A Special Closer Look at Part 4 (Patreon)

Edie and her family have moved to a tar paper shack. It's in the same neighborhood as they were in before, as you'll see later on. I'm skipping around a bit in my Grandpa's story, rearranging things a little. Which is sort of the way he wrote too. 

Here's the section of my Grandpa's writing that inspired this part of the story: 

"We moved from the trailer to a four room shack of a house constructed from used fiber wood packing crates and covered with cheap tar paper siding.  This house was real a 'Tobacco Road' dump. There was no insulation in the walls or ceiling, the windows were drafty, and our heat was a small oil heater in the center of the house.  Snow would blow into my brothers and my bedroom and land on our bed."

I had no idea tar paper shacks were a thing until I started researching them online. I'd seen them before but didn't realize they had a name. In my research I came upon this one incredibly detailed blog by a guy named Timothy Smith, whose family were missionaries in Larsen Bay, Alaska. There are some great photos of their tar paper house, both the interior and exterior, that I am using for reference. (See above photo. I basically used his exact house, with a couple tweaks. Thanks Mr. Smith!) 

For reference to draw Edie waking up, I used myself. It takes me (and my hair) a while to become functional in the morning. 

-mm