Linda Holden

What I remember most about Linda Holden: the decorator, the whimsical shop owner, the B&B hostess, and the mistress of the Post Office, was her unique sense of style for herself, for her businesses, and for her many design projects.

For instance, I once visited a restaurant she had worked on and was surprised to find a very dark color scheme. I hadn’t encountered that before, but that was me in the 80s.

She may have incorporated black tile in a restroom but she had her limits. When she discovered an artist had painted burning bones in the fireplace of the room she had to decorate for the Festival of Trees she turned the offending bones around and went on with her own plans to build a Colony-era décor around her very own Olof Krans painting.

Linda did things her way. Usually. When asked on one Lucia Nights to turn off the red-hot-chili-pepper shaped lights hanging in the PO’s front window—she did. She grumbled about the Lucia police, but she turned them off. I think deep down Bishop Hill always came first for her. It was more than just caring about how things looked, she cared about how well things were going with the village.

My only problem with Linda came when she found what was probably an old enameled metal sign from the 60s. It read: NO HIPPIES ALLOWED. (Or something to that effect.) She put it in the PO’s front window, and I had to stare at it every time I passed by. One day it occurred to me that if a person covered up the “IE” with a letter O, then “HIPPIES” would turn into HIPPOS. I spent weeks trying to figure out how I could do it without getting caught. For all I knew it was a Federal offense to tamper with anything inside a PO, so I didn’t want to leave fingerprints behind either. I thought about the sleight of hand needed. I thought about such things as timing and diversions. I thought about enlisting the aid of co-conspirators. In the end, I didn’t do anything. 

Now, I add the story to all the things I remember about Linda Holden.

Linda Holden

Dec. 21, 1944—May 30, 2017

http://www.stackhousemoore.com/notices/Linda-Holden