It "reminds me of the back-porch screen door of our house when I was a child, " says Mr. Talbot, who was born in Nashville, Tenn.

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But my best memories of the cottage are of the screened-in porch out back, reading in a chaise longue, listening to an afternoon rain shower and, one evening, the insistent call of a whip-poor-will.

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When we spoke, he was sitting at a picnic table, inside a screened-in porch in his back yard.

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