free acres

Cynthia Loewy brought a number of family photos to me to scan for the Free Acres archives. Casually she showed me a photo of James and Billie Cagney taken in Free Acres just after James had risen to stardom with his movie "Public Enemy". James and Billie were great friends with Cynthia''s grandparents Anna and Marcu Friptu. Cynthia''s mother was so enamored of James that when, as a six year old child she met "Billie" and understood that Billie was James''s wife, she hid in the family cottage and wept.James Cagney''s first call to Hollywood came on one of the two telephones in Free Acres circa 1930. They had their first home here. Remained faithful to old friends Ricaltons, Friptus, Will Crawford, the Kilians, Tomasettis and Blohms. There are several photos among our Flickr photos from From the Loewy/Friptu collection. Cynthia is bringing me a photo which we will post next month of her aunt Pauline Friptu posing with James Cagney. Can''t wait. Laurel Hessing

We know we have an eastern screech owl in our sycamore. He comes and goes and right now he is in residence. However near midnight on Thursday Sept. 3rd, our family, the Coopers and Romanos and probably many other Free Acreites, heard the calls of an owl, who spoke a different languange than our Easter Screech owl. Through Rachel Wintemberg''s I phone we were able, at the pool party this afternoon, to identify the owl from one of Rachel''s mobile phone applications which covers birds of the eastern seaboard. From the call we now know that this was a Great Horned Owl who was visiting Free Acres. The pool party by the way was a tremendous success. Sal d magic on the grill. People kept coming. The spirit was just wonderful. I know everyone had a great time. I certainly did. Thank you Sal and Tami especially. Laurel