First Good Story From The Cope Group, David Cope That Is

As you remember, David Cope and his sisters came by for a visit a short time back.  They promised to share some stories about the old place and I've received the first one.  Its a good one so, enjoy and keep'm coming.

Just for understanding, "Uncle G" was W G Curry the owner of the old Curry house we're remodeling.  Donald and Kay Curry bought the old house from Royce Curry, WG's son and is responsible for the restoring of the old home.  Uncle Coke's house was just up the way and you may recall seeing the old house as it is now.  The first picture below shows David and his sisters with Donald Curry.  I'm also including a picture of Uncle Coke's house.  We'll be removing the bricks from the chimney to make our entrance walk and we'll take a few of the old boards and use them on the walls of the sun room. 

Back about 1992 we had our last reunion at Uncle G’s. All the Curry’s came and we had a great time discussing all the “old times”. Uncle Coke’s house had pretty much fallen in by then but all the kids wanted to go look at it anyway. A bunch of them took off and went to “explore” the old house. My daughter Melissa (who was about 12 or 13) didn’t go on the first trip.  When the kids got back telling about what they had seen Melissa decided she wanted to go and asked me to go with her. So, here we go again, all the kids and me, back to the old fallen-in house. It was the first time I had been to the house since it had collapsed. Now, it was well known that Aunt Lillian had lost both her legs below the knee to diabetes and had artificial legs. When we got to the house the back part of it was still partially standing and you could see jars on the stove and her creamer and butter separator on the table. We looked around and I saw many things I remembered as a child while visiting them. Someone asked what was that laying on the floor on the other side of the room. I replied “That’s Aunt Lillian’s leg” and the kids wanted to go look at it. After they were all satisfied that was indeed what they were looking at, they all ran back to Uncle G’s house telling everyone about how neat it was seeing Aunt Lillian’s leg. All the kids are grown now and some have children of their own but Melissa still remembers all about Aunt Lillian’s leg.

David

David is in the middle, Donald is on the right

Uncle Coke's Old House

2 rooms, kitchen and a small bath

Sits at the corner of McKinney Rd and Curry Road

Requesting info

We are trying to get some pictures, stories and what ever for the Curry Road Memories page so I'm sharing what I know to be a map of the area and some little bit of info about the people of days gone by.

The crude map show Highway 63 and the intersection of Hiway 35 (Rison Cutoff), McKinney Road, Curry Road, WG Curry home, RD Curry home, the old Curry home place, "the lane", the Cope home place, Uncle Cokes, Mark's home, Marks pond (used to be Dick's pond?) and thats about it.

If you have any pictures or stories about this area or family or if you want me to correct the "layout" send me an email and I'll handle it or share it.

Thanks

Hello Summer Time

Well, several new things to mention so I'll get at it.

First we have added two new pages to the blog.  "Curry Road Memories,,,,," and "Food Travel and Humor" is the other new one.  You can find the link to them just under the introduction to the blog and just above the most recent post.   These are added to encourage followers and family to contribute to the blog and let us share in your knowledge and fun.  In the beginning, just send me the story or whatever in an email and I'll post it and give the proper credits  Eventually, we hope to be able to allow other people to post but we're not quite there yet.  

On to the remodeling, we have solved the issue of too much sun coming in on the sun room.  (Sounds like a country song don't it?)  The sun room faces due west and after about 2:30 in the afternoon until after sunset we just got so much sun we couldn't use the room even as our current work area.  The brightness was almost blinding plus the heat was really bad.  So,,,,,

We built new screens and covered them with a product called Coolaroo Snap Shade Screen Product.  Lowes carries the product but you can order it directly or find it at many other home improvement stores and hardware stores.  Its not cheap but its worth the improvement as you will see in the pictures.   We became familiar with this product while Rving since this is the product RV companies use to make sunshades in RVs.

We have seen a tremendous improvement in the visual aspect since we can see out but no one can see in.

 The picture to the left will demonstrate how the normal covered windows still let in bright sunshine while the windows on the right are covered with the sun shade screen.

 This picture gives a idea of how clear the view out is from the room.  We wanted to be able to see the beautiful pastures, woods and animals without impairing our view.  Additionally, I have measured about a 30 degree fall in temperature in the sunshine period of the day.  Thats remarkable and does what we wanted.

From the outside, the windows look a little like a drug dealers car but, hey, nobody back here but Bambi, Porky, Rockin Robin and well you know.

This will save us cooling money in the summer and  when we finally get the sun room remodeled we can enjoy all of the best view with reduced heat in the summer and hail protection when the storms come thru.






Don't forget to go the Curry Road Memories page and send us some info, we're ready to share all we can

New Page For Collecting Old Stories and History

We're moving on up!!!!!

No, really, we have added a new page or pages to the blog.  If you notice just below the first picture on the blog home page a listing for "Home" {thats where you are now} and one called "Curry Road Memories,,,,"    If you click on the Curry Road Memories link you will be taken to a new page that will have a lot of history, fun stories, sad stories, and just facts about the Curry Road home and the people that have grown up in or around the old place.

