Beckoned From The Beyond?

 

So a running joke I've had with myself (yes I have running jokes with myself, I mean who else am I going to joke with) has been that I would eventually, perhaps within the next year or so, dump my mobile home and the outrageous heat of Florida to return to my old hometown.

"Hanora Lippett Mills Manor calls you, Michael..." I'd joke.

Hanora Lippett Mills manor is a senior-living apartment complex built out of an old complex of mills, some dating back to the origin of Woonsocket's Industrial Revolution beginnings in the early 19th century. What with the vast number of old mills having now been long since either abandoned and demolished or simply burned to the ground over the years, it's astonishing that this complex, arguably one of the oldest in all of New England, still exists, and in fact is still in use, albeit not as a mill but as housing for the elderly.

Back before Operation V, I had briefly looked into potentially going into subsidized housing but then being not yet 55, it would have fallen under Section 8 housing and perhaps I'm a bit too biased against that, having grown up in such an environment back in the Morin Heights days of my youth ie "the projects," I wasn't too keen on that. But not too long ago, now that I qualify for "elderly" housing, I remembered these apartments as being some of the better ones available for seniors in my hometown. If I remember correctly, they're one of the ones that are on quite a lengthy waiting list since they are much sought after. So the running joke is that I'd sell this place, and practically everything I own, including Hulk, fly back to Rhode Island and take up residence with my fellow old Frenchies.

Now of course this was all just a pipe dream and one without much merit since I don't really think it would be a better life for me at all. I may bitch and complain about the long sometimes oppressive weather here in Florida and the rigors of mobile home park life but believe you me I can only imagine the horrors of living with some of the health issues I currently have, and I'm looking forward to having, as I age not so gracefully in the coming years in a cramped apartment in a 200-year-old building dealing with the harsh, brutal New England winters surrounded by crotchety old Memeres and Peperes.

Yet for some reason I couldn't shake it. Like an earwig song that just gets stuck in your head, I kept hearing the refrain, almost like a ghostly wale: "Come to Hanora Lippett, Come to Hanora Lippett."

Anyway, this all brings me to the first picture of this post. Yes that's Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins in the movie version of Dark Shadows but think of it rather as a an heirloom oil painting portrait of an early 19th century gentleman of a wealthy old New England family.

Or maybe just think of it as an angry and disturbed evil and immortal vampire awoken from its forgotten grave by a hapless and reckless youthful commoner in the 1980s.

In order to see if there was a decent picture of Hanora Lippett, I went to its Wikipedia page. And I read a little bit about its history.

"The Hanora Mills (also known as the Hanora Lippitt Mills Apartments) are a historic textile mill complex the center of Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The oldest part of the mill complex was constructed in brick around 1827 by the Ballou family, and it was named Harrison Mills. The mill was a water powered facility with a specially dug trench. In the mid-nineteenth century, Henry Lippitt's company purchased the mill from the Ballous, and it became known as Lippitt Mills. There are various other buildings which were gradually constructed as the site expanded with the latest dating to the turn of the twentieth century." 

If I had pearls to clasp, I would have...

As it says above, the oldest part of the mill complex was built around 1827 by the Ballou family. Unfortunately, I have some rather dark and morbid history with the Ballou family.

You'll have to read this post to find out more.