   Don’t forget to leave comment to enter this month’s giveaway. This set of canning utensils is going to somebody’s home!! Better sign up before April 15th or you will miss out on your chance! I figure that since most people are too busy for soap operas on tv anymore, but almost everybody sits at a computer, I would offer an Oklahoma Pastry Cloth™ soap opera for your enjoyment. It’s too long a story to put into one post and so you will get two installments – one today and one tomorrow. Will there be a happy endng? Stay tuned for…da da da (that’s organ chords)…The Old And The Feckless! Isn’t it funny how we get it into our heads how something is supposed to be, get all bent out of shape when it isn’t that way at all and then God provides a whole new direction that puts us all back together in contentment? I had that experience last week and I thought that I would share the adventure. Mr. Fix-It and I took a trip – a long trip! It started out heading to Georgia where Mr. Fix-It did some training to remind him that computers, his life’s chosen vocation, never work the way that they were intended. He’s just not as technologically savvy as I am. I know that the squirrels running the machine are simply out looking for nuts. Anyway, I took the opportunity to visit my uncle for the first time since my aunt’s death in December. It was a wonderful visit with much laughter and ample reminiscing. And then we went north to Kentucky. Now, Kentucky is beautiful and it is a wonderful state, but I was a little bummed about the trip to the place because we had to go through the mountainous part of East Tennessee where my parents had lived up until a year ago and where I grew up…and we didn’t stop…because my parents aren’t there anymore. I was sad. My mom and dad sold their house and had moved to a retirement community in a town in Kentucky that I had never heard of before and which was not ‘home’. When we got off of I-75 to wind our way to the town on narrow roads carved into the sides of huge bluffs (with no guard rails) and which narrowed down to one lane bridges in a number of places, I felt heavier and heavier. We were in the middle of nowhere and I was looking for the dueling banjos. “What were they thinking?” I asked myself. It was nearly dark when we arrived in their tiny town…and I do mean tiny. There are no fast food restaurants, only one gas station, a Dollar General Store (nope – no WalMart) and one grocery store. I had made reservations at a bed and breakfast (one of several) where the manager was kind enough to allow our little Ellie dog to join us in our room. The manager had informed me over the phone that we would be staying in a log cabin where the owner had a cat and so a little, long-haired dachshund would be no problem. We stopped at the main home of the two-part B&B, met the manager and found out that the cabin, we would call home for several days, was outside of town. We were to follow her car to the location. It felt like we drove forever, but that is always the case when one does not know where one is going. Off of a main highway, we came to a drive that led a long way down into a “holler” to a picture perfect sight of two, big, authentic Kentucky log cabins. I calculated their ages as it was revealed to us that they were built before Kentucky became a state. 1792 was that year – George Washington was president and Daniel Boone was a resident of the state! Wow.  But my heart sank as we carefully navigated the flagstone walkway that just begged me to be my usual, accident-prone self and climbed the stairs to an uneven porch and to an old, front door. “Now you have to work really fast to get the front door to unlock,” we were told as the manager unlocked a single knob with no deadbolt lock. “Just shove the key in and turn quickly. If you are timid about it, you won’t get it to unlock. Oh, and be sure that you really jam the door shut and double check that it has closed.” There was a note taped to a door pane that ordered, “Please make sure the door is closed.” The obstinate door creaked open and we stepped into a dark entry way, lighted only by an old, opaque globe with a light inside, showing off the various countries of long ago.   First, we were shown our bathroom. The door to the bathroom opened out into the dark entrance where any other guest would walk right past. I was relieved to find out that it was our personal bathroom, but the privacy was definitely wanting. Inside the bathroom was an old claw foot bathtub with circular curtain and old shower assembly. A tiny space heater provided the only heat. We then went into the parlor to the left of the bathroom and I felt like I had walked into an Edgar Allen Poe story. The boards of the floor (original) creaked and sank under the weight of our steps and ancient furniture, books and multiple stuffed animals were strategically placed around an old fireplace on a wall that was obviously uneven, old, painted plaster. Electric Christmas candles in the windows and a floor lamp in the corner offered dim lighting, and a large collection of crucifixes adorned the mantel and hearth. I was looking for the raven quoting, “Nevermore.” A narrow door of vertical boards, held together by a couple of cross boards and painted with enamel paint opened to a narrow set of stairs that led to the rooms upstairs which were occupied by another couple of visitors.  The door to our room was the same type of door, but wider. It was a little lopsided so that there was a gap between the door frame and the top of the door when closed. The doorknob was the old, metal enamel type with no lock. When opened, the door revealed a large room with three chinked log walls and one plaster one, a set of twin beds on a floor that sloped enough to mess with your equilibrium and a very large, lighted Christmas tree in the corner.  That tree, along with a floor lamp, a set of electric Christmas candles in the window, a dim table lamp and a collection of strange, lighted plaster art on the mantel of a huge fireplace, served as the lighting for the room. In other words, it felt like we would be living by kerosene lantern light. The bed that would be Mr. Fix-It’s had one leg leveled by a wooden block. There was a television. And there was a light switch on the wall, but we were cautioned that the light switch would turn off everything, including the space heater and it was cold!  Because there were no electrical outlets, a maze of extension cords and spike bars crisscrossed the corners of the room and over the mantle. A large extension cord dangled from the mantel to be used for a space heater on the hearth. Mr. Fix-It surveyed the electrical nightmare with horror. I just looked around in dismay at the very weird room. By this point, I was really depressed…(and with that, I will leave this to be continued tomorrow!!)  |
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OH MY! I can’t wait to hear the rest of the story. Just by looking at the photos posted, I would have gone crazy surrounded by all that clutter. I love history and historic places, but I just don’t believe I could have stayed there.
You were very brave, very brave! I’ve always known you to be the adventurous type just didn’t know quite how adventurous.
Sure, Carol…and next time I’ll carve my name in a tree like Daniel Boone to prove I was there!! 🙂