A Thanksgiving Surprise

We celebrated Thanksgiving Day here at the old jail. Two of my brothers were here with their families, plus my mom and my sister-in-law's sister, Amber. In addition to a wonderful salad, Amber brought with her a scrapbook of clippings and other mementos that had been assembled by a woman who lived here for eleven years in the 1940's and 50's when her husband was the sheriff. The scrapbook included a lot of things about our old building.

I spent several hours for a couple of days after Thanksgiving scanning the clippings and photos that pertained to our building into my computer and printing them out for my own scrapbook. In the process of doing so I learned a lot that I hadn’t known before. I was especially excited to see a photograph of the fireplace mantle and wood moldings on the first floor, all of which had been removed by the time DH and I bought the house. I was saddened by a story about a little 10-year-old boy who committed suicide in his cell in 1948, discovered by the sheriff's wife when she went to bring him his dinner. When I read about a couple of prisoners who had enlarged a hole in the southeast corner of the jail and used it to escape, DH and I went into the cell block to look for the place where the wall had been patched. There was a cute photograph of a bunch of kids celebrating a birthday party on the jail steps, just in front of the "Visiting Hours" sign.

As I removed the items from their plastic covers for copying, it occurred to me that the last person who had touched them was probably the sheriff's wife who had assembled them, maybe even sitting in this same room, which was most likely her bedroom. I felt close to her, this hard-working, underappreciated mother of six who toiled daily for no salary, feeding the prisoners and her own family, seeing things no woman ever wants to see. She obviously felt a special connection to the old place, because included in the collection are clippings pertaining to the sale of the building long after her residence here. Near the end of the book was an article announcing the death of her husband at an untimely early age; I thought about how shocked and grieving she would have been as she placed it into the book.

Old buildings are like that--for a time they are the center of our whole world, the place where holidays are celebrated and tragedies are mourned, where children grow up and leave and return with their own children. Then we move on and another family takes our place and the whole cycle starts all over again.

What happened to the train?

The picture above hangs in the entrance hall of the Lawrence County Museum; I see it just about every day and it reminds me of why historic preservation is so important. It is of J Street in downtown Bedford, the same street our castle faces, at a time when the railroad was a daily presence in the life of our town.

I remember being stopped by a passing train in Bedford on lots of hot summer days before car air conditioning. My siblings and I would count the cars while the sweat ran off our faces. A hundred or more wasn't uncommon. When DH and I bought the old jail and moved back here in 2007, the train still passed once a day, and it was always fun to wave at the engineer and hear him blast the horn so loud it made our windows rattle. Cars would line up on the street out front, waiting for the train to pass. The Christmas parade that year had to stop for ten minutes to let the train roll through downtown.

When I came back from my trip in early July of this year, I noticed that the train didn't come by anymore. I don't know why; I suppose I could research it, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that another part of our history has been lost, at least for the time being. Maybe some Bedfordians are glad to be rid of a noisy train, but I miss it.

October was really nuts--three big fundraisers to organize at the museum (take a look at www.lawrencecountyhistory.org for details), and both my kids were sick at some point. The kids are both healthy now, thankfully. The last of the fundraisers will be over tomorrow night; it was all fun but it will be great to be free to think about something else.

I'm looking forward to a visit from one of my sisters who lives out of town; Friday and Saturday I hope to go out with her and my mom for some girl stuff (probably antiques/crafts shopping and lunch in some cute southern Indiana town--stay tuned for a full report). I'm always on the lookout for places that serve real meringue pie, made with real eggs and browned in a real oven. If you know of any place like that within an hour and a half of Bedford, please share the information!

Behind Closed (Pocket) Doors

You may remember that earlier this year we traveled to Detroit over a weekend to buy pocket doors to replace a set that was removed from our house who knows how long ago. I even included a picture of my handsome DH posing in front of the salvaged doors. What I didn't show you is what lies behind those doors--the first floor turret room, which is mostly round and which serves as our living room.

This room still isn't finished--it needs baseboard moldings and the fireplace needs to be reopened. I would love to build in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves one of these days, and add some furniture that hasn't been bought at a garage sale. Still, it is my favorite room, and when I turned on these lights the other night after a couple of hours of dusting, what I saw made me happy. After hauling out buckets of crumbling plaster, sanding floors, and stripping woodwork in this old house, we can take our coffee into the living room and savor the feeling of home.

No Time for Fun

I've been volunteering a lot of time at our local museum and haven't had much left over for my needlework (or blogging). I did manage, one sleepless night, to rip out a lot of the teal Blue Sky Bulky sweater I started late last winter and re-think the design. I'm pretty sure I'm only going to be able to knit the body of the sweater with the yarn I have, then maybe the sleeves can be felted wool dyed to contrast or something. More on this later.

