The House in Gormania

Pam's grandfather was living in this house when I first visited it about 35 years ago.  The house is located in a small West Virginia town and has stayed in the family with  sister-in-law Kathy and her husband Bernie currently owning it.

When I first entered the house, I was struck by the hand painted artwork of Disney cartoon characters on the dining room wall because I had seen a similar scene long ago.  In the 1950's my Uncle Steve and his family lived in an old house on the outskirts of a tiny town in Upstate New York, and the kitchen wall also contained pictures from the Disney cartoon feature, Bambi. 

My guess is that these paintings were done in the 1940's because the movie was released in 1942.  I don't know if an itinerant artist specializing in these paintings roved small town America in those years, or if kits were sold providing instructions for home-owners to paint them themselves.  To me the pictures have always symbolized a link between my family and my wife's.