An Orange Crate For
The Poet's Typewriter
At Connemara **llie mountains all
around . . . sufficed to revive the artis¬
tic souls of the Sandburgs."
By CAROL SPICER
Connemara. Carl Sandburg’s home
for ihe Iasi 22 years of his life, is ihe
genuine, no-frills, workaday home of a
genuine, no-frills. wxirking writer. A
white clapboard house with a high front
porch, it sits on the side of a mountain
in the North Carolina Blue Ridge
foothills, and is almost exactly as it was
during the Sandburgs' residence from
1945 to 1967. It is open to the public,
free of charge.
Plain as a pipestem (better: an orange
crate) what beauty there is in the house
itself lies in the views from the uncur¬
tained windows, and the 10.000 (but
how can you count them?) books.
(There were that many in the days of the
Sandburgs and there must be almost
that many now. wallpapering the rooms
and choking the «xld shelves.)
There are also goats on the place.
They are in a barn and pasture at a safe
distance from the house, the distance
between barn and house having been a
strong selling point when it came to
buying the 240-acre farm. Although
Carl went along with his wife. Paula's
hobby — indeed, passion — for the
raising of goats he was firm about a de¬
cent separation between family and
beasts.
Thus it must be the only Famous-
lf >ou \ isii Connemara «rar walking
'h<K-> and explore, with Ihe help of Ihe ex¬
cellent Park Sen ice map. Ihe pond' and
lake-, and mum outbuilding' of the
240-лтс
farm. Be wary, (hough, of farm animal'
that can bile or kick. Slay on established
walk' and palhv Do not climb fence'.
t he properly goes up oxer Ihe lop of l.it-
lle t.lu"X Mountain and up to Ihe very hip
of Big
(Ла"у
Mountain. If you are up lo it,
do a' Ihe Sandburg' did and climb lo Ihe
|
и-ак
where, a' ftiula 'aid. “you can
чес
a
million acre' of sky.” You can
а1ч> м-е
Ihe
Smokies, and ihe Blue Ridge Mountains
and I lie low n of I leiuler'onx ill».-. To get there
you walk Ihmugh endle" timber of oak and
black gum and pine, and through dogwoul
lhal in Ihe spring makes a while world that
looks like i4'ran surf.
Writer’s-Residenee-Cum Goats in the
fold of the National Park Service. Cer¬
tainly the only National Historic Site of
its kind.
To reach Connemara drive south out
of the town of Hendersonville on U.S.
25 for five miles until you see. at a cross
road, a wide red bam marked Flat Rock
Summer Theatre. Directly across the
road and beside a lake is a modest Park
Service shelter from which a pine-chip
fix»! path winds through huge pine trees
to the summit. A lovely, and lilting, ap¬
proach to the dwelling of a man whose
Pulit/er prize-winning biography of
Abraham Lincoln ("The Prairie Years."
"The War Years"), whose Pulitzer
pri/e-w inning collection of poems, and
other books, all are permeated with the
love of the out-of-doors.
At the unpretentious old house (built
in 1838 by a Charleston man who later,
ironically, became Secretary of the
Confederate Treasury) the visitor is
given a 20-minute tour of the rooms by
a Park Service guide. Time enough, for
the furnishings of the house, of a son
of Sears-Roebuek-eatalog-of-lhe- 1920’s
style, are unremarkable. What one
remembers are the books and the filing
cabinets and the orange crates, and the
plywood shelves full of more files,
more papers, more
Ыюк.ч.
Strange — the plainness, the lack of
adornment — when one considers that
Paula. Carl’s wife, was the sister of
Ы-
ward Steiehen. the famous pho¬
tographer. and that Sandburg, himself,
was a sensitive writer and poet.
The mountains all around, and the
mountain air. and the fragrance of the
pines, sufficed, it would seem, to nour¬
ish their artistic souls.
The South blossoms with great,
columned, ante-bellum mansions with
ancestral portraits and gold-framed mir-
The mountain home ot Carl Sandburg. Connemara,
has been restored by the National Park Service and
Is a National Historic Site, located ott U.S. 25, 4
miles south ot Hendersonville at Flat Rock, it is open
to the public with no charge tor admission.
“. . . what one remembers arc the books and the fil¬
ing cabinets and the orange crates
rors on the w^ills. old family silver on
the Hepplew hite side boards, brocaded
sofas and chairs. At Connemara the liv¬
ing room (the least plain room) is
memorable chiefly for Steichens black
and white photographs of the family on
the walls, and Carl's guitar propped
against a chair.
The guitar, rightfully, has a place of
honor: it went along with Carl on the
popular lecture-concert tours across the
country that helped augment his uncer¬
tain income in his early years as a free
lance writer. As Will Rogers used his
lariat on the lecture platform while tell¬
ing his tales. Carl strummed his guitar,
the deep voice that was like organ
music, singing his own folk songs and
ballads, speaking his ptvtry and prose.
At Connemara Carl slept in a low.
slanting- roofed room upstairs where he
could write without disturbing Paula, or
any of his family of three daughters and
two grandchildren who might be
around. In that book-glutted room the
THE STATE. AUGUST 1986
12
