Renovating Vonnegut: Did you know there is a book about The Vonnegut House?
There is an old saying in Hollywood:
Good news or bad news, just spell my name right!
The essence of it is this, no matter what people say about you, all publicity is good publicity.
We are joking a bit, since “Renovating Vonnegut: How a Black Sheep Opened The Side Door to High Society” by Sarah Handyside isn’t that bad to us, it’s just that any time someone takes a picture of you, it makes you a bit self-conscious. It sure does make fun of the somewhat madcap process of renovating the Clemens Vonnegut Jr. House. This was a process Sarah witnessed and even participated in when she and her boyfriend Garth gave up a journey on foot up the Mississippi River to show up in Culver the day the house was purchased in 2013 by Old East Shore LLC to “slap some paint on it and get it rented!” Work by Sarah and Garth soon revealed that it was going to need a lot more than paint, and that the new owners had underestimated some of the damage done by five years of sitting and then a year of salvage before they had been able to secure the house from demolition. That renovation would turn into a year-long project, which she lived through the first three months of, in-situ.
This light read will be entertaining to anyone who has spent time enjoying this house, lived in Culver or visited Lake Max, recently renovated a home, or got a kick out of the Capra Classic “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” (or its modern remake “The Money Pit” with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long). It’s a fun modern tale to give perspective on this historic timepiece, but with dramatic local history infused.
Garth and Sarah arriving in May 2013, the day the Vonnegut House was purchased by Old East Shore. You can see they had their work cut out for them.
Born on the West Coast to middle class means, but having given up a traditional career and life path for a vagabond existence years before, Sarah explains Lake Max through her eyes fresh from the Occupy Wall Street movement. While learning to enjoy a summer of semi-luxury (surrounded by workers and construction noise all summer we will admit!) and reasoning some of her complex feelings on class in America, she appreciated what the early comers like the Vonneguts in the 1890s were trying to create for themselves.
The book interlaces her experiences in the house with a researched history of the house, area, and extended families; the Vonnegut, Schnull and Mueller Families who constructed and inhabited the five homes along the bluff from the late 1880s through the first 50 years or more of the homes’ existences. This family history included Kurt Vonnegut himself (whose father Bernard owned the yellow home to our North and designed perhaps all the homes through their 1920s renovations, including ours), who by his own admission ranged across all the houses with regularity, along with all his siblings and cousins, “like a Tornado” in Vonnegut’s words. There are deeply researched anecdotes and even some love stories that took place on Lake Max; the old stories creating an engaging and nostalgic offset to the ‘wham wham wham,’ ‘drill drill drill,’ and ‘takin’ care of business’ beat of Sarah’s time at the house in the summer of 2013.
She makes fun of the contemporary scene with some restraint and shares her and Garth’s frustrations and satisfactions before a surprise departure. All names were changed to protect the innocent, and while a few people did get bent out of shape by their characterization, Sarah admitted to a little editorial license (but there also may be some inability to deal with the true fiction from some of the ‘fictional’ characters out there). Again, there is no story without controversy!
All in all, The Clemens Vonnegut Jr. House is proud of Sarah’s effort and immensely appreciates the work she and Garth put into the house. Their honesty and efforts laid the groundwork for our future success, and we enjoy the book too, recommending it as the kind of fun read you’d take to a week-long vacation at a beautifully restored old lake house where you have some time to relax!
“Renovating Vonnegut: How a Black Sheep Opened The Side Door to High Society” by Sarah Handyside is available a few places online that we can find:
There also appears to be a copy in the Culver-Union Township Public Library in Downtown Culver:
Check it out, or get it while it’s hot!
A Dramatic Excerpt from the Book: