Appletree Street

About the Book

With a good-paying job, J. Samuel Wudheim could afford to rent a house on Appletree Street. He learned a skill working on a farm, and it qualified him for a job with the A&P Grocery and market as a butcher in a town nearby. He and his wife, Liddy, had three small children, to nurture, plus grand ambitions. The house they admired wasn’t in a highfalutin part of town, but it was ideal. It was on a paved street with a wide sidewalk, good people for neighbors, and a school close by. The streets directions were north and south with dead ends. That fact didn’t send any signals to the young couple with a desire to have a better life. Fate and fortune could be created after the Great Depression for persons willing to acquire debt if needed for a sound business plan. With their unique doctrine, they instilled and drilled their two older sons, preparing them for a place in a pipe dream. The third child, being the girl and much younger, escaped some of the rigid training to a point. Sam and Liddy’s cultivated plans became entangled and refashioned by wars and in-laws. The daughter, Anna Grace, became the target of their philosophy after becoming aware of a natural interest. An art teacher assured her, imaginative and impulsive drawing and painting were qualities of a real artist. Less frustrated, with that fact she trained her ability and for a few years, it fit within her parents’ plans. Disappointing events and choices she made led to another love and lifestyle that created more avenues to sustain and enhance the joys of being an artist. The Wudheim family was one of many households on Appletree Street whose visions, heartaches, and loves would be resolved. The process of life led some away and some to stay, but fate or fortune wouldn’t replace the memories.

About the Author

To accommodate a lifestyle and interest during forty-seven years of marriage, I’ve continued education at Troy University n my home town. With roles of wife, mother of three children and a business owner, I was selective to history courses that were of interest and somewhat correlative to another interest. For a lifetime, I’ve enjoyed the practice of drawing and painting. Many pieces of my art work have been accepted and received awards in regional and local, juried exhibits. The two interests have been compelling reasons to visit other regions frequently. Europe, Mexico, South America, Africa and to the forty-eight states. Writing a novel was not on my itinerary. After being retrained from close art work and travel, because of an eye problem that had to correct itself, it seemed to be the ideal time to re-arrange a studio storage room. It was stuffed with sketch books, paintings, personal journals, local newspaper articles and boxes of snapshots. I was incited to recall another point in a younger life when vision was threatened, plus larks, socials, intervals of life’s dramas, the general cultural scenes of the southern system and some who lived it. Inside the storage room was a genuine relic, a portable typewriter. Passing the point of a year before having normal vision again, I was well into the final drafting of this narration.