While my neighbor and I were training for a marathon, my wife and I were working on an old Victorian cottage we had bought in the old part of Little Rock known as “The Quapaw Quarter.”

I don’t know what got into us.

It just seemed like the fashionable thing to do the time. Our friends were restoring old homes. There was a defined little gang of “downtown people” who had bought cheap property in the old neighborhood around Downtown and were busy, and happily it seemed at the time, restoring them to their once sparkling beauty. Yes, all our friends were doing it.

Not a soul appeared, not even my sainted mother, to mention jumping off cliffs.

The house had been built in 1898 by a man named Fox, who worked for a Mr. Gans. The Gans building were they worked after it was built in 1903, still stands on Second Street. Our house, located at 2107 South Broadway, had been remodeled a couple of times. The last remodeling had removed the Victorian porch and replaced it with a 1930s monstrosity.

Like a couple of idiots, we decided to restore it back to its original luster.

It was to be, as they later said about military life, not a job, but an adventure.

Our little cottage.
To the left of the big house.