Your thoughts? Curious readers want to know.
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Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl
Educational and thought-provoking Beaman’s writing is exceptional, and she retells stories with a keen sense of detail. I learned a lot about a [Mennonite] culture that I knew little about beforehand. ~ Pete Springer
My Checkered Life: A Marriage Memoir
Things I wish I’d read many years ago. . . This book is wonderful. I started reading it when my flight left Jacksonville, FL and couldn’t put it down….finished it as we landed in Denver, CO. ~ JudithAnn Reinhard Belz
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Good morning, Marian.
Oh . . .intriguing! I hope it leads to a magical world. 😊
The world is always magical at Plain and Fancy, Merril. Congratulations for being number 1 again.
Instead of a door leading into a room, perhaps, it’s a door leading outside into a colorful world.
You sound like a writer, John, thinking outside the box! 😀
Thank you and you’re welcome, Marian. 😊
A wine cellar! 🙂
Nice try, Liesbet! 😀
Narnia! Through the closet into a new world! Awe and wonder! Meeting the Lion!
What an imagination, Elfrieda! We will meet the Lion soon, and I think you know what I mean. 😀
Great picture. I picture a root cellar with the harvest of potatoes in the corner and jars of relishes, pickles, jams and jellies on shelves along the wall. Of course, there are the earthenware crocks for the sauerkraut. A dusty bottle of whiskey – for medicinal purposes.
Arlene, you’ve just written a paragraph of flash fiction–Brava! Watch this space for more revelations. 😀
Ooh intriguing!
A separate apartment space in a house? Great door!
Good guess, L Marie! Seems very plausible. 😀
My first thought is a church. Maybe a school?
You get another try, Liz. 😀
I was stumped, so I clicked on Inspect and found out what the image is and what town it’s located in. Please don’t flunk me. 😉
You go to the head of the class, Liz!
Whew!
A root cellar or door that leads to a stable under a house?
Elaine, you are taking me back to my childhood. Root cellar–good guess, but not quite. 😀
What Arlene said……root cellar or walk in cold room for food storage……
Almost but not quite, Jack. The photo comes from our hometown decades ago. 😀
Yup, you fixed it. Thank you. I like your style of writing. Haven’t written much lately (last book was 2 years ago). Need to get back to it. Thanks, perhaps you just gave me the kick in the pants I needed to start writing again.
Have a great day.
It was worth publishing this post to hear you say, “. . . perhaps you just gave me the kick in the pants I needed to start writing again.”
Thanks so very much, Irwin, and thank you for your “alert” message earlier today, so appreciated! 😀
HI Marian, I like the idea of a door into a world of books and/or stories. It reminds me of the Broadway song sung by Angela Lansbury for the musical Mame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv3CQyvDOfM
You are often my “Angela Lansbury” voice, urging me to “Open a new window” every day. Thanks for the link and for always shining your light in blog-land, Robbie!
Thank you, Marian. This is a lovely comment 🤗🌼
I have to go with a magic place or maybe a scary dungeon. It certainly has plenty of latches and bolts to keep something out or something in. I think of you as a child sitting in a dark cellar in your first book–on the other side of that door.
How insightful of you to recall my moments in the dark cellar from MENNONITE DAUGHTER, Elaine. Thank you!
I’ll give you a clue: It’s not a particularly scary place but it is quite cold. Thanks for playing along! 😀
It has to be a door to a haunted house!. I love doors like this.
I know you love doors and you treat your blog readers to a gallery of doors every so often. Doors are enchanting because they suggest possibility! 😀
The door leads to an attic filled with a lifetime of keepsakes and treasures. Similar to my junk room, which I keep promising myself I will sort through some day.
Linda Lee, thanks for playing along.
If you have keepsakes and treasures in your junk room, then it isn’t really junk. Ha ha! 😀
Looks like a freezer storage space. I didn’t read everyone’s replies so forgive me if it is a repeat. I’ve been busy busy catching up on the computer… it had gone down over the weekend, my daughter thought it was the cord/possibly battery. Took it to a computer guy yesterday and he gave it a temporary fix and ordered a part that should keep the 2018 Dell going…. I hope! More than you needed to know here…. At any rate, I’m glad to be floating again.
Melodie, you have come closer to the true answer than anyone else, which may surprise you. Way to go!
