Curio and Curiouser

Yesterday morning, I left home in a pouring rain to go to Peggy Shifflett's Cottage Curio in Salem. I was the author in attendance, Mary Tousman was the potter, and Don Myers was the woodworker. Plus Hilda was there to make really good apple dumplings.

Here Peggy takes a picture of Mary, who is coning the clay prior to making a pot.


A close-up of the coning process. The clay has to be coned three times before it's shaped.


And here's the bowl taking shape.


Don uses recycled wood to make his furniture. This pie safe was made from wood he recycled from an old granary.


And this one is made from wormy chestnut recycled from an old barn. Don even had a picture of the old barn before it was torn down.


I should have taken some pictures of the dumplings, that were absolutely wonderful, but they were selling fast at the CC, andJohn and I promptly ate the ones I brought home.

A lot of folks came to the CC to chat, including my cousin Judy. From Hilda, one of the folks sitting around the kitchen table when I was eating my dumpling, I learned how to pick up a skunk so he doesn't spray you. A skunk has to have his feet pushed against something—usually the ground—to spray. When you grab him by the tail, don't let his feet touch the ground or any part of you.

From another at the table, I also learned more about the Rockingham turkey processing plant that I ever want to know. You can always count on down-home conversation at the CC.

When I returned back home, a few minutes before four, the rain had stopped and our lawn looked lush and lovely in the waning sunlight.

When I fed the horses and dogs—about 6:20ish—I heard a couple cars going really fast on Novelty Road. A minute or so later, a red car sped down Listening Hill Road really, really fast. I figured the other car I'd heard would be behind it. But it wasn't.

I exited the dog pen and walked around the horse pasture a bit. Suddenly all four dogs stopped wolfing down their chow and ran to the LH Road side of the kennel. They barked frantically. What could have happened? Did one of the horses get out? (Cupcake did that once.) I went out to check. As I rounded the front of the shop, I saw a silver car in the ditch across the road, and a couple other vehicles near it. One belonged to my next-door neighbor, the district supervisor.

Then I looked at my lawn—that two hours earlier was so perfect. But wait—a picture is worth a thousand words. So, here's "three thousand" plus a few extra words:


The above picture is my side yard. My driveway and mailbox are at the top left. See the tracks? Looks like one car drove with only its right tires on the grass; the other had all its tires on the grass. Now follow those tracks into the next picture which shows my lower driveway.

In the picture below, you can see my lower driveway (where I have a "flower bed"). The grass was so wet (a inch of rain earlier!), that the tires were pretty wet, don't you think? Anyhow, they left wet marks on LH Road. I got my camera and snapped these pictures before the wet marks dried.

Now, see where those tracks above go? All the way across the road. Do you think they might have ended here?


The driver, however, insisted she hadn't driven on my lawn. "I didn't do that!" she said. "I must have skidded on loose gravel." The driver of a red car, who turned around and returned when her friend wasn't behind her, also said that she hadn't been speeding.

Notice how the car is turned completely around and is facing the direction from whence it came. It's right front wheel is hung on our drainage pipe, which drains into the cow pasture across from us. Had it not caught the car, the driver, her passenger, and the two toddlers would likely have flipped into the fence and rolled down the hill to the pasture, which is below road level.

(Look back at the two earlier pictures. See any loose gravel?)

Anyhow, by the time her uncle pulled the car out, it was getting dark. That's why we didn't think to check the front lawn.

However, this morning, here's what my front yard looked like:


Again, two cars drove over the lawn. The first car only had the right wheels on the grass. The second car left tracks over top of the first car's tracks and drove way up onto the lawn. However, when the two cars turned right onto LH road, neither car hit the telephone pole or the big rock or my mailbox. How strange that both drivers lost control, regained control and made the turn just fine, and then lost control again.

It gets curiouser and curiouser.

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