In need of some woodwork that used to be a routine staple of life in the old window environment, we drove about 140 years into the past this afternoon to drop off some ancient wooden windows from the house with a semi-local carpenter we know who replaced other equally ancient windows in the house last year. We are working our way slowly from most damaged by time to the least damaged and I figure we'll definitely finish the job sometime around 40 years from now. I kind of get a kick out of still working ship-to-shop in my retirement and long after the Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activities bit the dust.
Still, it was nice to drive an hour south and over a hundred years into the past and I find that the past really was a nice place. Nobody really needs the internet, tv, electricity or the rest of the labor saving things we've invented if you just have enough children. People have really forgotten that aspect of family life in rural America.
On the other hand, cheerfully carving out little exceptions to the rule so you can use a donkey engine to run belt powered machine tools is an obvious case of allowing some modern things to creep into the perfect 18th century lifestyle on stealthy little feet. Hell, I did it myself sailing down to old Mexico on a 41 footer and finding a single solar panel was enough to generate the charge for the two or three tiny white lights below deck in a boat that otherwise could have sailed in the 17th century. I'm pretty sure the Atomic 4 dates from the Revolution.
I really enjoy driving through the endless vistas of rural Ohio just south of the Lake. Good roads, nice drivers, excellent ice cream parlors, cool libraries and of course, skilled craftsman who can make you a brand new window, seal it, paint it, put on new hinges and hardware and glaze it for less than $50.00 a window. You have to understand, the price is not the object or the delight, it is finally after years of looking, finding a man who will still make anything you want out of wood and simply ask for pay.
I don't know about you, but my window shopping has been a pure hell of so-called window contractors that come to the house, estimate what it would take to put their window systems™ in place of my existing windows and all of whom declare that it will run about $7500/window and of course that doesn't count the modifications to my existing window frames to fit their damned window systems™which are otherwise incompatible with a house built over a hundred years ago.
On the gripping hand, you should hear my brother talk about the idiot contractors he has to hire to work on his other family house in Vermont. That house was built in 1839 and uses methods and materials so far removed from current practices they might as well come from the Apollo era.
Still, it was another fine day.
5 comments:
Dealing with an actual craftsman is certainly a delight. A pox on corporate "systems" and their ilk.
One of my favorite books and book title.
https://www.amazon.com/Another-Country-Personal-Adventures-Twentieth/dp/0962134244
The late Ltc. Cooper borrowed a quote from L.P. Hartley's novel "The Go-Between", "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there".
I have never read any of his work but now I'm going to.
Cooper wrote a commentary column for "Guns and Ammo" magazine for many years. You can find them archived here --
https://www.molonlabe.net/Commentaries/
Pretty much considered ancient history now. As one who also wore the uniform (Army) I tell folks, "Yeah, I used to tell war stories. Now? I teach history".
Somewhere in his writings, Cooper recounts his WWII service, being a freshly minted USMC officer posted in gunnery aboard USS Pennsylvania (BB-38). Used primarily for shore bombardment, she fired more rounds through her main batteries than any other U.S. BB. Cooper remarked that "Blasting Jap pill boxes with 5-inch 38's at point blank range beats shooting tin cans with a .22 all hollow".
My father was Army for almost 30 years and me Navy for almost 30 years but the only place I ever saw Guns and Ammo was at the barber shops over the last 55 years. I was weapons officer on a DD and enjoyed the hell out of firing the guns but the navy so poisoned everything about going to the range that even in my last job where we were basically training 100% of the Navy security forces going to the MIddle East and protecting shipping, I would routinely turn down offers to join the Training guys at Pendleton or Nyland because the Navy inculcated in me the belief that going to the range amounted to 2-3 hours travel time, 2 hours of pointless safety instruction in the blazing sun and then standing around for hours and hours while the other groups shot while waiting your turn at the targets. On the other hand, if someone arranged to shoot at Ballast Point Submarine Base or NASNI, I could be talked into it.
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