The Vinita House Page: 9 of 12
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This latter room was also a bedroom. It was furnished like the one described
above. It had a west door into a hallway that ran south past the room above the dining
room. I remember that on very hot nights, the occupants of these bedrooms would climb
out the east windows and sleep on mats laid on the roof of the long east porch.
The room above the dining room was a third bedroom equipped with the same
items as the others. It had a door opening into the hall mentioned above. With the hall
removed from its eastern side, it was the smallest room in the house. (VAA recollects the
first room described was for the girls, the second for the boys and the smaller was for
T. V and Ellen Scott. The smaller room again, was off limits. He thinks the beds for the
children were a white painted wrought iron. The furnishings for the house VAA described
as a nice quality but not auspicious, as TV referred to himself as "a man of the earth ".
He had no use for the "Gilded Age" of the period and practiced with his family to not
over indulge in items, which were for show only.
As noted, all the bedrooms had chamber pots for nighttime use. In the daytime,
there was an outhouse located some twenty to thirty feet south of the kitchen. It was a
two holer built of brick, painted white with trim to match that on the house. As is normal
for such structures, the door could only be locked from the inside and it had six inch
round vent holes on each side about eight feet above the ground. The door faced east.
To explain the attic, it is first necessary to describe the roof layout. The eaves
were of normal height but very shallow, painted dark green to match the house window
trim. The shingle roof rose on all four sides at about forty-five degrees to near the top
where it was cut off by a platform about ten feet square. There was a three foot grill
fence around the perimeter painted black. From the northeast corner a lightning rod rose
above the grill to down the northeast ridge and on down the house corner to a ground.
The platform also had a chimney in the center. There was no access to the platform from
the attic as far as I know. I was never up there.
In the midline of each roof section, starting at the attic floor level, an alcove was
constructed wide enough and tall enough to mount a normal sized window plus
decorations sitting on the attic floor.
Due to the alcoves, the attic space was in the shape of a cross. The attic stairs
entered just to the west of the north alcove window. Starting at the east window, a series
of shelves were installed on both sides of the window to almost the center line of the attic
from north to south. Up to the time of my teens, a voluminous collection of T. V.'s grape
correspondence from all Europe, especially France, was stored. A relatively lesser
amount was from the U.S., mostly from California, much of which was from Luther
Burbank. The remainder of the attic had stored furniture or was empty.
I do not know what finally happened to the correspondence. Uncle Willie
(William Bell Munson, T V's son) might have disposed of it more likely. After his death,5
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Maki, Joyce Acheson. The Vinita House, text, January 31, 1998; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1353279/m1/9/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Grayson College Foundation.