Library Everywhere

In December of 2001 I moved from Kansas City to Huntsville, Arkansas to live by myself and make a film. I stayed in a house my grandparents built when they retired in the 1970’s. The house sits far back on a county road on 80 acres of forest. When I was younger my family would gather at the house for Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, and other occasions. My grandparents got older and we realized that they couldn’t stay there by themselves much longer. The house was too far from town and they needed someone to check on them every once in a while. My grandma fell and hurt her hip, and it took a long time for the ambulance to arrive. They finally moved to Pawhuska, Oklahoma to be close to my aunt.

My family wasn’t sure what to do with the house. At first my grandparents thought they would sell it or rent it, but it had so much of our family history bound up in it that it was hard to imagine anyone else living there. Finally my dad decided he would buy it. He still lives with my mom in Oklahoma, but they go to the house to maintain it and just to relax now and then. My aunt and some of my cousins stay there sometimes, too. My grandparents have since passed away.

I lived alone in the house for four months. When I got there I wasn’t totally sure what I was going to make a film about. I had received a grant to work on the film, and in the grant proposal I said it was going to be about chicken farmers. I did actually interview a chicken farmer but I was more interested in what it was like to live in Huntsville and what the farmer knew about my grandparents.

After a few weeks I started to feel very lonely. I was getting a lot of reading done but I was craving more human interaction. I decided to try and find a job. I started working at the Sonic in town, and that’s where I met Jere. We started hanging out and I told her I wanted to interview her. At first she didn’t want to be interviewed because she was very shy and didn’t think she could do it. I waited a little while and then asked her again, and that time she said OK. I interviewed her in the room she shared with her husband, Trent, which was on the second floor of Trent’s parents’ house. I was grateful to her because I know she was nervous. This is her interview. The video in it’s entirety is called House in Season.

P.S. My little sister did the music.