places in Naked in Church
Coconut Grove, Miami
The home pictured above is the home in Coconut Grove I used as a model for Tita's home. The scenes below are typical of the sights she would see on a regular basis when she was in h er adopted home of Miami and Coconut grove as well as places Travis would have seen when drivig with her.
Buffalo, Western NY & Niagara Region of Ontario
When Tita took Travis on his surprise ride to Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, they crossed the Peace Bridge from Buffalo to Fort Erie.
She told Travis the story of the barge stuck in the river, as they approached the Falls.
The photos above include the Prince of Whales Hotel (two left) and the Oban Inn on the far right, from which the photo of the Lake was taken.
Little Pond, NY
I grew up on a dairy farm near Delevan, in Cattaraugus County. The fictitious town of Little Pond is based on a combination of Delevan, Arcade, Yorkshire, and Machias, the towns closely clustered where I grew up, all in the same school district. The physical description of Little Pond in the novel is primarily based on Delevan as it was when I grew up and as it has slid into decay and blight as it is now, but with a few landmarks thrown in from other towns in the area, or in one case from a town in Illinois.
Above left, the location on the map, the Arcade Super Duper, which served as the model for the supermarket in Little Pond, next right is Dave's Barber Shop, mentioned in the novel, positioned next to the old Empire Type Foundry in Delevan. I had this scene in my mind, among others, when I was writing scenes in town. The Delevan Methodist Church is used as Casey Fenner's place of employment, as the First United Methodist Church of Little Pond.
The Delevan Drive-In Theater (back of screen) is a landmark in town. The Delevan Baptist Church is an exterior model for Bennett Richards' Little Pond Church of the Nazarene. Lime Lake, on Rt. 16 between Delevan and Machias (right view, above) is used as the model for Sulphur Lake in the novel. Below, a historic view of Main Street, Delevan.
Below is the now closed St. Pius X Catholic School, mentioned as the St. James the Less School in the book.
Below are some pastoral scenes around Delevan and the County which are typical of the landscapes the
Naked characters would see and live in. The building on the top right is the Cattaraugus County Courthouse, where Tita went to court to represent her nephew Brandon.The water scenes are the Stone Quarry off Worden and Stone Quarry Roads in the Town of Yorkshire, just down the road from my family farm, which was the model for the Johnson Farm.
Mobile homes or "Trailers" as they are commonly called in Western New York are common in rural areas, very plentiful, including in and around "Little Pond."
The basketball water tower in "Little Pond" is based on a real such tower in Hebron, IL, near where I live now, in the far Northwest Chicago suburbs. The tower was painted to commemorate tiny Hebron's unlikely state championship in high school basketball in 1952. In the novel, this tower is set in Little Pond to commemorate their last championship team in 1954, which just happens to be my birth year. What the heck?
Havana, Cuba
Tita's & the Esquivels' beloved
home of origin.
