more about 'history in a box'

The workshop is a busy place these days. I just finished a big project and am now onto another set of three shadow boxes. I've displayed historic hinges in three wooden boxes and feel it's now time to show off hard hitting hammers, because I want to send a message, i.e., hard work never hurt anybody.

But I have one last word about one particular hinge and accompanying lock and key. The items are from my dad's barn (in Norwich, Ontario), a century old, leaning-to-one-side type of structure that was once commonly seen inside small villages, towns and cities in SW Ontario.

[Wood from Dad's barn and my own house

in London look pretty good together"] 

Dad's barn is ten-years gone, along with so many others. And I wish it wasn't and I wish I had one like it so I could have a larger workshop (oh, I wish!) and build things that would last even half as long.

["Water colour by Edith Harrison (my mother);

the barn door above (opened) is currently my workshop door"] 

My projects may not, like me, have long legs, but I'll often be found in the busy workshop 'giving it a go' at any rate.

Photos by GH

***

Please click here to read 'about history in a box 4'

My Memoirs: And I’m Not Even Dead Yet

My Memoirs: And I’m Not Even Dead Yet

[Post 4]

Chapter ONE - The Early Days in Burgessville PT 2

I visit Burgessville, my first hometown, on my motorcycle once or two times yearly.

I like visiting my first school, now an under-funded museum, with one room unchanged from the 1950s. Last summer I was given the full tour by a kind-hearted university student who was inside preparing for a summer vacation program for young children.


["The two-room school in Burgessville is still standing": photo GH]

I also like visiting my first home and the current owners, Les Knotts (a prolific birdhouse builder) and his wife Betty.


["My first home is half a block from the school."]

The house and property are of goodly size but seem absolutely huge in my earliest memories.


["It took hours to crawl to the edge of the property."]

When I think about my first six years of life in the tiny village, a limited number of memories surface, most of them as warm and fuzzy as a pair of Dr. Denton’s sleepers.

The memories are fairly clear ones and include each of my parents as well as three siblings (out of four) that also spent their early years in Burgessville. I have a few that feature neighbours, an irritated car driver and a scary guy in a peaked cap who chased me around the local Co-op for some unknown reason.

The stupid ass. If it weren’t for him my time in Burgessville would have been completely untroubled.

Well, almost.

My earliest memory that includes my mother doesn’t end well.

She wanted me to eat my crusts at breakfast and I refused.

“There are children in India who would love to have your crusts,” she said.

Stop the movie right there.

I’m in pajamas, I’m about three years old, and my mother, who is tight with a missionary family that attends the Burgessville Baptist Church (the McKenzies - you wouldn’t know them), wants me to stay at the table and eat dried crusts of bread, or else she’ll send them off to India, wherever the heck that is.

As a kid, I felt I had only play one card to play.

I said, “If you want to send them to India, go ahead. I’m not going to eat them.”


["Kim and I sit at the kitchen table. No crusts allowed!"]

Knowing me the way I do, I’m pretty sure my mother had zero chance of forcing me to stay at the table to eat the crusts.


["My mom and I clown around with a paper bag."]

Fortunately, our relationship improved, and one day she complimented my chalk drawing of the Indian chief that appears on American nickels of that era. She even helped me draw the side view of his eyes, and for that I thought she was wonderful.

And I was right, as usual.

***

More exciting adventures will surely follow, perhaps on some sort of regular basis, now that the holidays are over.

Please click here to read ‘Chapter ONE - The Early Days in Burgessville PT 1.’

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Norwich Cenotaph: Preparing to remember

On Tuesday I biked to my hometown, Norwich, Ontario.


["Go east on Dundas St., London to Dundas St. in Woodstock. Watch for '59' markers"]

Norwich is on highway 59, about 16 miles south of Woodstock, the dairy capital of Oxford County.


It is easy to find and so is the cenotaph on the high school grounds about a half mile south of the main intersection and our one and only set of traffic lights.


The names of those who served and died are listed on the memorial and many names are connected to people I grew up with, delivered papers to, or waited on at Maedel’s Red and White grocery store.


["Kennedy, Hughes, Poole, Alexander, Harris, Frain, Beattie...:" photos by GH]

I prepared my mind a bit for today’s Remembrance Day service in London by reading the names that appeared.


Some of the proudest memorials are found in wee villages like Norwich (e.g., Atwood’s immediately comes to mind), and I’m thankful that assorted community members banded together in the past to build monuments that help us remember today.

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It Strikes Me Funny: We should go to war against the machines Pt 2

[Please read Pt 1 for some context]

Perhaps the city of London needs to take a step back in time.

I don’t think it would be considered backward, however, to allow men and women to do some jobs today that machines are now doing.

When we consider London’s rising unemployment figures (i.e. 10.9 per cent, the second-highest urban rate in the country) today should be the day we consider going to war against some of our machines.


["How many people does this machine replace?": photo link]



For example: In the areas in which we’re bleeding jobs (the auto industry, tourism, manufacturing, construction, transportation and warehousing) are there ways to reduce our reliance on machines for production, maintenance, delivery (help me here) and rely more on human muscle?

I admit, we built mighty machines in order to help with the cause of mass production, to keep up with high demand, to produce cost savings etc., but do some of those conditions apply today?

What is more important now?

Should we be thinking less about mass production, just in time delivery (in the auto sector, for one) and the employment of machines, and more about the employment of men and women?

What machines could we unplug or refuse to fuel in order to give someone a job?

(And, would the machine fight back?)

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My Hometown: Norwich is still alive and well

I knocked on a friend’s door when I visited my hometown last week but she wasn’t home, so I’m only guessing - my hometown seems to be surviving.


I always say I like to go back for a visit but I couldn’t live there.


The Lam family is still in business, there’s enough traffic to warrant a stoplight and I actually saw five or six cars at the intersection at one time - unheard of in my day, except after church or a funeral.


The Post Office tower (my friend, a talented artist, was its Post Mistress for many years) still remains, ringing out each hour as it did when I was a boy.

Once it rang 13 times at midnight and I said to my friends, “We’d better go home. It’s later than it’s ever been.” (They didn’t get the joke).

***

Do you return on occasion to visit your hometown? How does that feel?

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