MY ancestral home—white columns, a veranda that stretched the width of the front, a row of rocking chairs —was knocked down. The new owners built a bigger and better house. They didn’t put the new house in the exact same spot, but ‘sited’ it in the middle of the pecan orchard. By taking out four rows of pecan trees, they created an instant mature avenue that led right up to their new and grand veranda.
My sister and our cousin never got over it. When I said I thought the new house looked wonderful, they howled like wolverines. They would have stopped, that the veranda was so decrepit that you could only sit in the rocking chairs if you were blood kin and knew how to navigate safely the mosaic of rotten boards. I hinted that the columns weren’t Doric, no laurel leaves were carved in the pediments.
