Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 12, 1993 TAG: 9310130315
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Kathleen Wilson
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Sure was. After three solid hours of gawking at how the other half lives, I whipped out my notebook and jotted down ``marry a millionaire'' and ``see if someone would consider sponsoring re-covering my sofa.''
This annual event raised more than $125,000 for multiple sclerosis and allowed more than 2,000 of us who call those things on our windows ``curtains'' to see just exactly how those who call them ``window treatments'' live.
At first, this sounded like a fairly tacky thing to do. But we shell out money to wander through Graceland, right? And every morning thousands line up in Washington to see where Bill Clinton eats his corn flakes.
For the price of a $15 ticket that went to a good cause, the Smith Mountain Lake Home Tour was an absolute blast.
Personally, I find the thought of opening my home to the public absolutely horrifying. I mean, sometimes there's stuff growing in the dark recesses of my bathroom you could make a science fiction movie about.
But then again, these homes bear no resemblance to any place I've ever lived or hope to live.
These are homes with built-in wine racks and toilets so strategically hidden that you'd need a map to find one. These are homes where stereos are heard but not seen.
These are not homes where any mother ever hollered, ``Eat your Ring Dings IN THE KITCHEN!'' or ``If you're going to drink that Mountain Dew in the den USE A COASTER!''
At the Hawkins home, we got to peer at the dining room from the other side of one of those gold braid ropes you find in museums. In the living room, there was a 100-year-old, 7-foot square stained-glass window the couple got from an old mansion in Newport, R.I. A flotilla of gargantuan gardenias floated in one of the Jacuzzi bathtubs that seem to be standard-issue at the lake.
The rooms in the Hawkins home were all named. You know, like The Safari Room and The Southwestern Room. (In my family, the only room we ever named was the empty room we haven't furnished yet. My sisters and I call this The Ironing Board Room, because that's all that's in there.)
The DiStefano home downright frightened me. Despite the fact that we were issued surgical booties to cover our sneakers before we entered the home, the moment we walked in the door someone yelled, ``Don't step on the rug! You can walk everywhere EXCEPT on the rug!''
Each room of each house on the home tour was manned by a volunteer armed with an index card, ready to answer any questions you might have. At the DiStefanos', Leigh Crawford, 12, showed me around the sunroom.
Leigh, who made my day by showing me how to say ``boys are dumb'' in sign language, was worried about the trailer park positioned opposite the lake, but not for the reason most were clucking about how it marred the view.
``It must be awful to live over there and have to look at this beautiful house every day,'' she pondered.
The Rotty home was just that: a home. There were tomato plants and a jukebox and pictures of the grandchildren on the refrigerator.
I loved the framed photo on the wall of the whole family - including three golden retrievers - huddled on the stairs. It was one of those pictures where everyone's laughing because whoever set the timer on the camera had to move pretty fast to get in the shot.
Men dragged along on the tour seemed happy to hit the Rottys', where the big-screen TV was blasting the baseball game. Faces lit up. People even sat down.
Pat and David Rotty got a kick out of the questions folks asked them, and I got a kick out of their answers.
``Is that a ficus?'' one woman wanted to know.
``I don't know, but it's silk,'' Pat admitted.
``What's this room paneled with?'' a man asked David.
``Uh, wood,'' he answered.
Unlike at the DiStefanos', Pat was hoping everyone would tread on the living room rug.
``I wish they'd wear it out,'' she said. ``I'd like a new one.''
You didn't need booties at the Wilks home either. This was probably my favorite of those I visited. It's a Georgian colonial designed and built around Margaret Wilks' collections of antique furniture, blue delft porcelain, black Wedgwood jasperware and Waterford crystal.
Everyone gasped when they walked into the pristine, white baked-enamel kitchen designed by Lisa Grinnell of the Roanoke Kitchen Center.
Like many of the other kitchens on the tour, the cabinet doors were glass.
``I wonder where they keep the dishes they REALLY eat off of?'' one woman wondered.
I spent a lot of time in the bedroom of John and Margaret Wilks` now full- grown son, Whit. The children's rooms at every other home I visited looked more like Hyatt hotel rooms.
You could learn a lot about Whit Wilks, who's now a lawyer in Charlotte.
It was filled with University of North Carolina Tarheel-abilia. There was an unopene d bottle of Pepsi labeled in Russian.
And among a massive collection of soccer and basketball trophies was one that named Whit ``Best Boy Camper.''
Margaret Wilks was a warm hostess, welcoming us into her home, telling us to never mind the booties. ``It's just a floor,'' she kept repeating. ``It's meant to be walked on.
Where I grew up there's the one strip of wallpaper in the foyer that doesn't match the rest, because that's the one where my dad lined us up to chronicle our growth. And you wouldn't want to miss the basement wall where my little sister, Julie, painted ``I LOVE JEFF'' when she was in the first grade.
Though my mom undoubtedly scolded Julie for that, she never once considered painting or paneling over it. I think Margaret Wilks would have understood that.
``Someone actually asked me why I didn't reupholster the sleeper sofa in Whit's room,'' she told me, slightly aghast, about the sofa that looks way better than the one at my Casa del Mingling in Salem.
``I would never redo that sofa,'' she said. ``It's going to stay like that because he likes it that way.''
by CNB