose in front of the tomato canning factory.
Tom & Mary (Riggins) Dunaway on the porch of the home they built on Pinnacle Mountain. With grandchildren Gene & Lylith, children of Noah Dunaway. My father purchased the place from them in 1967.
Inside the house I found a copy of Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, a journalistic exploration of what the world would look like if humans instantly disappeared, leaving everything as they left it...
Wilma (Dunaway) and Carl Vanlandingham. Taken under the bluffs. Wilma and Carl, grandparents by then, were fixtures in my childhood. So were the bluffs.
Travis and Raymond Trolinger check on an abandoned buzzard's nest. Raymond had trail cameras sprinkled around the property, and we'd ride around in his UTV to see what was out there.
Everett and Lylith Dunaway Everett holds his baby daughter, Lylith, in front of the shack where he and his 5 siblings grew up. The shack is now a wing of the big house.
Elaine (Dunaway) Trolinger and her sister, Janice (Dunaway) Knight on the porch of the childhood home they recovered next door.
Children under the maple. Back row: Don (left) and Lylith. Front left to right: Clifford, Janice, Sue, Gene. Under the maple, with the farm in the distance. Posing with guns.
Wilma Dunaway, the only girl of Tom and Mary's 6 children, who married Carl Vanlandingham. With her sister-in-law Lydia, who married Oscar.