You can still stay on the Home page and click on the different "posts" shown on the left hand margin of the page or you can go to the Memories page and see those posts.

We hope to add other pages as we go including food, travel and humor so stay tuned and enjoy.

Finally,,,, We've Got History Info!!!!!!

Well, we finally found some good resources for the history of this old house and we know you will find it entertaining and very interesting.  I'm going to try to introduce these resources to you and I probably will get a little of it wrong, but we are so excited about the new information that I'll come back and correct any errors in the lines of family members, but,,,,,

Unfortunately, Mrs Juanita Curry, wife of Mr. Royce Curry, son of Mr. W.G. Curry passed away.  Her funeral was today and we offer our condolences to Mr. Curry and all of his family.  As is often the case this funeral was the reason for most of Mrs Juanita's family to come back for the services.   Many of the family came by to see their old home and pay respect to the family and family history they all enjoyed here in the old Curry house.

Mr. Emmet Green Curry built this old house in 1929 and Mr. W.G. Curry eventually owned this old house where he and his wife, Miss Erma, lived here for many years.  Mr. W.G. (uncle G to some) and Miss Erma were the center of many of the family "get togethers" and many kids grew up here or within a half a mile of this old house and many other old homesteads.  We heard so many old stories that we are actually in "over load" but we have been promised written input, pictures and recounts of many tales of the past from several family members.


Approximately 100 yards to the south of the Curry home lived the Cope family.  The senior Copes' were sisters and/or brothers of the Curry family and Jerrilyn (Cope) Bulloch, Dorthty (Cope) Brighton and David Cope were brother and sisters and younger children and actually grew up here on this farm and their adjacent farm.  The picture below is of (left to right)  Jerrilyn, David, Dot Cope and Robert Donald Curry.  Jerrilyn currently lives in Huntsville, TX, David lives in Helena, AR and Dot lives in Mt Pleasant, TX.  Robert Donald owns the house and he and Kay have commissioned the restoration and live here on Curry Road.

Jerrilyn has man old pictures and items that she has promised to share with us so we post them on the blog, so look forward to hearing more from her.  David and Dot have more stories than we will ever be able to post but we're going to try.

Just to start with, we took Dot into the front bedroom and guess what?   She quickly stated that she was born in this very room just ,,,,,,,, a few years ago.   Is that neat or what?  We asked her to pick her place int he bedroom and let us take her picture, thats her below.

David has many stories to remember about the place and wonderful love of W.G and Erma and the great history of this old place.

We're going to really enjoy these stories and we want to include them for all to read and remember.

Again, if I get a name wrong or a relation wrong, we'll correct that for sure. We are just so excited to have such a resource for the complete story we want to build and share for all.

Thanks to the Copes for coming into the restoration life and stories that this Old House olds.

Anyone else that has some stories that can be shared will be welcomed and will help us make a complete recap of the history of this great old house.  So,,,,,,, get connected and let's go.

Thought you might want to see the progress

 Well, here is the window treatment.













The lighting and the colors are really working for us.  At least for our taste!






Doesn't this make you want to come and visit with us and have a glass of friendship wine?

We're Back

Well, we've been very busy.  Its been a long winter time with snow and cold weather and all that regular stuff.  But,,,,, we've been completely consumed with the KITCHEN.

We figure we'll spend most of our "real time" in the kitchen so we've spent a lot of time and effort in the restoration.  We decided, after much deliberation and struggling, to ceramic tile the counter tops and to build an island and to tile it also.  While we were at it, we decided to put a high "back splash" of the tile around all of the counter tops.  Eventually we decided to tile the east wall of the kitchen to help integrate the lighted accent box and to balance the entire wall.

 The island is large, 5'x42" and was built to be "moveable"around the area.  The tile was accented with a set of smaller tile in the middle that would eventually be the accent on the wall.  Lots of time but, hey, its were we live, right?

As with any remodeling project of an older home, nothing is square or plumb.  So when we finally got to tiling the wall we had to draw all kinds of level lines and plum lines and ?? anyway, it looked crazy for a while.




Anyway, we finally completed the wall, the accent box and it turned out pretty good as far as we are concerned.  The box has rope lights inside the box and we installed pendent lights over the cook top.

We liked the color of the box so much that we decided to install a "shelf" along the entire north wall of the kitchen.  We built the shelf out of wood cut and milled on the farm and the support hinges are built in a replica of the exterior roof hinges or support brackets.  The cornice board was added to accent the large kitchen windows and we have since installed pendent lights just like the lights under the accent box above.  Just to make a "show", we added rope lights on the top of shelf to help accent the "tin look" ceiling we worked so hard to install.

Spring is passing and summer is here so more to follow. We just wanted you all to know that we are still working and its just getting better (as far as we're concerned)

Stay tuned, we'll catch up on the work and the info as we now have more time to blog.

Come see us,,,,, God Bless