Birdhouse Hunting Pt 3: My first home still stands in Burgessville

During a short but very eventful motorcycle ride on Friday I did more than deliver a 41-year old corn curling broom to a school chum from my elementary school years.

I spotted several lovely, painted birdhouses in Salford and visited the school house in Burgessville in which I started grade 1 in 1955.


And after closing the school door behind me I rode three doors down and parked in the driveway of the first home I lived in as a child.


The present owner, Les Knotts (I didn’t ask if he was related to Don Knotts), bought the house no more than 2 years after my family moved down the road to the next wee village, knew my father when he worked at the Burgessville Co-op and is a prolific birdhouse builder.


["Les gives his birdhouses away; donations for supplies are accepted": photos GH]


Les showed me his workshop, tools and benches inside the garage that once was an old barn. Everything was covered with dust, but not from lack of use. He has built over 2,000 birdhouses in four years. Good grief!

(re the barn: For years I thought the barn had been torn down. The shape and colour were different than Les’ garage. But Les told me he tore down the barn, board by board, turned it 90 degrees so the doors faced the street, and rebuilt it using the same timbers. “I only had trouble fitting in the last board,” he said. I looked at the garage from the side and the old barn reappeared in my memory).


He allowed me to take any pictures I wanted and invited me back anytime.

***

I didn’t bore him with my story of hiding milk money in the trickle of a creek down the road or how I helped Rhonda Wettlaufer get through hard times at school.

That’s for later.

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