thanks so much for posting that info on James Thom and his home in Owen Co. It was very
interesting.
--
N.J.Skinner White
"Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past" {Deuteronomey
32:7a}
-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Bob Alloway" <ralloway(a)earthlink.net>
Housed in history See pictures and story at
www.Indystar.com
James Alexander Thom lives in the spirit of the early settlers he writes
about.
By Abe Aamidor Posted: June 1, 2008 His mother bought this
wooded, rural land in the 1940s.
Before that, the Indians he writes about in his many historical novels often
passed through the area.
And over on a nearby hill, on the side that faces the sunset every evening,
is where he'll be buried.
Author James Alexander Thom and his wife, Dark Rain, live in a log cabin he
erected on this rugged patch of land between 1982 and 1985, using materials
from a cabin originally built in nearby Monroe County in the previous
century.
"I lived in a tent one winter and also wrote the biggest book I ever wrote,"
said Thom. "So it was pretty grueling."
Thom used a Hermes manual typewriter -- he didn't have electricity yet.
He has electricity now, but still uses that Hermes to peck out his
manuscripts one letter at a time in a very small, very cluttered home office
on the second floor of his cabin.
Thom, 75, writes about frontier settlers such as George Rogers Clark, and
famous Indians such as Shawnee chief Tecumseh. His national bestsellers
include "From Sea to Shining Sea" and "Follow the River."
They are historical novels -- Thom has a rich library to consult and has
committed many facts to memory -- and he invents dialogue only when no
primary source is available. The goal always is to write exactly what was,
or what truly might have been, he says.
Born in Gosport, once a small depot on a bluff overlooking a rail line and
the West Fork of the White River, Thom graduated from Butler University and
served in the Marines. He later worked at both The Indianapolis Star and The
Saturday Evening Post before beginning to publish novels in the late 1970s.
The deeper he got into his historical novels, the more he wanted to return
to his roots. So he did.
He learned how to build houses while attending Arsenal Technical High School
in Indianapolis. Building stuff, he says, includes understanding technology
from various eras and lots of problem-solving.
"If you get a balance there, you'll get the most out of your faculties."
The walls inside his cabin, which he generously estimates at 2,000 square
feet (including attic and basement), are made of half-timber, dovetailed
logs. He lifted the pieces into place by himself, using a pulley system he'd
built.
The rock-hard, seasoned oak was tagged and then sandblasted before
reconstruction, and the original lime-clay-and-horsehair chinking was
replaced with wire mesh, fiberglass and white mortar.
He raised the ceiling in the main room by about a foot -- you can still see
the holes and slots for the original floor joists -- and changed the pitch
of the roof so he could convert the attic into more usable space.
The floors squeak some, but only where he installed new strip flooring that
he bought at a home store. Most of the wide-plank oak and poplar flooring,
as well as one window, came straight out of that 1800s cabin and fit
perfectly.
The plumbing is modern -- no showers, but he has two tubs in the
tight-fitting bathrooms.
"Not side by side," he said. "It's not a Cialis commercial."
Derryl Dale, an independent builder, helped with some of the post-and-beam
construction inside the cabin, plus a new wood stairway to the second floor.
"I was just going to lay a log up there and notch it," Jim said of his
original plans.
Bob Boneau built and hand-rubbed new kitchen cabinets from locally grown
poplar. All the panels are in a butterfly design, meaning the same grain
patterns face each other left and right.
"I put up the cabin myself because I didn't have any money," Thom said.
"But
then my books began to do well enough where I could hire a carpenter to do
the finish work."
Dark Rain, now 66, moved in shortly after the couple was married in 1990. It
was culture shock. She moved from her family's 17-room home in Ohio to what
was still a pretty primitive cabin perched high on a hill and accessible
only by a treacherously narrow, winding two-lane blacktop road, then a dirt
path the last 50 yards or so.
She refers to the cabin as "the nest."
She stores dozens of jars of dried fruits and vegetables that she dries
herself in the kitchen, and a Missouri ham was hanging from a hook in the
back during a recent visit.
"We only go to the big grocery store once every three or four months," she
said.
Dark Rain, a Shawnee, specializes in Indian education and folklore. She also
hosts occasional puberty ceremonies for Native American children, as well as
"Wild Beast Feasts" that she prepares only with foods from before
Christopher Columbus landed in the New World in 1492.
Also an author, she writes on a computer. She shares her husband's office,
but admits to being driven to the kitchen table downstairs at times because
of the loud tapping from his manual typewriter.
He won't give up that typewriter any sooner than he's going to give up his
little log cabin on a ridgeline in rural Owen County.
"I built this when I was 50," he said proudly, but not smugly. "I think I
could still do it."
Call Star reporter Abe Aamidor at (317) 444-6472.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080601/LIVING02/8060103
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