attic antics

The grandeur of Tanner Manor belied our humble lifestyle, but we were rich in some ways. We were rich in freedom because our mom and dad trusted us, so they gave us a very long leash to play and discover things on our own. Fortunately for us, we didn’t have to go much further than the walls and halls of our own home to find adventures. Consequently, no nook or cranny of Tanner Manor went unexplored. 

​​Take our full-length attic, for example. Running the full length of the house, the attic was a jungle of exposed beams and secret doorways, all painted silver to cover smoke damage from the fire that had threatened to burn the whole house down just six months after my parents and their first 11 children had moved in. (Fortunately, my brother Richard, just eight years old, discovered flames behind the staircase panels at 7:55 a.m., when not one but two crews of firefighters switching shifts came to the rescue.) More than the typical, dusty repository of old things, the attic in Tanner Manor served as our gymnasium, playroom, and hideout where we could safely escape.​

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