Week 7 - " go antiquing" - well, sort of...

     Since it was around 100 degrees today and no sane person would be outside, Dad and I decided to drive to Collinsville to a postcard show.  Gary Brinkmeyer, a friend of ours, has been an avid collector for over 20 years and has tried to get Dad interested as well.  I wasn't too excited about the prospect and knew that Dad could (and probably would) stand at one table until he looked through each and every card that the vendor had for sale.  Well, I was right about that, but found that I actually enjoyed the day.  I was a little quicker than Dad and went from table to table looking for cards from Pana, Ottawa, Charleston and Jacksonville.            

     After about half an hour, I found a couple of cards that I liked, so called Dad over to pay for them.  The vendor said, "That will be 10."  I wondered why Dad gave him a 20 dollar bill instead of getting some change from his pocket.  I was shocked that the two cards were $10 instead of 10 cents!!  After that I was a little more selective in my choices. (I didn't buy that $35 card of Pana I saw.)
     The picture on the left is the BlackHawk Beach where Dad and his friends and siblings went swimming when he was young.  He said it was a great place until the polio scare in the 1950's.  It was thought that polio might be contracted from the lake water, so the beach was closed down.

     The picture on the right is Huber Memorial Hospital where I was born.  I was so excited to find this card.  I also have the original statement from the five days my mother was in the hospital for my birth. June 24 to June 29, 1948 with birthing fee, dressings, medicine, lab tests, light treatment and "care of baby" came to a grand total of $64.00.  And I'm worth every penny!
     The postcards themselves are antiques, with some we bought dating back to 1908 and 1909.  There is one of Eastern Illinois University with the campus lake directly behind Old Main and Pemberton.  Those two buildings made up the entire campus.  Dad is already thinking that he will go to another show sometime, only this time with his friend Gary.  That way he won't be limited to only 2 - 3 hours and he won't have to buy me a nice lunch afterwards.

Week 6 - "complete a landscaping project"

      It was a beautiful day to finish a landscaping project in our back yard.  We decided to turn the burn pile into a fire pit.  The hardest part for me is convincing Dad that the day isn't too hot or too busy or it isn't too early in the day or too late in the afternoon to start a project.  And I am sure that I drive him crazy when I get an idea for a project and want to start on it immediately!!  Yesterday we went to Rural King and Wal-Mart to find the bricks that we wanted.  Even though we asked for some help loading them, no one ever came out to the lot.  So we loaded them all in the trunk of the car and drove home with the bottom dragging the ground.

   This morning after coffee, we cleared the burn pile of debris and started digging.  Do you remember when that area used to be a sand pile when we first moved to the house?  I remember several years ago finding buried sand toys and plastic dinosaurs out there. Today we loaded 20 years of ashes into our huge wheel barrow (thanks, Patrick and Jess) and dumped 7 or 8 loads in the woods at the back of our property.  When Dad got down to dirt, he started to dig the pit.  We found a lot of buried rocks which I hosed off and added to our landscaping around the back porch.

     When we were satisfied with the size of the pit, we started placing the bricks around it.  And, of course, we only had enough for 1 1/2 rows.  So, it was back to Wal-Mart again.  There was still no one to help us, but we only needed 12 more bricks this time.  With those in place, we added sticks and some fallen branches and the fire pit is now ready for a fire this evening if it isn't too windy.  I think we need to try it out with s'mores.
     And speaking of driving Dad crazy, I thought of a few more projects when I was out there this morning:  the shed needs a new roof and the back porch needs to be re-screened!