August 24, 2006

Yellow Springs native Jaime Adoff remodeled Granny’s house after returning from a hectic 15 years in New York City. He is thrilled to live on his family’s property, reintegrate into the community, and devote his time to writing and working with youth.

By Lauren Heaton

There is meaning for Jaime Adoff in the hog pen fencepost behind the Dayton Street farmhouse that once belonged to his grandparents, Etta (Perry) and Kenneth Hamilton. After nearly 15 years in the bustling chaos of New York City, Adoff, who grew up in the village, has returned to claim the fence, the land, the house and all the childhood memories that go with it. He is really home now, he said last week, and he couldn’t be more grateful for the community of Yellow Springs.

When Adoff came to the village in 2005 to finish his novel, Jimi & Me, he didn’t intend to stay. He had been through a couple of rough years in the city, he said, and he planned to use the quiet here to figure out his next move. But after the first night in his parents’ house, he remembers waking up with the birds serenading him outside the window.

“I wanted to kiss the ground and thank God I wasn’t in New York!” Adoff said. Within six months of arriving in Yellow Springs, Adoff was remodeling the farmhouse, known around town as Granny’s house, and preparing an office space in one of the bedrooms upstairs. And soon he began dating his Yellow Springs High School prom date, Terri Johnson, whose children Levi Perry and Yosef Johnson attend Mills Lawn School.

After graduating from YSHS in 1985 and getting a bachelors degree from Central State University, Adoff was off to the Big Apple to attend the Manhattan School of Music and start a rock band. For ten years he wrangled the music scene with some success, until some proverbial soul searching lead him to turn his lyrics into poetry and begin writing literature for young adults.

In 2002 Adoff published his first book of poems, The Song Shoots Out of My Mouth, which received considerable recognition. He continued writing and publishing, much to the surprise of his parents, Virginia Hamilton and Arnold Adoff, both nationally-known authors. Virginia knew before she died in 2001 that her son had begun to write, he said.

The publishing was going well, Adoff said, but other things were not. New York felt fearful after 9/11, with armed police patroling the subway, he said. The stress of his divorce in 2003 only added to his discomfort. Then the high cost of living in the city began to get to him too. One particularly tiresome day, he ordered a $12 chicken sandwich that arrived with nothing on it but a tiny, tasteless sliver of meat.

“I remember waking up in New York, thinking, ‘I don’t have to live here,’” he said.

Adoff loves living in Granny’s house, a white two-story frame that sits streetside on the front edge of the two and a half acre property where he grew up, and where his dad still lives. He can see the house across the street that his great-grandfather, Levi Perry, purchased after coming here a freed slave in 1864. Photos of his grandparents watch over him from the front room.

“There’s so much history on this land; it has a life of its own,” he said.

The Yellow Springs community has changed a little, said Adoff, who recalls more age and racial diversity among the residents when he was in school here. He also notices the high price of housing and taxes, which, if it weren’t for Granny’s house, might have prevented him from moving into the village proper. He wonders how much longer single parents and people on limited incomes will be able to live in the community.

“This town has always been about inclusion, not exclusion, but we seem to be moving away from that with the recent actions of the Village Council,” Adoff said, referring to Council’s support of a village tax levy that, if passed by voters in November, would increase property taxes for local residents.

“It seems to be Yellow Springs’ dirty little secret that there are a lot of people here who are just barely getting by, and some of them will not be able to handle this,” he said.

Adoff, a member of Home, Inc.’s board of trustees, gets fired up about issues that affect the community precisely because he cares so much about it, he said. Its small size makes him feel that by speaking out and taking action, he can really make a difference.

The village still is a unique place to grow up, he said. It’s a town that attracted Quakers, artists, builders of the Vale and mixed race families like his. It’s a place that still feels safe and nurturing for children, whose role models are people who are passionate about making things better through their art and their music. Yellow Springs represents what is possible, Adoff said.

“I think about how many people leave New York every weekend to try to find a town like this and pay $1,000 a night for a room in the country,” he said. “When you’ve lived somewhere else, you know the value of a place like this. It’s priceless. It’s a jewel.”

The only thing Adoff said he misses about New York is being able to get Chinese food delivered to his doorstep when he’s craving it at 1 a.m. Otherwise, he anticipates it will take him at least twice as long to get tired of Yellow Springs as it took him to get sick of New York. That means he plans to be here for at least 30 more years. It’s a good thing Granny’s house isn’t going anywhere.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com