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The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home

by George Howe Colt

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8391925,746 (3.93)42
Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt recounts returning for one last stay with his wife and children in this stunning memoir that was a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This poignant tribute to the eleven-bedroom jumble of gables, bays, and dormers that watched over weddings, divorces, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays, breakdowns, and love affairs for five generations interweaves Colt's final visit with memories of a lifetime of summers. Run-down yet romantic, The Big House stands not only as a cherished reminder of summer's ephemeral pleasures but also as a powerful symbol of a vanishing way of life.… (more)
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What a thorough and valuable memoir with bits of history and genealogy thrown in. I could only dream of one day finding a book like this written about my house, and especially, of my ancestors. But, I don’t feel like the younger folks who have not yet experienced all they can from their lives with family and friends, creating memories with the passage of time, will be able to fully appreciate this memoir. The first thing I would do is Duck Duck Go maps and find out exactly where Wings Neck peninsula, overlooking Buzzards Bay, is in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, so you get the visual of where George Colt’s story takes place.

This is about the author’s memories of summer’s spent at this summer home, known in the family as “The Big House”, that has been in the author’s family for a 100 years. As well, he has put together a great historical account of his ancestor’s summer gatherings at The Big House from the very beginning by interviewing family members and elders who were still summering on Wings Necks, and by reading and researching through many books. At the end of this book, in Notes, he has recorded all the books used in writing up the historical parts of the book. It’s worth a browse.

The author's Big House, originally 6,000 square feet and later remodeled to 8,000 square feet, was built by his great grandfather, Ned Atkinson and designed by Ned's brother, William. Ned married into the Forbes family...Ellen Forbes. They had two sons and one daughter. Their only daughter, Mary Atkinson, married outside the fray of what was normal for Bostonians to a penniless, upstate New Yorker, the author's grandfather, Henry Colt. This is one branch of the Forbes family to whom the Trust Fund of descendants of Ellen Forbes Atkinson would peter out. With taxes and maintenance up to $25,000 a year by 1990’s, it had become unaffordable to keep and decisions between his father and siblings had to be made. Even though they did manage to keep the house in the family, it was no longer the gathering place for just whoever wanted to spend the summers there. It now belonged to someone. His parents eventually purchased a small one-acre cottage in Maine, where George and his siblings now meet for family functions. This would now become their "Big House".
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MY LIFE AND MY "BIG HOUSE":

I could fully relate to his sentimental reminiscing, and you will too. I think we all have a “Big House”. I grew up on Cow Bayou when it was alive back in the 70’s and 80’s. But, unlike the author, we didn’t have money. My parents bought a rundown 2 bedroom camp on Cow Bayou that had been vacant for 30 years. They did a lot of work to it over many years to get it in good living condition. Me and my two sisters shared a large room over the bayou throughout all our growing years, up until we moved out of the house. We survived by putting the "don’t cross the line" tape down the middle of the room between each bed. Mom mostly stayed home and kept house and cooked beans and rice. Dad worked a miserable job in the warehouse at the plant. But, once when Mom did go to work for just a short time, we were in high school, and wouldn’t you know, we started sneaking boys over, and we’d open our windows and, running through the house dripping wet, jump through them into the bayou, then we started jumping from the roof of the house, then we would swim the quarter mile to the little bridge on the highway and jump from there...until….someone drove by and saw us jumping from the bridge and told mom. She quit her job.

Other memories of the bayou were of the good-looking doctor’s sons and their friends next door at their “true” camp on weekends, and all their loud fun. Us swimming and learning to ski, seeing the occasional gator down our cut (once I was even chased out of the bayou by a gator), splashing the water all around when we’d see a black snake (water, moccasin, or cotton-mouth...we never knew the difference) to scare it off, fishing for gar at midnight off our little dock, and camping nights on the little marshy island just across from us. We did crazy things. It really is amazing we survived at all.

Much like the author's Big House, our house was always an open house. The grill was always going on weekends with loads of sausage and chicken and beans cooking on the stove because someone would ALWAYS stop by in a boat or bring their families for a day of swimming on the bayou. My parents fed them and shared a cold one or two.