Thanks for sharing your computer woes. You probably see only the stuff that goes right for me in blog-land, but believe me, I’ve had my share of troubles. My computer is probably older than yours, a MacBook Pro. The battery has been going bad and will not hold a charge, so it has to be plugged in constantly. My tech guy has ordered a new one, which may come by Friday, fingers crossed.
This morning my blog launched with a snafu. Subscribers who get my posts through MailerLite, a newsletter service much like MailChimp, got an error message (page not found) because the wrong link was posted. It took about three hours to figure out what was wrong and then straighten it out. I decided that tomorrow I’ll try to go with the flow and avoid upsets. Here’s to smoother sailing for both of us! 😀
Well! I’m anxious for your reveal!!
When your ‘puter gets better.
Blessings, Melodie
Hmm, not sure why my mind went here, but the first thought is it’s a door to nowhere like when the Road Runner outfoxes Wile E Coyote yet again.
Clever guess although I don’t believe you think “door to nowhere” is the right answer. On second thought, why not Looney Tunes’ characters? Thanks, Pete! 😀
I’m guessing without reading any of the other comments, ’cause I don’t want to be influenced by them. Besides, I recognize this door. When I was growing up in southern NJ, I visited a friend’s grandparents’ farm with her. We were 11 – not quite children and not quite teens, and bored. So she told her grandparents we were going for a walk, and we took a detour past their farm, past three other farms, until we reached an old seemingly unused farm with a red-bricked dilapidated barn. “It lives in there,” Judy whispered. “What does?” I asked, bemused. “The thing.” She knocked on the door, and a huge knock from the other side was returned. Judy, always bored in school or at home or with her grandparents, suggested, “let’s unlock the door. It can’t be that bad….”
What a neat piece of flash fiction, Pam.
I wonder if you use photos like these as prompts for your creative writing students.
Anyway, thanks for a super-creative answer. Stay tuned! 😀
I think it is a Cold Storage door
You are getting warmer, Jean.
Very close! 😀
Under the eaves in the attic? It seems like it’s a small door and reminds me of one in my parents’ house that allowed entry to the cramped eaves.
Excellent–but not quite!
Stay tuned for the reveal around 4:00 today. 😀
DRUM ROLL, PLEASE. . .
Well, folks, here is the reveal!
The MYSTERY DOOR is the entrance to a building with a brick facing on South Poplar Street in my hometown, Elizabethtown, PA — the “ice house.” Before electric refrigerators, families cooled their food in a wooden ice box in the kitchen. A block of ice bought from the ice plant could be placed in the bottom of this “box” to keep food cool on the shelves above. These days, you can find antique ice boxes on eBay and Etsy. The link shows a model for $800.00. The fancier ones run $1200.00 OR MORE.
Link
I remember Daddy going up town to get a block of ice at the ice house, trucking it back home swaddled in a burlap bag. I also remember our old ice box being hauled into the back yard temporarily when our new refrigerator came, most likely bought at Zarfoss Hardware. Found this gem posted on the Growing Up in Elizabethtown Facebook page. Contributed by John Alleman, October 27, 2023
I’m definitely curious, Marian. It looks like it goes down into a cellar, which is what some others have said. Pretty wherever it leads!
Good guess, Barbara. Thanks for playing along. In case you missed the reveal:
The MYSTERY DOOR is the entrance to a building with a brick facing on South Poplar Street in my hometown, Elizabethtown, PA — the “ice house.” Before electric refrigerators, families cooled their food in a wooden ice box in the kitchen. A block of ice bought from the ice plant could be placed in the bottom of this “box” to keep food cool on the shelves above. These days, you can find antique ice boxes on eBay and Etsy. The link shows a model for $800.00. The fancier ones run $1200.00 OR MORE.
Thanks, Marian. I think I’d rather rely on something I can plug in, although that certainly fails during power outages 😉
Absolutely! 😀
In Missouri, my grandparents had an underground icehouse stocked with blocks of pond ice every winter. We had icecream from Grandpa’s cow in the middle of the summer with fruit from Grandma’s peach trees–and it was hot in Missouri in the summer with no air conditioning. The icecream was hand churned by my Grandpa or Dad and it delicious. That icehouse worked!.
You come from resourceful stock, Elaine. Same here.
Even in Florida, we don’t need blocks of ice for cooling food now. If my fridge gets too crowded, there’s always the lanai, the screened in porch for short-term storage. In the 40s this morning. 😀