The Mudlavia Project: It Started With Grandpa

        Every Christmas, spring, and summer break my mom would load us six Ringer girls into our red suburban, Ida Red, (and later, our fifteen passenger van, El Ghosto) and take us down to Indiana to visit family. It was about a five hour drive to our Grandma and Grandpa Ringer’s house, and you can just imagine all the hair-pulling, drink-spilling, and yelling of “I have to go potty” from the back seat! I’m sure people could hear the Ringers coming from a mile away! But my mom loved music, so there was also a lot of crazy dancing and singing all the way from Michigan to Indiana too! Two of my favorites that we used to sing were Crocodile Rock and Rama Lama Ding Dong. All six of us went through a Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen stage, and to this day my parents still moan and groan about the torture of listening to the Olsen twins for hours on end. Brother For Sale, anyone?

        As we rocked the car along 41 south, my mom would turn down the music and always ask us if we wanted to take the normal way or the hilly way to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house. There was no argument- we always wanted to go the hilly way! She would lurch the suburban down Moores Hill Road and we would scream and squeal with delight like we were on a roller coaster!

        As a kid, it felt like it took hours to get around the hills and curves, and up to our grandparent’s house, but when we came to a long stretch of trees, lined up like soldiers along the side of the road, we knew we were finally close. We’d drive by the trees, one after another, until we came to another sharp turn and steep hill. My mom would sometimes pretend that the hill was so steep that we wouldn’t be able to get the car up it!

The base of the hill

 

 

The hill my mom used to pretend she couldn't get up! We ran down it, but walked back up it!

 

        At the base of this curve and hill, was a little overgrown road that led to an abandoned building, missing several walls and crumbling with age. I would press my face against the window, staring at it as we went by.

The view of Mudlavia as we drove up the hill

        My grandparents lived close enough to that old building that us girls would sometimes run or bike by it, and whether you’re a kid or an adult, you can’t go by it without wondering about its story.

        When we’d ask grandpa to tell us a story about it, he would get all excited and tell us a tale about the great hotel, Mudlavia and its magic healing mud. My ten-year-old imagination took his stories about Mudlavia and turned it into a magical castle with lords and ladies, and of course, horses!

        When my husband and I moved back to Warren County a few years ago, just a few miles from Mudlavia, I could still remember bits and pieces of my grandpa’s stories. We’d drive by the remains of Mudlavia and I’d try to recall Mudlavia’s story to my husband. It still captivated me. The writer in me had all kinds of questions and was dying to know the story of the great hotel. I asked my grandpa about it, and his stories were fascinating and his excitement uncontainable. He passed the wonder of this once magnificent hotel on to me, and that’s where the idea for my Mudlavia novel started.