Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Joy, from a small fragment of wood...


My new treasure: a beat up fragment of a 80 year old green wooden shingle… To each our own… One of my hobbies is studying old house and railroad paint… I collect 19th century paint sample cards and books. I collect painter’s guide books. I collect books (most reprints) on style and decoration as practiced by Victorians…

And I collect fragments of painted wood and plaster… Not just any piece of painted wood… fragments with a known history… I have over 25 samples of “box car red” each cataloged with information about the car it was found on… I have samples of wood removed from a number of railroad depots… Last Sunday I found the very thing I was looking for, a Southern Pacific green wood shingle… I have tried before, but have been turned away by hazardous waste contractors concerned about any fragment that MIGHT contain a contaminant leaving… This is really a treasure. A small treasure, but a treasure.

I also think big… I am also trying to collect the entire building… It’s a tiny tool shed, maybe 102 years old. It was once at the north end of the Bay Shore yard serving San Francisco… Somewhere along the line this building along with 3 others ended up in the parking lot of a now closed factory… and as a result escaped being bulldozed by the railroad in the 1960’s with most of its brethren. Now, the factory site is being redeveloped, and the buildings are again threatened… but this time the owners seem to be interested in seeing them saved, hence the opportunity… (of course they may be motivated by San Francisco preservation law) Now I have to work out logistics, agreement and such to pick up and move a 10’ x 18’ building (or two… ). I have accomplices… Cris, a friend with whom I have sent a couple of British railroad cars back home, (Cris has his one project, a steam engine, with its own web site) Randy (a different Randy) an architect and preservationist… an inspired good thinker. This project is likely to succeed. We may speak of this again….

On to other things… Brian and I got the garden project completed today… Like many bigger projects this could be divided into smaller discreet parts… removing the rest of the roots, cutting up the trunk of the tree, digging out the existing plants, repairing the picket fence rail we had to cut away to drop the tree, building the new planter box, digging holes for the new trees (and a trip to the nursery to pick up the flowering cherry) planting the trees, planting the daffodils, cutting new fence picket and installing them, and cleaning up… each part was simple, small and definable… but collectively it was an all day sucker… By about 3:00 it was done… It’s beautiful, we took showers, cleaned up, and Brian left for his New Year’s Eve party…

As I write this it is nearing 10:30 pm on the last, the final day of the year. The fireworks have started… (in our neighborhood its not gun fire it’s fireworks, not the safe and sane of the legal fireworks stand, the big stuff, aerial mortars, M-80’s and the good stuff…) The year is ending fast. I am getting sleepy. There is a bottle of champagne in the fridge… The bottle may survive the evening…

Tomorrow I pack for the cruise…

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