I was looking thru a Better Homes and Gardens from the 60’s, and there was The Man Next Door by Burton Hillis. Oh my, did that stir memories.
Judy, Rosemary, Grandpa Hillis, his wife Christine. I loved to read about them every month. His real name was William Vaughan, he wrote under the pseudonym Burton Hillis, He was so folksy and funny, I enjoyed his columns so much.
I hadn’t thought about him for years. He died in 1977 at the age of 61 of lung cancer…
Here are some of his quotes -
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
“I'm not convinced that the world is in any worse shape than it ever was. It's just that in this age of almost instantaneous communication, we bear the weight of problems our forefathers only read about after they were solved.”
“Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.”
“Aren’t we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? You know, the birth of Santa.”
And my favorite -
“The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.”
I grew up reading the The Man Next Door in my Mom's Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Every month when her magazine would arrive, I'd flip to the back page and read that column first thing. I wanted to live in that neighborhood when I grew up! For the last 3-4 years, every few months I'll go online and search for a compilation of all The Man Next Door columns. So far, no luck.
ReplyDeleteI loved reading him every month as well. One of my favorites was one titled (I think) "They Don't Make It Anymore" which was about trying to replace a part in a window and ending up having to replace the whole house. I just found some old BH & G magazines and decided to do an internet search and found your post.
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