Saturday was my birthday, always a reminder that time stops for no one. DS had a bout of flu last week that was remarkably focusing; I spent a day at home playing board games with him (he won them all) It was great; having one child off to college this year makes me savor the time I have with the one still at home. My dear husband is up to his elbows in things to fix as usual.

I'm taking a drawing class--in the first class I mostly drew cylinders. Maybe this week I'll move up to cubes! I look forward to drawing something well enough that I won't be embarrassed to post it here. That might be a while.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes

When the days were still short and it was cold outside early this past spring, our son planted tomato seeds in egg cartons and placed them on his windowsill. He tended the plants like children, transplanting them into pots as they outgrew the egg cartons, then reluctantly moving them outside when the time came. Once out of doors the plants required very little human attention, although they got a lot of attention from a certain groundhog.

There was a tense day in June when DH, who doesn't always read labels, decided to spray all the plants for bugs. Not only did DS, an organic gardener, not approve of the use of chemicals on his children, but the spray DH used appeared for a time to have killed the plants. Contrite, he hosed them all down, hoping to save not only the plants but his son's happiness. Fortunately a few survived, and DH sneaked in a few more he bought from the Feed and Seed across the street. Had all the plants lived I don't know what we would have done with all the tomatoes.

For the last few weeks we have been awash in tomatoes. We have orange ones. We have Roma, which always make me think of the gypsies I encountered overseas. And we have the classic red ones that taste great on a ham sandwich. It is a great joy for me to pick them in the gentle September sun and lay them carefully into a doubled Wal-mart bag, which I lug into the kitchen and empty onto the counter. A mixed blessing, however, is figuring out how to use them all. I've given as many away as I could find recipients for. I've made salsa, I've made spaghetti sauce, I've frozen a dozen Ziploc bags full, I've made more salsa, I've made more spaghetti sauce... DH grumbles that there's no room in the freezer for anything important, like ice cream.

I hate to admit this, but I left several dozen to rot on the vine. The groundhog, who early in the summer got thumbs-down for getting fat off the fruits of our son's labor, now gets an indulgent smile when I see him race away with a big orange tomato in his mouth.

World's oldest known fibers found!

Check this out: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090910142352.htm

The thing I love about this story is not that people have been working with fiber for 34,000 years, it's that even way back then, we dyed them. It wasn't enough that the flax be functional, from the beginnings of time our fibers had to also be pretty. Is that great or what?

I took a particular interest in this discovery because as many of you know, I spent four years in the country of Georgia and have great admiration for the Georgian people, the single most artistic group I have encountered in my travels. Every person you meet in Tbilisi can recite poetry. The flowers in the first picture are from a wall hanging in Georgian theka, or felt. The second picture is of a handmade Georgian rug. These are only two of many examples of the beautiful textile work done there. It's no big surprise to me that the first person to spin flax into thread might well have been a Georgian.

Blue and White China

I love blue and white china. Here are a couple of pictures from my dining room, just to prove it. It seems I'm not the only one--I discovered this wonderful painting of a woman with a blue and white china ruff and bonnet at an exhibition at Vascoeuil Castle in Normandy this summer. The image above is a watercolor done by my daughter Isabella (aka DD), using my blue and white Delft teapot for inspiration. She claims to prefer Fiesta Ware for herself, but she's still young.

It's funny--my collection started entirely by accident, when one of my former high school teachers called me up one summer during my college years. He said that he and his wife were divorcing; he was moving back in with his parents in northern Indiana and he didn't know what to do with his half of their china service. He thought my sister and I might want it. I said yes, sight unseen, and he arrived with four blue and white English ironstone plates, cups, saucers and bowls. Sorry as I was for his misfortune, I was immediately smitten with the dishes and a life-long love affair began. Fortunately when my sister moved to a different apartment she left the blue and white for me, and the rest is history.

I probably have two hundred pieces by now, and I love them all. Many I bought for myself and many were bought for me by family and friends. My DM (darling mother) contributed at least a couple of dozen pieces, often precariously mailed through the diplomatic pouch. The collection traveled the world with me; at one point, during the 1993 military mutiny in the Central African Republic, I thought I had lost it, but it all eventually arrived at our new home in Djibouti. Fortunately the Foreign Legionnaires who occupied our house during the hostilities were honest and had no interest in china.

There was a time when I couldn't pass up a nice blue and white piece at an antique store, but my passion for collecting has cooled somewhat and now I enjoy rearranging them in our castle, finding new uses for them, and setting a pretty table occasionally. I'm still on the lookout for a covered vegetable dish that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, having passed up many beautiful but expensive ones, however regretfully, many times.

Thank you, Mr. DeBeck, wherever you are.