But, today, Cow Bayou is dead. You don’t see kids swimming. You don’t see boaters and skiers...people having fun anymore. The bayou looks dead, scary and creepy. My parents are 75 and 90 years old now. Their yard is not as kept. Their doors are closed. We girls are taking care of our parents as Mom goes through her lung cancer treatments, and as Dad needs his doctors for skin cancer treatments. He on oxygen and she needing treatments and will also soon be on oxygen. Life changes, and like the author, whether you want it to or not, you have to find a way to someday let go because you can’t go back. It changes because it never really was about “The Big House”, it was really about the people who made The Big House so great. So any place can be “The Big House”. It’s our little Cow Bayou house. It’s my great-grandparent’s poor little house in Vidor, Texas, where we gathered every Christmas Eve for many years until they could no longer hold it. Then, it was the little house on 6th street in Port Neches, at my grandparent’s home where we gathered for another many years. The Big House is where your family gathers and memories are made.

P. 189: They had a tradition of waving goodbye to guests and family members while standing on the porch waving a hanky or shirt or whatever until their visitors rode out of site. Down here in Southeast Texas, we walk them outside saying our goodbyes, then, feel it’s rude if we don’t walk them to their car...still saying our goodbyes. We don’t dare turn and walk back into the house until they are in their car driving and out of site. Meanwhile, we are still waving goodbye and they honk their way away. Too funny!

P. 304: George's father chose to keep the Trollope set because his mother LOVED them, but they were to remain in the house with the new owners, his father's nephew and wife. This started a discussion of the merits of Trollope, especially "Barchester Towers" and "The Warden", and its readability between the siblings. Hmmm...yesterday I just bought “The Eustace Diamonds” at a used bookstore for $1.00. I’m curious now what his grandmother loved so much about Trollope’s writing. I loved that their Big House was filled with books in every room. The family seemed to always be big on reading. His grandfather always read a bedtime story to the kids during the summer at Wings Neck, and this trickled down to creating readers of those kids...something to remember. ( )
  MissysBookshelf | Aug 27, 2023 |
This book came to my attention through it being on the list of National Book Finalists. I thought the premise of writing the history of a house sounded intriguing so I got it from the library. From the first page, Colt's prose resonated with me so I did the most reasonable thing - I returned the library book and ordered a copy of my own. I placed sticky notes on pages where I found beautifully written sentences, paragraphs, and profound ideas. My entire book has sticky notes coming out of it! The history and context of the New England coast provide a nice backdrop to the story of the Colt family and the Big House. I feel like I've been there. ( )
  Kimberlyhi | Apr 15, 2023 |
A tribute to the author's summer family home on Cape Cod. I would love to discuss this with my book club who recently read Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor and talk about the similarities and differences between the two. ( )
  auldhouse | Feb 28, 2023 |
The book is 15 years old now but I recently heard about it from Erin Napier, of HGTV fame, when she tweeted that she was reading it. It was a National Book Award Finalist in 2003. Since I love all things historical, architectural, and generational it seemed right up my alley.

First of all, the cover of the book really grabbed me mainly because I'm a big fan of watercolor art. The soft and gentle colors and just the peek of the edge of the house suggest to me a gentle story of lives lived in a beach home. That is exactly what you get.

There is no major drama or suspenseful action going on here. But you do get pulled into the lives of generations of the same extended family that occupied this home for over a century during both the happiest and saddest times of their lives.

The book includes a lot of information you wouldn't think to find in a memoir. Personal memories, architectural history, travel stories, learnings of how the upper crust of Boston lived and thought, and text that makes you feel like you too are there living in this home for the summer.

What I wished the book had was family photos, a picture of the home, and even a map of the area where the home is. There is so much detail into the way the home looks and the area surrounding it that a map and photos would have been even better to impress upon my mind where the stories were happening and how they connected. But, the fact that these options aren't available doesn't really detract from the book. I just like putting faces to names and locations to places.

It made me wish I had a home like this in my family history. That place we all congregate too during the summer and just become one with each other and nature. A place to wash the city off and gaze upon the ocean and let it all go. To be free of expectations. To breathe the salty air. To eat the fresh seafood. One week at the beach isn't enough. I want a lifetime. Especially after reading this. ( )
  WellReadSoutherner | Apr 6, 2022 |
A century in the life an an American summer home.
  BLTSbraille | Sep 5, 2021 |
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Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt recounts returning for one last stay with his wife and children in this stunning memoir that was a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This poignant tribute to the eleven-bedroom jumble of gables, bays, and dormers that watched over weddings, divorces, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays, breakdowns, and love affairs for five generations interweaves Colt's final visit with memories of a lifetime of summers. Run-down yet romantic, The Big House stands not only as a cherished reminder of summer's ephemeral pleasures but also as a powerful symbol of a vanishing way of life.

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