Bingo Night at the Fire Hall: Rediscovering Life in an American Village - Softcover

Holland, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156006650 ISBN 13: 9780156006651

Publisher: Harvest Books, 1999

Synopsis

When Barbara Holland inherited her mother's small cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, she quit her job in advertising and moved from Philadelphia to her new home high on a mountain, with only her cat for company. In Bingo Night at the Fire Hall, Holland recounts her adventures and misadventures adjusting to life in a rural community, as her small town adjusts to the inevitable encroachment of suburbia. Whether writing obituaries for the local paper or learning how to handle a chainsaw, Holland shares the triumphs and travails of being a newcomer to an old land with a rich history, a beautiful place sadly losing ground to subdivisions and four-lane highways. Filled with wonderful anecdotes, humor, and insight, Bingo Night at the Fire Hall is a fascinating portrait of a paradisical yet disappearing world.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Holland is the author of several books, including Wasn't the Grass Greener? and Endangered Pleasures. She has written for the Washington Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Smithsonian, Mid-Atlantic Country, Utne Reader, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Parents, and more. She lives in Loudoun County, Virginia.

From Kirkus Reviews

Reflections on living in the Blue Ridge Mountains, as they metamorphose from farmland and self-sufficiency to commuter subdivisions dependent on cars and asphalt. Holland (Endangered Pleasures, 1995, etc.) came to the Virginia Blue Ridge when she inherited her mother's summer cabin. She couldn't afford the upkeep on both her Philadelphia apartment and this rural retreat, so she opted for for the ``one-bedroom, one-bath house without furnace or insulation,'' but with ``flush toilet, electric stove, and a phone.'' Holland is both cautious and adventurous as, ``stiff with sophistication,'' she tries to carve a niche for herself in this self-contained community. Establishing herself as a part-time writer of obituaries on the local newspaper, she insinuates herself carefully among the regular customers at a nearby bar and never undestimates how alien she is. From her perches on the bar stool, at the newspaper office, and in her snowed-in cabin, Holland rearranges priorities. For instance, she learns that her neigbors believe that government people don't do much--``What could anyone possibly do while sitting at a desk?'' Doing, for them, is ``fixing the tractor, nailing shingles on the roof . . . motion.'' Nevertheless, Holland gives due to both her long- established neighbors who raise pigs, can tomatoes, and chauffeur children, and to those newcomers who chauffeur themselves back and forth on the highways to city jobs. She explores the history of the region: Its point of reference is the Civil War, and its hero is Southern guerrilla John Mosby of Mosby's Rangers. She celebrates the rhythms of community suppers with supportive neighbors but accepts the inevitable replacement of small towns with the Internet. Still, it was lovely while it lasted, and Holland describes the past and the intruding future eloquently, without whining: ``I was told as a child to eat what was put on my plate.'' -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvest Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0156006650
• ISBN 13: 9780156006651
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 210