Old Trunks, New Leather. All from Maine.
September 7, 2008
Holy cow, would you look at the calendar?
September. There goes the
summer - it blew away, probably caused
by one of these hurricanes that
are lining up like soldiers. Since
I know many of you have expressed
grave concerns about the impact of the
hurricanes on our part of Maine
I figured I'd file this report to help
you cope with the concern.
While it's true that none of you have
actually phoned or e-mailed to
express your worry about us, I can sense
that there's a big Cloud of
Concern out there somewhere. So,
the following report is offered to
help you relax:
First, and this comes under the heading
of 'Interesting
Weather-Related Science' there are so
many hurricanes this year, or
tropical bru-ha-has or neo-latitudinal
depressions or whatever it is
that one guy on the Weather Channel calls
them, that I think a lot of
us are starting to get the names mixed
up. A is for Apple, sure, but
I think we're up to L or M or something
in that range of the alphabet.
I don't really remember what happened
to Bruce, Chuck, Dave, or
Elaine, but then just a couple of weeks
ago it was Fernando, I think,
just going from memory, and last weekend
our side of the Atlantic
dealt with Gigi or Gus or Gary Busse or
whatever it was, then came
Helen or maybe it was Hank or Hoo-Hah
or Horace Toothaker. Next was
Ike and that one I'm pretty sure about
because his original intention
was to pound the islands like the real
Ike pounded his wife (Tina) but
in the end he (the human one)(or inhumane
one I guess) just ended up
pounding daisies up which served him right
though a couple of decades
late, and now on the TV I see a few more
storms heading in such as
Jake, Kip, Larry, Moe, etc.
I don't recall the roof flying off the
barn during the early part of
hurricane season, nor, for that matter,
do I recall seeing any of it
fly away at any time. I've checked
outside recently, but have yet to
find any pelicans blown off course, no
Haitians floating on a raft
over in the river, no coconuts plugging
up the chimney, no missing
shingles or windows, no goats driven sideways
through the air so that
their horns got stuck in the big oak tree,
no net loss/gain of mobile
homes - if we lost any then some new ones
dropped in their place I
guess - no upside down cars, no witty
signs spray painted on plywood
announcing 'Fixer Upper For Sale' in front
of a demolished home, no
piles of new flashlight batteries in the
kitchen - in short, or maybe
too late for that, it just flat doesn't
look like we've had even one
hurricane here this year. So that
brings me to this point - if I find
out that you folks in other parts of the
country have been hogging up
these storms and keeping all the fun to
yourselves, well, I just
better not find out. Let's leave
it at that. Bottom line - it's been
pretty quiet hereabouts.
Tourists mostly left last week, but in
another few weeks we'll get the
Leaf Gawkers. They're good for our
state, so we're glad to have them.
Some of them stop by the shop to
kick the trunks or the leather
around, figuratively speaking, and I suppose
we'll see some of them
here pretty soon with twigs and leaves
in their hair - these would be
the folks who hogged up the hurricanes.
I'll just act natural.
So, now that some of you are living in
government-supplied housing,
eating who-knows-what although I suspect
it's mostly those 5-pound
blocks of government cheese, can't you
see the need for a refinished
trunk in that box you're living in?
Sure, they dropped your new home
from a helicopter and it's smaller than
the crate your last lawn
tractor arrived in, but a trunk always
seems to pull the decor
together. We've got a mess of them
for sale right now, and although
the website has suffered some heavy wind
jostling recently, the last
time I saw the Trunks For Sale page it
was right about here:
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BrettunsVillage/d027778c89/9818a2f7ed/ef80120e5f
For you leather crafters, particularly
those of you who lost your
leather, tools, etc to the storm(s),
we've added a new page to the
site to show (and sell) some very nice
leather items made by one of
our original (and most loyal) customers:
Fred Schoolik, better known
as The Mountain Man in Pennsylvania.
Fred makes nice arrow quivers,
does incredible hand tooling, and invests
a lot of hours in every item
he makes. On the site right now
we have a couple of his quivers (more
to come) and a limited edition knife series,
just in time for hunting
season (here in Maine our Expanded Archery
season opened on Saturday,
but at 80 degrees with a lot of mosquitoes
buzzing around it didn't
feel much like hunting season).
Check out Fred's stuff here:
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BrettunsVillage/d027778c89/9818a2f7ed/6cb97217e1
Some new leathers show on the site, particularly
on the
Lightweight/Thin Leathers page, and a
whole mess of new additions to
both the Clearance page and the Metal
Spots and Decorations page.
After all, we haven't had to board up
windows, nor fill the bath tub
with drinking water, nor lash down the
chickens, boat, camper, pole
barn, hay loft, spare pickup truck, neighbor's
kids, or even That Dog.
It's been quiet. Storm hogs.
Knock it off.
I hope to gosh you folks know when I'm kidding.
Thanks-
Churchill
BrettunsVillage.com
Old Trunks, New Leather, All From Maine