The mystery of the dollhouse furniture kept Deborah Miller’s Decatur neighborhood abuzz for months.
Somebody, acting secretly, was staging repeated home invasions at Pinetree Drive. But they weren’t stealing anything.
Instead, they were steadily furnishing the dollhouse that had been in front of Deb and Moe Miller’s house for several months.
The Millers had plans to turn that dollhouse into a Little Free Library — the “take a book, leave a book” boxes that stand on pedestals all over Decatur and elsewhere. Fate, and home furnishings, intervened.
Credit: Rebecca Wright
Credit: Rebecca Wright
There are 90,000 Little Free Libraries in 88 countries around the world, from the U.S. to Japan to Pakistan. Little more than a wooden box mounted on a pole, they serve as places to recycle books and also as a way to start conversations among neighbors. Todd H. Bol, who founded the organization in Hudson, Wisconsin, died in 2018 from pancreatic cancer.
After Miller found out about the organization, she wanted to create a book exchange in her yard. The retired schoolteacher figured it would be a good way to offload some of the thousands of volumes spilling off of her own shelves.
While driving to the Emory area, she spotted a roofless dollhouse on the side of the road and knew it would be perfect. She and a friend rang the bell at the nearby residence, and the homeowners confirmed that the rough-looking dollhouse was indeed up for grabs. Miller brought it home and put it in the garage.
“I thought, ‘My husband is a builder; he can fix this,’” she said. Then a year went by.
“I have no excuse,” said Moe Miller.
“I started giving him friendly suggestions,” said the diplomatic Deborah. Then her birthday came, and she woke up that morning to discover that her contractor husband had, in fact, mounted the dollhouse on a pole in the front yard, just as she hoped he might.
Unfortunately, it still lacked a roof. Included with the birthday gesture was a friendly note that said the roof was coming.
A few months went by. The Little Free Dollhouse, covered partially by a black plastic garbage bag, was attracting some negative attention from neighbors. “It kind of embarrassed me,” said Deb.
Then one day the Millers peered inside the dollhouse and saw a tiny red chair in an upper room. A week later another chair joined the first. Then a table. Then a cupboard.
Miller was never able to catch the givers, whoever they were, in the act. But once a week a new item would appear. Soon the givers were installing fixtures in the dollhouse bathroom, including a sink, a commode and a bathmat.
A downstairs room became a bedroom. A music room was dressed with a tiny piano, a music stand and a miniature oil painting. “I questioned all my neighbors and asked them if they knew anything about it. They all denied it,” said Miller. “I said, ‘One of y’all is lying.’”
In the meantime, rain was getting into Deb Miller’s Little Free Dollhouse Library. Moe Miller finally bowed to the inevitable and requested that his friend, Paul Buechele, a house renovator, finish the job. They took down the structure.
On the post the next morning was a sign that read, “Boo Hoo.” Deb thumbtacked a note next to that note, explaining the disappearance. She wrote her note in the form of a limerick, with 10 stanzas, ending with a request that the givers make themselves known.
In a few weeks, Buechele finished what he called a “gut rehab, tearing out everything but the shell.”
He added a new interior, a roof, an open-air deck with a tiled floor, a clear door to keep the donated books dry and a pink paint job. (Miller repainted the house rust red.) Since the books would displace the dollhouse furnishings, Buechele also built a wing on one side of the structure and created a reading room with tiny bookshelves and teeny-tiny books.
Then one evening the givers knocked on the Millers’ door. They introduced themselves as Bill Kaiser, a retired insurance salesman, and his wife, Barbara Allen Kaiser, who lived one or two neighborhoods to the south. Bill, who was in his 80s, would pass the dollhouse each Sunday (while the Millers were at church) and add a credenza or a fireplace or hand-sewn curtains for the windows.
The Millers installed the new, improved dollhouse back on the post in their front yard but swathed it in a black plastic garbage bag to keep the results secret. Then, with the Kaisers, they hosted a “reveal” party, inviting the neighbors to see the new, improved dollhouse after they pulled aside the veil.
It was a big hit. But the Kaisers didn’t get to enjoy it for long. Bill Kaiser died a short time after the party, and Barbara Kaiser moved from the neighborhood.
Deb Miller keeps track of the books that come and go from her Little Free Library. She has discovered, to her chagrin, that the book giveaway wasn’t thinning out her shelves. Quite the contrary. She now has a new supply of books coming into the house from her highly educated neighbors.
On a recent morning, one could find books by Chaucer, Thucydides, Erasmus and T.C. Boyle waiting to be picked up by a curious reader, along with a potboiler from Dan Brown and the usual assorted mysteries.
The dollhouse is marked with a bronze plaque that reads, “The Kaiser-Allen Library, in memory of Bill Kaiser.”
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