My Fury

A long time ago, when I was in my second year at IU, I bought my first car, a gray 1972 Plymouth Fury, a big heavy tank of an automobile. I didn't choose it very scientifically; one of my good friends was graduating from IU that year and his parents were buying him a new one, so he sold me his old car for $1000. Had I been thinking I might have chosen something a little more economical to drive and with less room for passengers. I drove the Fury until I shipped out to Germany shortly after graduation. My clueless younger self couldn't be bothered to sell it, so I gave it to my sister, tags and insurance intact, and left.

When I returned to the family farm on leave a couple of years later, I was unhappy to find my old car had been stripped of its relatively new tires and was parked at the edge of the woods on concrete blocks. The sister to whom I had given the car had moved on to Virginia and left it behind. I demanded that the relative who took the tires put them back; still, I was only home for a few days. I canceled the registration and insurance and left again. Like Sleeping Beauty, my car waited in the woods for thirty years.

Now that I'm older, back in Indiana, and spending a lot of time with other people's heirlooms at the museum, it really bothers me that my old car is rusting away in the woods, even if I'm not the person who put it there. I have enlisted DH to help me retrieve it for recycling, but it isn't easy. On our first trip to the farm we discovered that it had been moved from its original spot to a much less accessible one, blocked by other abandoned vehicles, thick thorn bushes and a stand of new trees. Funny--the Fort Riley sticker from ROTC summer camp in the summer of 1978 is still intact and still bright orange, but the seats are completely destroyed. All four tires were buried up to the rims in frozen mud. My ever-practical DH lost enthusiasm for the project, citing the number of hours and resources it would take to extricate the Plymouth, but I was Ahab and the car had become my white whale.

This week we returned, better equipped with a small chainsaw and a large jack. It was a clear steel-blue day and the air was fresh and biting, but we worked in the cold for about three hours this time. We cut the new trees and the thorn bushes away and put boards under the flat tires. We even managed to drag the car forward five feet, but discovered the wheels wouldn't turn. This, DH declared, was a major obstacle to towing. And so we left my Fury again, but not before taking this picture.

Scarf finished!

I ran completely out of purple yarn, so the reverse knitted scarf was a little shorter than it was supposed to be. I compensated by single-crocheting an inch on each end with the rest of the green yarn and a strand of something called "Squiggle" by Crystal Palace Yarns in the same lime green. DH thinks I ruined it, but sight unseen DD pronounced the idea "awesome" so I think I have a winner. What do you think?

Reverse Knitting

I think I told you before that DD and I were learning to reverse knit. Now that she's gone back to school, I sit up evenings and diligently work to finish this scarf we started (the pattern is in Debbie Stoller's book "Son of Stitch 'n B****"). The directions in the book are very clear and I love the way the two colors alternate on each side of the knitting. The two layers of knitting also make a very warm scarf; DH has admired it several times, so if I ever finish this one I might have to make another one in more subdued colors for him. The pattern calls for 23 repeats of a 14-row design; I have finished seven so far, so we'll see if DD gets to wear it this winter or not. In the meantime my bulky sweater project sits in the corner mocking me, so I have my hands full of knitting.

I've also become quite a fan of a blog called "Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing" (blogforbettersewing.com). Gertie is working her way through the Vogue Sewing Book and the results are gorgeous, plus she refers to other sewing blogs she likes, which led me this morning to "The Two Windmills" (thetwowindmills.wordpress.com), which made me really want to sew a new skirt! Perhaps by now you are thinking that I should stop blog reading and start actually making a skirt, or finishing my sweater, or doing something concrete and practical, and you are right, except for one thing.

Our museum (lawrencecountyhistory.org). On Friday we learned how to carefully clean and wrap antique textiles to preserve them for posterity. We have a huge collection of clothing and other textiles, many of them donated years ago (the first box was wrapped in newspaper dated September 1957, just as an example) that we are trying to get identified, documented, and properly stored in anticipation of a really stunning exhibit this spring. Unwrapping those newspaper parcels is like Christmas. Such wonderful things. Two 1850's dresses, so tiny that we'll have to make special mannequins to display them on. A brown velvet capelet, trimmed in lace and tied with ribbons, right out of an illustration for "Little Women". An old fox fur with the head still on (this one made us a little queasy). I go to sleep dreaming about these clothes. And it's not just clothing--I unwrapped a parcel labeled "quilt blocks" and found this sampler embroidered by a 13-year-old girl named Zilpha Colby in 1834. Small wonder I can't concentrate on my needlework, not to mention sweep my kitchen floor.

An overnight in Indy

DD and I are just back from Indianapolis--we went up last night and stayed at my friend Renata's B&B (http://www.renatasbandb.com/). Renata is so much fun--this was my fourth stay, since I get to Indianapolis on various kinds of business fairly frequently and I never stay anywhere else. Here she is with DD. Her house is a real Sears Roebuck house that she and her husband have renovated top to bottom. It's just gorgeous. We were lucky that she still had her Christmas decorations up (another believer in waiting until Three Kings Day!). DD tried to take a good picture but my iPhone isn't that good in low light. There's probably an app for that. Anyway, here's a picture of Renata's living room and her pretty tree.

This afternoon we went over to the Indianapolis Museum of Art (www.imamuseum.org) to see "Fashion in Bloom", a wonderful exhibition of clothing from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. All of the fashions used flower motifs in some form or other. We two fashionistas couldn't resist all those beautiful clothes! Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures of the exhibit, so you will have to just go see for yourselves. Don't be surprised if the person on duty at the exhibit is a real sourpuss; evidently the IMA doesn't train its employees to be friendly. We still had fun and to prove it, here's DD cutting up outside the museum.

Happy New Decade

DH insisted on a live tree again this year (it's so cute that he hates to cut down a tree just for Christmas). This one looked kind of silly even in the field, but we were a couple of weeks late going out to choose a tree and it was the last one. It is a Norway spruce, fat around the bottom and sparse higher up. I wired a crocheted Christmas angel that my mom made to the top; it stood up straight for a while and then started to sag to one side, as if the angel had just given up all hope (fortunately, real angels don't do that!). Almost immediately after we got the tree set up in the house, the needles started to fall off in clumps. We watered it religiously, but it was determined not to be pretty. As the branches sagged, the ornaments slid off, stripping every needle and crashing to the floor.

I normally keep the tree up until after Three Kings' Day, but if we wait that long it will be nothing but sticks, so I'm contemplating a break with tradition this year. I really hate to take it down so soon, because the house looks bare without it.

It was a fun holiday. DD was home from college, without the love of her life who went back to Lithuania to visit his own family, so we had lots of mother-daughter quality time. We learned together how to double-knit and are making an argyle scarf together. I've helped her design a special gift for her sweetheart (I can't tell you what it is, just in case he sees this, but when it's done I'll put up a picture). Two of my sisters were with us for a few days before Christmas and we took in the Barbie exhibit at the Indianapolis Children's Museum--what a great time!

I am pretty pleased with the festive touch we gave to the dining room chandelier--a roll of ribbon and a box of ornaments from Lowe's can work wonders! And I still love the hand-carved wood nativity scene from Georgia that DH and the kids gave me some years ago--I think it looks great in front of this photograph by my friend Gia Chkhartarashvili (for more see http://www.pscphotographs.com/bridge_over_the_ocean/gia/index.htm) of the village of Ushguli in the high Caucasus mountains.

Here's wishing you and yours the happiest of new decades, filled with love and creativity!

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!