Kid Town!

  I suppose that some folks will accuse me of living in the past.  It is probably true.  At times, I ponder if I was born in the wrong era.  The newfangled ways of doing things not only befuddles me but usually aggravates me a bit.  I prefer the tried and true methods of most everything.  This is fine by me but it does seem to irritate some folks a bit.  "You are living in the olden days" is a phrase that I hear quite often.  Oh, well.  Too bad.
   
  This bit of nostalgia does not just apply to my ways of doing things, it also becomes evident with items that I hold dear.  I am still  in the midst of creating a play area for the grandlittles and their upcoming visit.  Most of the furniture was stripped from Darling Daughter's old bedroom to provide plenty of space.  This left me with a blank room that was in need of some place to stash a multitude of what are now called "retro toys".  These toys are ones that my kids used when they were toddlers. The "antique toys" term applies to my toys and those of my parents and grandparents.  (Just thought I would toss that in there for clarity!)  Wow!  I am antique!  Anyway, while contemplating the problem, I had a brilliant idea!  Kid Town!  I could use Kid Town as a low shelf!  

  Kid Town is a very sturdy low bench that is from my grandmother's childhood.  The term "Kid Town" was affixed to the bench because it was on this bench that all the kids sat during meals.  The bench was pulled up to the old table on a farm that her folks (my great-grandparents) had out "north of the Bay".  These great-grandparents had a fine old house in Biloxi but also had a sprawling farm about twenty miles northward.  During the summer months, most of the kids were plunked out at the farm to take care of the farm animals and plant the crops.  My great-grandparents would travel back and forth once a week or so to check on the kids.  Yep, it does seem strange but that was the norm back in the day.  Kids were a form of free labor.  It was not unusual for parents to send kids far away to pick cotton, strawberries or whatever crop was in season.  My grandmother and younger siblings were sent to do the farming while her older siblings stayed to help in the hat shop that Great-grandfather owned.  It was just good business practice to do such.  No one batted an eye at the kids fending for themselves for a week at a time.  The bench was a major piece of furniture albeit a handmade one.

  Years later, my grandmother fell heir to the bench and she used it to hold her potted ferns and begonias.  My granddaddy kept the bench in repair and later it was passed on to my mother.  Mom, like her mother, used it to hold plants except when there was a huge family gathering. Then, as many times in its past, the bench was called into use to seat kids at the dining table.  Years later, I became the proud owner of Kid Town and its colorful history.  I have been labeled the "Keeper of Weird and Wonderful Things" so perhaps Kid Town falls in that category.

  As Mark and I toted the heavy bench into the room, I thought of how fitting it was that a bench called Kid Town was being placed in a playroom of sorts.  A new generation of kiddos will be making use of the bench that is well over a hundred years old!  Being as I do not know the origin of the bench and the exact date when it was made, I can only estimate but this is at least the fifth generation of kids to use the bench....it may well be a sixth or seventh.  Yep, I am the Keeper of Weird and Wonderful Things and I do probably live in those olden days.  Face it....I AM antique!

The Rescue!

  Last night saw the Little Bayou House being battered by high winds.  Limbs and who knows what else slammed the windows and pelted the rooftop.  Several times, the house trembled when gale force winds smashed against it.  All night the windows rattled and the house creaked and groaned.  Then, lightning started bouncing around the Bayou and the hillside.  Thunder crashed causing the house to shake that much more. Suddenly.....rain.  Hard rain.  From about midnight until the early morning hours, almost three inches of rain fell.  This was fine with me.  I was snug as a bug inside the Little Bayou House so I merely sat back and enjoyed a fine storm.

  This morning things looked clean.  The wind and water had washed the world!  I was happy to see that the soaking rains actually made the gardens look that much better.  Everything looked so fresh, the sun was shining and temperatures were in the seventies.  What a wonderful day!  Nothing was amiss after such a intense bit of weather...or at least I thought!  Early this afternoon, I heard a knock on my door.  My brother stopped in to ask a simple question.  That question ended up being quite an ordeal.  "What happened to the bench on your pier?"  Huh?  What was he saying?  My bench?  I had been on the pier earlier and never paid much attention to the bench.  I had gone down to turn on the pump in Mark's small skiff.  Sometimes the thing gets stuck and refuses to pump out rainwater.  I never thought to look for the bench.  I called Michael.  "Son, lets head to the pier.  The bench is missing."

  Sure enough, the bench was gone!   After a bit of pondering, I spied something far, far down the shoreline. Could that be our bench?  After a bit of discussion, Michael decided to hop in the skiff and investigate.  He poled his way down the shoreline until he was near the object in the marsh.  He reached over to haul it in the boat and was on his way back to the pier!  My bench was rescued!  After Michael scooted the bench back on the pier, he made a point of tying it securely to one of the pier posts. That bench was there to stay!

  Other than a few limbs down here and there, the missing bench was the worst damage from the storm.  At least that is all that I noticed!  Tomorrow, I will venture back behind the house.  Hopefully, I will not find any more surprises from the storm during that hike!  One stolen bench was enough!

It was meant to be!

  The cleaning and building continues here on the Bayou.  Michael is hard at work constructing the much desired greenhouse!  It is beginning to take shape nicely!  For someone who has never done anything of this magnitude on his own before, he is doing a remarkable job.  He told me that this greenhouse is going to be my birthday gift....and Mother's Day gift and next year's Christmas gift (and perhaps even the following year's!)  I do not mind.  I AM getting a greenhouse after all!  I raked and cleared the trash pile where limbs have been stacked while awaiting to be burned.  It was under that pile of limbs and rotten boards that I found treasure!

  Years and years ago, I bought a child-sized bench for the garden.  It sort of matched the iron bench that my oldest son, Mark, had gotten for me the previous year.  I really had no need for a child-sized bench but the tiny thing's price was marked down ridiculously low due to several missing bolts.  I literally felt that I could not pass up this bargain!  So, I toted the thing home after handing the cashier my three dollars!  Then came Hurricane Katrina.  Although I moved both benches right up against the house, the storm waters carried them away.  We found the both the large and small benches battered and broken.  The large one was beyond repair as the cast iron legs were crushed under a huge pine tree that had fallen.  The child-sized one had a few slats broken but was repairable.  With more pressing things to do, the bench was set aside with grand intentions of mending it.  That never happened.  Years went by and the bench was soon covered over with this and that until it was forgotten.  When I uncovered it today, a small oak sapling had grown through the scrollwork of the legs.  I could not remove the tree roots no matter how much I twisted and turned them.  Michael took a break from his building project long enough to chop out the roots.  The poor little bench had seen better days for sure!  The slat seat and back had completely rotted and the iron legs were quite rusted.

  After a good cleaning with a wire brush, the tiny bench legs seem to be as good as new.  Tomorrow, I will paint the legs and once Michael has time, he will replace the seat and back.  This little bench will find a special place in the garden so that my sweet granddaughter can use it.  The little bench so needs a precious little girl to call it her own!  I am thinking that a violet garden might be just the right place for this little bench.  Mary Ruth can have a secret garden at MawMaw's house!  Now I know why I bought this little bench so many, many years ago.  It was meant to be!