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Tour Celebrates Christmas Long Ago

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By D'ANN LAWRENCE WHITE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 31, 2007

BRANDON - There are times when Carolyn Yoss is convinced she should have been born in the 1800s.

She's perfectly at home in the reproduction colonial saltbox house she and her husband, Larry, built at 1400 Viola Drive off Bloomingdale Avenue in Brandon in 1977 and turned into Behind the Fence, a bed and breakfast in 1993.

Decorated with 18th- and 19th-century antiques, the house has been featured in 'Country Home' and 'Country Living' magazines, as well as national bed-and-breakfast publications, all of which praise the home's early-American authenticity.
Yoss said she gets along fine without a computer and enjoys doing things the old-fashioned way. Like colonial women, she tears rags into strips to adorn gifts and trim Christmas trees and wreaths that she makes from magnolia leaves and evergreen boughs from her yard.

Her husband, a registered nurse, gets into the spirit as well, collecting used candles from area churches to recycle into homemade, hand-dipped ones.

But Yoss concedes there are advantages to living in the 21st century. She joked that she wouldn't give up her microwave or TV news, although the television is discreetly hidden inside an 1800s pine cupboard.

For 21 years, the Yosses opened their home to the community for an old-fashioned holiday home tour. Yoss continues to provide tours for clubs, Scout troops and school groups. However, the open house became too much for her to handle when Yoss was stricken in 2000 with an illness resulting from battling polio as a child.

'I've been able to continue doing the individual tour because I can schedule them when I'm physically able, but the holiday open house was just too much for me,' she said.

This year, with a lot of help from her friends, Yoss will open her home to the public again.

Neighbor Cary Quaid, an antiques dealer and primitive crafts artist, is one of those friends.

'Everyone loved her tours, and people kept asking her when she would have another one,' Quaid said. 'I knew she loved it, too, but was worried about whether she could do it. So we offered to pitch in. It's such a great chance to get the community together to experience the holidays the way they used to be.'

The Yoss home will be open to the community from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Nov. 8-9 and from 9 to 5 p.m. Nov. 10. There is a $5 charge to cover the cost of homemade doughnuts and cider served to guests.

During the tours, residents will be invited to stroll through the candle-lit saltbox house and a cottage behind it, enjoy the doughnuts and cider and watch Larry Yoss make candles in a gazebo. Quaid will have her primitive samplers, Christmas trees, wreaths and ornaments available for sale, and Brandon doll artist Jane Dulaney will sell her handmade Santa and snowman dolls made with homespun, tea-stained fabrics.

Antiques will be available for sale, as well as reproduction antique oil paintings and floor cloths.

'People will get a chance to see and enjoy Christmas the way it used to be,' said Carolyn Yoss, who has her home filled with 1800s Christmas decor made of goose feathers and decorated with antique spun-cotton ornaments and toys of the era.

'Most things were handmade,' Yoss said. 'This was a time when people didn't run out to the Toys R Us for a gift. You had to really think about what you were going to give someone, and oftentimes it was something homemade. I think that's how Christmas is best celebrated - without all the commercialism.'

For information, contact Yoss at (813) 685-8201 or Quaid at (813) 545-2481.

TAKE THE TOUR

The Yoss home will be open to the community from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Nov. 8-9 and from 9 to 5 p.m. Nov. 10. There is a $5 charge to cover the cost of homemade doughnuts and cider served to guests.

Reporter D'Ann Lawrence White can be reached at (813) 657-4524 or dlwhite@tampatrib.com.

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