How strange to stumble upon photos of my childhood house of the 1960s on a movie web site. I was searching Google images for a picture of Lake Sybelia in Maitland, 
Florida. Once a quaint hamlet of citrus trees and lakes, Maitland was long ago consumed by the tourist monster that ate Orlando. During my search, up popped the house — white columns, veranda, and canopy of live oaks — under siege by a phalanx of movie cameras and crew.
Interlopers! was my first thought, irrational given that my family rented the house and moved out thirty-eight years ago. Then the movie title tugged at me: The Way Back Home.
I’ve found my way back many times over the years, driving or walking past. It was odd that we lived there, given our middle-class status. The house and yard and orange grove out back, sprawling over a gentle slope overlooking the lake, hinted at money we didn’t have. But my parents rented the place for a steal. And it was a step up from the other two houses we’d rented on the lake since arriving from New Hampshire in 1958, when I was in the third grade.
My childhood was privileged not by wealth but geography. A field for football and treehouse with Tarzan swing. A grove laden with fruit for throwing at brothers and friends and occasionally eating. A spring-fed lake and two Labrador retrievers that swim with us.
Passing by the house as an adult was like looking at a movie set backdrop, a two-dimensional replica. I stared at the front door but saw a painted cardboard facade. I imagined crashing through this make-believe entrance, white-haired man tumbling into nothing on the other side.
I had found my way back but couldn’t go home.
Now home is in Northeast Portland a few minutes from downtown. My view out back is a small fish pond and three pear trees, an accidental shrine to the now murky lake and vanished orange groves.
I’ll rent The Way Back Home. Watching it in the dark, I’ll freeze-frame scenes again and again, searching for evidence that I once lived there.
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Dear Michael
I was fascinated to read your two blogs (or blog entries?) about the years that you lived at 900 S. Lake Sybelia Dr. My two brothers–my twin Douglas and younger brother Paul–now own the house and the land.
The house was built in 1936 by (or for) my grandfather, George L. Chindahl, who had retired as a patent attorney in Chicago. The architect was James Gamble Rogers II of Winter Park, and there is a small photograph (among many) of the house in a recent book about Rogers. My grandfather, my grandmother (Josephine Townsend Chindahl), and my mother (Margaret/Margery)–then 18–chose the area so my mother could attend Rollins College while living at home. My grandmother died the next year of food poisoning–spoiled Thanksgiving turkey.
When my brothers and I were children, we would go down every year from Connecticut and then Illinois (my father, George Greene, was a very liberal Congregational minister) to spend a month with Grandpa in Maitland, which was then as you describe it–a small orange grove village. The house was the first on that side of the lake, and my grandfather’s land originally stretched around the curve on Lake Sybelia Dr., heading toward Eatonville. As he grew older, he began selling off some of the land. The road around the lake was not paved until after my grandfather’s death.
In his retirement, Grandpa developed a scholarly interest in the American circus, about which he wrote what is still considered the best history (A History of the Circus in America [1958]).
Grandpa died in 1957, aged almost 81. My parents inherited the property and made the decision not to sell it. I realize now what I didn’t realize then when I was 13–that this was not an easy decision for them to make; like my two brothers and me, they were not wealthy (despite the aura of the property) and were in fact terminally middle class. In order to hold on to the house and land, they decided to rent the house. I think that you were the third renters after Grandpa’s death and definitely the ones who stayed in the house longest. I am not sure that the rent was really a “steal” at the time–but I’m glad your parents thought so!
My father died in 1978, aged 51, and in 1970 Mom decided to move back to Maitland. I remember that she and your parents worked out a considerable length of time between the decision and her moving back in so your family would be as inconvenienced as little as possible. (I also remember–though why I don’t know it occurs to me right now–that your mother had started Park Maitland school a few years earlier.)
Mom–Margaret Chindahl Greene Kennedy–died two years ago, at the age of 88, of Alzheimer’s. We had promised her and ourselves that we would not move her out of the house, and we were able to keep that promise, with full-time caregivers. During the many years that Mom lived there, it served as a family retreat (as it had under my grandfather), and children and grandchildren were frequently there with her. Fine generations of our family have now lived (temporarily or permanently) in the house.
The movie was filmed there in 2005, and Mom, who already had Alzheimer’s, was able to sit out on the front lawn and enjoy the experience. Unfortunately, the experience was not so pleasant for the rest of us because the star and chief writer was very difficult to work with. (Another story). There was an article in the Orlando Sentinel (two full pages) about the filming that called the house a “70-year-old faux antebellum mansion”! (We prefer Colonial Revival.)
When Mom died, Doug, Paul, and I had already decided to keep the property if it was economically feasible. For all of us, it has been the one permanent place in our lives, and, as Doug said, “if I had a million dollars, this is the kind of place I’d want to buy, so why should we sell it?” Our children share the feeling.
Several minor notes on your postings:
1. The clock at the foot of the stairwell was purchased when the house was built, and the landing where it stands was consciously designed for that clock. It is, however, a grandMOTHER clock! It worked when my grandfather was alive, and my mother had it repaired several times after she moved back. It is working now; whenever I’m in Maitland, I set it and wind up. Could it possibly be that your parents simply didn’t wind it? The chimes are melodious but quite loud at night.
2. The orange grove is ancient–some of the trees go back to the 1890s or even the 1880s–but it is not dead. In fact, we’ll be fertilizing it shortly.
3. The railing around the second-floor “sun porch” has been entirely replaced at least twice since you lived there, always to the original design. So I fear that your time capsule must be long gone.
4. We agree about the clutter of knickknacks in the house, and we are beginning to thin them out. The piano in the “book room” is indeed too big, but it is difficult to know what to do about it–we all like having a piano available! It was installed after Mom remarried; earlier there had been a combination game chest/bench in its place. We do intend to get rid of the large china cabinet in that room, which should open it up quite a bit.
I appreciate your offer for reminiscences when you and your family lived there and may well take you up on it some day.
Have you ever wondered why the back building is called the Annex? That, also, is another story!
If any of you would like to see the house from the inside, we’d be delighted to show you around. Just let us know so we can plan our schedule (I live in northeast Georgia, Doug is in Norfolk, Va., and Paul is in Sarasota).
With best regards
DAVID
P.S. Your blog is the best written of any I have read–and I am a retired college English teacher!