A little girl, one of seven children, often dreamed of dollhouses. She had a vivid imagination, creating homes from cardboard boxes with cut-out paper dolls living there.

She treasured and loved her Christmas baby dolls, even though hard play always made them come apart.

Now that Linda Hudson, a home health nurse, is a great-grandmother, her childhood dreams have come true.

Her husband, Jackie, a retired auto master mechanic, patiently creates the environment she longed for as a child.

He is her dream maker.

“My brothers and sisters and I grew up not knowing we had little money because our family was rich in love,” she said. “I spent most of my childhood in South Haven, Miss., but I was born in Japan. Our mother, Frances, always took us to join our father, Aubrey Pierce Cook, wherever he was stationed in the military.”

She said her father was a caring, loving man, and that she had spent her life trying to find someone like him to marry.

The Hudson’s cozy home on North Robinson Street in Cleburne reminds the visitor of well-planned and decorated playhouse.

A welcoming fireplace mantel, carved by Hudson, with gas heater inside warms the room and covers an outside window.

“The old girl doesn’t look her age,” Linda said of the place.

The abstract of title for their property is dated October 25, 1854, and was filed April 17, 1856.

The Hudsons are searching for the legal records to determine when their home was constructed.

Cleburne was founded in 1867, with their property outside its early city limits, she learned.

“Our abstract states that C. Chaney sold two tracts of land to W. F. Henderson,” she said. “Other names mentioned were G. H. Maxey, Nat Henderson, B. D. Johnson and B. J. Chambers, the ‘Father of Cleburne.’

“That’s exciting to us to learn that our property goes back that far.”

When the Hudsons bought the place in 1977, the back porch had been closed in to enlarge the house. The original barn still bravely stood in the back yard.

But an enormous amount of remodeling and restructuring faced the couple.

Through the years they have removed and replaced siding, removed layers of wall paper, sheet-rocked, taped and bedded, painted, and replaced the kitchen and bathroom sub flooring.

Jackie has crafted furniture, cabinets and shelves to fit Linda’s designed décor.

“Jackie built new kitchen cabinets for me and put some of the original salvaged hardwood floors in,” Linda said. “I had him to take out a closet wall and include it in the hall bathroom when we redid it.”

A lace curtain over half of some of the cabinetry in that bath provides privacy for their cat and her litter box.

Linda says she is the painter. She found that the original exterior boards had many layers of paint on them.

“I was so surprised when I found the earliest color under there to be almost the exact color I had chosen. So she is yellow again as she was in the beginning.”

Now the original back porch is the kitchen, Linda’s sewing and quilting room and Jackie’s music room. He has been a musician for many years and played the steel guitar for me.

Linda beamed as “Last Date” brought back memories.

Born to Albert “Doc” and Faye Hudson in Knox Hospital in Cleburne in 1941, Jackie spent his early years at Brazos Point.

The oldest of five boys, his family moved to Mesquite, where his father was a mechanic at B.F. Goodrich in Dallas.

“I taught myself to play the guitar when I was a child, and played in local bands much of my life after I came back to Cleburne,” Jackie said.

Jackie remodeled the original barn in the back yard to make a side-entry garage and a wood workshop.

He found square-headed nails in all the structures on the property, with railroad spikes buried in the ground.

I wondered why the spikes were there.

Local historian Jack Carlton said that railroad lumber from Silsbee was often used to build early homes in Cleburne, as shop lumber was thick and strong and could be purchased for a mere $1 a carload.

While repairing the home’s roof, the Hudsons found a hole.

Linda decided to explore one day when she was alone, a decision she soon regretted.

“I climbed up on the roof and went down into the hole,” she said. “I had a single dropped light. It was so dark in there. Suddenly, I fell through, and found myself hanging from my knees on a rafter. I fought to pull myself back up so I wouldn’t fall more, and I met what made the hole, face to face.

“I don’t know who was more afraid, the squirrel or me.”

After that, the Hudsons made a pledge never to go back into the attic alone.

There was also a moment of panic in the backyard when Jackie cut down a tree, and the couple learned they were not lumberjacks.

“The tree didn’t look very big looking up at it,” Linda said. “So Jackie got his chain saw and a rope and tied me to the tree. He said, ‘Now, just stand here, and I’ll cut the tree. Then we’ll let it down.’”

She laughed.

“Well, the tree was much bigger than we thought. When he cut it, it fell into the neighbor’s yard and catapulted me into the middle of our yard. It absolutely scared us both to death. I still remember Jackie throwing the chain saw down, getting to me to be sure I was OK.”

Inside his workshop are rocking horses in progress that will bear miniature leather saddles and have real horse hair for manes.

The horses are sanded smooth as glass and placed on rockers that were soaked in the bathtub so they could be curved.

They have become folk art that can also be ridden.

They showed me the gazebo where they were married, the lily ponds they dug that have real fish, protected in the deep water from that night’s snow and frigid air, and the playhouse with hand-painted topiaries and vines on its walls.

A television is brought out to the playhouse in the spring and summer when the grandchildren come to visit and play.

Together they have six children, 12 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

The dollhouse in the bedroom is her favorite of Jackie’s creations, Linda said.

“He planned to make this and give it to me for Christmas one year. He began work on it in October and finished it in February — so many hours of detailed work.”

The dollhouse’s two-stories and attic were wired for Christmas lights.

Miniature photographs of Linda and her children hang on its walls.

Individual wood shingles provides the roof. A tiny cradle matching the hand-crafted one Jackie made is displayed in the corner of the bedroom.

They plan to join Save Old Cleburne and hope their home will be added to Candlewalk home tour in the future, Linda said.

The environment seemed a perfect fit — the creations, the home, the couple.

With a great deal of work, dreams can come true.



Larue Barnes may be reached at laruebarnes@yahoo.com.