PART II: SCENES AND STORIES FROM OUR LIFE IN RIVERWOODS, IL
Bernie and I lived in this house from 1985 to 2002. It was a notably happy time in our lives.
▼▼ This is how our log house looked from 1988-2002… but NOT how it looked when we bought it in 1985. See the “before and after” photos linked below these photos.
See BEFORE AND AFTER photos of the main changes we made both inside and outside over ten years.
Here’s a passage from Martha’s memoir describing how she and Bernie fell in love with this house in 1985.
In July, Bernie and I bought our first real house in the leafy Village of Riverwoods, just north of the Lake County-Cook County line.
Riverwoods is aptly named. It’s a peaceful place where the Des Plaines River flows through a northern flatwood forest dense with native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. The landscape naturally floods in springtime, but after those annual soakings, the understory explodes with white trilliums, wild pink geraniums, yellow marsh marigolds, and unique jack-in-the-pulpits. Then the woods fill with the preening, flirting, and singing of birds in courtship, followed by the plaintive cheeps of hungry nestlings. August nights resound with delicate choruses of tree frogs. Autumn colors accompany the rustle of migrating wings.
The log house was vacant when we first saw it, so we drove there several evenings in a row and sat for an hour in the driveway with our windows down, simply enjoying the ambience. No rowdies showed up. No noisy vehicles. No commercial ruckus. Nothing but the whispering leaves of tall white oaks and hickories and barred owls calling back and forth, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?”
We were sold.
AT RIGHT: PHOTOS FROM RIVERWOODS IN AUGUST 1985
TOP: Bernie introduces José Gato to the brand-new furniture we had just bought for our screened porch.
In all, we had 4 chairs around a 60″ glass-topped table, plus two more chairs for extra seating and a matching rectangular side table between two chaise lounges. Eventually, we added two ceiling fans to keep the air moving.
For us, over the next seventeen years, that porch was our three-season private-and-party paradise.
BELOW: Margaret Alford, Bernie Marks, Minnie Marks, and Truman Alford in our den, which we forever kept left “rustic” even as we brightened up the rest of the house.
The watercolor shown is “Sea Stacks on the Oregon Coast,” which Bernie had painted on our first trip there in the early ’80s. We enjoyed it in all our homes from then on. That original “Early Bernie” is still available now.
