Fence Post Pickin

I know some girls like to get dressed up and hit the town. My kind of girls like to get dressed in their best coveralls and pile the kids in the truck. Parties and soirees are so yesterday, digging through old homesteads is where it's at.

Sometimes it get's kind of crazy up in here. It's a fine line between laying down for a rest/coma  in the afternoon or bundling up to go out and get some sunshine. Sometimes the yellow blaze wins out and you'll come home just as tired, but there will be contentment tucked away in your heart. Really, what could be finer than pickin around in the east country with a best friend?

Much to my husband's demise, I can see nothing finer than soaking in a bit of history. Since there are no museums in sight, someone's old pad works perfectly for me and my pal. Driving home with a truck full of tins, window sills and simply goy-geous doors is enough to make a grown man shake his head and scold us like we're children.

We just can't be stopped.

Visions of our kids someday actually being big kids, gives us dreams of our own shop to create junk from our junk. What could be better? What could drive our husband's crazier? We just need to adopt some skills and possibly some muscles. I think i Phones are in demand so that this chica and I can stay in touch. The two hour drive get's in our way and  if only we could snap photos of the junk we happen across and could send it to the other sister--wouldn't we operate more smoothly? It's all about efficiency, practicality, and lunacy.

This lady's husband is cleaning up a rig we'd be able to pile all our kids into, legally, to scour these places. He doesn't know that it's a truck for Gina and I both to cruise in with the kids for picking yet, he just thinks it's a good family vehicle. Yoohoo! Didn't I hear you say, "welcome to the family?"

I wish this was my babe, but alas, she's a daughter of the east country land. I love her.

As I've mentioned before I love the stories about these exhausted houses. True or not, some are better left to the imagination.

There's one old place that never had power brought in until the mid seventies, prior to that they used coal and wood for their cooking and heat; the things we take for granted. These sweet souls never had children, so the neighbors adopted them as grandparents. In the fall the couple would squirrel up for winter, the neighbors helping haul in supplies. It was said you could hardly move in the blessed house for all the provisions stacked hither and yon. The nearest town was over fourty miles away and with a good blast of snow in our dark, short days, they could be stuck in the house for up to two months. The neighbors would ride in regularly on horseback to check on the couple-later when they got a power toboggan they would ride over the drifts to see how they were. The Mrs. stayed on the place until 1998, until she moved into a lodge in town, where she still is today. I hope someone sits with this lady and will write her story someday.

Next time you pass a veteran home, if you are sitting with those that lived nearby-ask about it. Find out what those walls hold for stories and sneak them away inside of you to pass on. This is how history remains relevant and alive. It's what reminds us of what we are made of, where we come from, and helps us move into the future with eyes opened wide.

At least this is what Gina and I tell our husbands anyway.