Quintessential Rhode Island

There's a little pale blue duplex probably a hundred years old on the corner near Precious Blood Cemetery. Cars pass it every day taking a shortcut to Diamond Hill Road. They all like to take the left off Privilege Street at Marchand's Auto Body. At the end of the street on the left corner is this quintessential Rhode Island house. Everything is meticulously kept up. There's a grape arbor in back over a picnic table which is behind the tool shed made of old storm windows. A clothesline is strung with a cotton sack of clothes pins hanging from it. There are handmade flowered curtains with matching ties in each of the five garage-door windows. The wooden clapboards of the house are painted light blue, the porches white with lovely Victorian detail in the corners. The lawn is trimmed; a green haircut. White wooden duck pins are assembled into a fence bordering a garden where tomatoes and sunflowers are planted each year. I can't help smiling when I pass this house. My librarian friend used to live here with her husband and two small boys. One September they gave me fresh sunflower heads to dry, and I kept them as subjects for sketching. The house mice nibbled at the seeds when I was asleep. I wonder if my friends in Texas ever see houses like this down there?