Category Archives: folklore and ethnography

101 Creative Curses for Bookshop Handymen

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Regular followers of this blog may remember that I discovered a hidden staircase in our basement. Three rooms of unused space, accessible from inside the house? It was inevitable: Wendy “requested” that the stair be re-opened, and (my) work commenced. I said at the time that I should have kept my mouth firmly shut, but – hey, ho – I never was any good at that!basement stair

Other part-time DIYers will nod knowingly when I say that any project is a voyage of discovery, because things rarely go as expected. My first step down the path of the absurd was to decide that the basement’s four hopper windows needed replacing. Original to this 1903 house, they were rotten and falling apart.

“It won’t take long, and it will keep the basement watertight,” I told Wendy as I unloaded window frames from our pick-up, “Unnecessary” (That’s the truck’s name. Don’t ask.)

Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and men…. The closest size of ready-made window almost fit the first opening; none of the openings were quite the same dimension. Adjustments were required, usually involving a hammer, lumber, and curse words strung inventively together.

The next “not to plan” moment: water pipes in the underfloor staircase space had to be removed and the washing machine relocated to the garage and plumbed in again. Luckily our good friends Leroy and Witold were on hand when sealing off the old pipes proved difficult and frustrating. I hate water leaks!

But I was yet to meet the bigger leak (and further plan diversion): four days of continuous rain led to the discovery that rainwater simply ran off into the yard, and that our bone-dry basement wasn’t always so clear as I’d thought. There will be digging to do, if this bloody rain ever stops. I have been concerned by the parade of spider species exiting the basement in pairs; rumor has it that Noah picked them up.

IMG_3513Finally, windowsills, torrential rains, pipes and all, I got to the grand re-opening of the staircase (which we promptly christened Tutankhamen’s tomb). No steps were the same size; the old washing machine pipes proved near impossible to cut out; all the electrical cables running through the space had to be maneuvered to the side where they can be boxed in.

With all that done, at last I could re-build the steps using the old ones as supports. This will not be public bookshop space, as we originally envisioned. Wendy is making noises about moving our bedroom down there.

Renovations reveal all kinds of hints at the history of the house, and conducting friends around the work (where we found yet another hidden staircase; no, Wendy, no) has proved fascinating—although speaking of conducting, we found yet another problem: old electric cables down there are live, despite going nowhere, which will mean yet more scary stuff further along.

Did I mention spiders?

A Thing I Look Forward to All Year

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This Sunday will be the Epiphany service at the Methodist church the next town over. “Lessons and Carols” is a collection of just about every musician for three counties ’round packing out the big, beautiful, Norman-esque Norton church to do Christmas music. (No, the Normans didn’t reach Wise County in the Middle Ages, but some architects apparently sent missionaries.)

I look forward to this event–held the third Sunday in January–all year. Maybe it’s because it comes after the crush is over; most of the tinsel and glitter are out of the floorboard cracks; lawn decorations sit in boxes at the base of attic stairs. It’s January: cold, bleak, emotionally exhausted and financially drained January. We may as well sing together as face Winter alone.

And there’s just something about Christmas carols, when you don’t have to think about all the other stuff surrounding the holidays, that goes straight into your veins. When you can really hear them, their messages are exhilarating.

Musicians dust off sheet music and embrace hastily-cobbled partnerships–bluegrass trio, classical harpist, brass ensemble, unaccompanied folk singers and all. The music at Lessons and Carols doesn’t change much. Sometimes the strolling guitar team does Joy to the World instead of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. The violin quartet moves between Handel and Mendelssohn.  There aren’t many surprises.

So few that, in the four years Jack and I have been singing at this event, I’ve developed trigger points. When our neighbor David–his wife Heather works at our store and he heads the college music department–leads his choir into Little Drummer Boy, no matter how I steel myself, I go to mush. The thrumming, sobbing, opening bass notes, followed by all those black-clad quiet voices in blended harmony, “Come, they told me….”

A little boy soprano always sings the first verse of Once in Royal David’s City, before the congregation joins in. One pure small voice soaring through that high-ceilinged church, then everyone rumbling forward more-or-less together with “Jesus is our childhood pattern….”

I’ve learned to wear something with pockets and pack them with tissues.

Jack wonders why I like this event so much.  Musically,  it’s all over the place. It’s predictable, and long–now grown to two and a half hours PLUS prelude music. The benches are uncomfortable. We even do that hackneyed candle thing with the lights out.

Ah, but “come, they told me…..”