Author: Shelly

[Note: I edited the last post to fix the incorrect letter. Oops!]

This was the inside of my step-dad’s woodworking shop in Metamora, taken in 1979. The shop was in the back of the old livery stable.

We lived in the house on the left. My room was upstairs, the two windows on the left.

The woodshop was in the back of the grey building next door. I worked in the front shop, from 4th grade until we moved away in 9th grade. It sold granny craft supplies and, weirdly, cabinet doors. The woman who ran it would make dried flower arrangements and attach them to the doors. Tourists ate that shit up like candy. I remember her telling me that crafting was cheaper than therapy, and I guess it was for her.

We didn’t have a shop in the house, and there was nothing on the porch to make it look like a shop, but tourists would walk in the front door all the time. It was a strange place to grow up. But on the weekends and in the winter, we had the whole town to ourselves. We were basically feral.

The Google street view image is from 2013. I expect it’s changed even more since then. I sometimes think I should go visit. I don’t live far from there. But I’m sure it would be depressing.

What the house and shop building looked like in 1979. That’s trumpet vine covering the corner of the house and the front of the shop.

My step-dad from the door of the woodshop, 1979. Basically, it was hippie hell.

Me in 1979. I’m pretty sure that’s a Hardy Boys book I’m reading. My mom’s purse on the coffee table was made by inmates at the Indiana State Prison. My step dad had worked there, teaching automechanics.