Olde Time Things

The nice thing about last week's outing, on the Ghost Trolley, is that the tickets were good for free admission to the Thomas Wolfe Memorial, which includes an exhibit, short movie, and a tour of the boarding house that his mother ran, where Tom spent much of his childhood.

Thomas Wolfe, the famous playwright and author, lived from 1900 to 1938 and his father moved to Asheville maybe 20 years before - I can't remember exactly. Like so many people did (and continue to do) his father moved here because his wife at the time was suffering from lung ailments and the mountain air in Asheville was thought to have special restorative properties.

Anyway, the neat thing is that all of the stuff in the house was genuine olde time things that the Wolfe family actually owned, right down to the dishes and the kitchen tools. They even have an old working phonograph that they still turn on for special occasions.

The most interesting part of the tour was learning about how his novel, "Look Homeward, Angel," was autobiographical to such detail that the people of Asheville were pissed when it came out because the characters so obviously portrayed real people in Asheville, and not always in a very flattering light. Makes me want to read the book.

I'm afraid the pictures aren't the greatest because it was hard to get a shot with the tour moving so fast and people constantly being in the way of the shot.