A Trip to Paris

     We had been down this road before. We were returning from our Seattle trip with the Ranger loaded with packaged crates.  

     I was driving and the Goodwife was navigating.  I missed the junction.  Not much of a difference in mileage, really.  It was whether we went south along the east side of Bear Lake (we did) on the Wyoming border, or south along the west side of Bear Lake into the corner of Utah before turning east into Wyoming.  (For map, see,  https://www.google.com/maps/@42.0477867,-111.140537,10z)

        This time we stopped, really stopped, like in overnight stop, before proceeding along our chosen route.  We spent the night in Montpelier.

     I asked the friendly motel clerk lady where the junction was to go through Paris.  She pointed through the office window front where a couple of blocks away, we could see a stoplight.  “Turn right at the stoplight.  Don’t blink,” she added.  “You’ll miss it.”  She wasn’t referring to the stoplight.

     It was a lazy Saturday morning, not much traffic, not much reason to be stirring on a coolish weekend morning.  We met a couple of pickups towing stock trailers.  Sale day somewhere?

      We could slow down, pull over and snap a picture or two without worry of being rear ended by someone in a hurry to get somewhere.

 

      If you didn’t know Bear Lake lay six or seven miles away (pretty hard not to know if you read the road signs advertising local businesses), you would think Paris was a small town in the middle of nowhere, with mountain ranges in the distance, with not much to recommend it.  But it must have had something to recommend it in the olden days, enough to earn it the county seat with all the trappings that go along with that designation.

 

      There are other historical buildings and historical sight markers.

     And a city hall building where one would find the Justice of the Peace if he wanted one:

 

    Many years ago, a young couple eloped to Paris.  They could always say they got married in Paris.  No need to mention “Idaho”. 

     Like filling up the gas tank in Sinclair, seeing Paris, ID was a dimple in the bucket of my bucket list.  Paris was a bit more fulfilling than Sinclair was.  It was quite picturesque, actually.

 

     We drove around a little, mostly to view a chateau on the hill to the west, which turned out to be somewhat of a modular the closer we got.  There are lots of older houses, with “character”, I’m told. 

 

      After the last shutter snap, we proceeded down the road.  The road and the shoreline of Bear Lake drew together, but it was hard to see the lake.  Between the highway and the water are “cabins”, from modest bungalows to huge multi-story mansions.  Many homes are going up on the opposite side of the highway, too.  Most are vacant this time of year, as the place seems to be a summer refuge for those who can afford to maintain a vacant house during the winter months. 

     Somewhere near the southern tip of the lake, you cross over into Utah.  The road bends around the southern tip of the lake and leads into Wyoming.  It is a pretty drive.  It would probably be prettier going west and north (we were going south and east).  You get a better glimpse of the lake and there are mountain ranges to the north and west that you don’t really see going the way we did.

     As the sun slowly rose higher in the east, we headed to Kemmerer and our way home.

   

     

  

Ninety-Year-Olds

      The invitation came towards the end of September.  A quick glance at the calendar revealed three or four Veterans’ Day performances the week of the celebration.  We could not go.

      I thought we might get away the week following Veterans’ Day, but that week got filled in, too.  As it turned out, it would not have been a good thing.

      It was a 90^th birthday party for two, a surprise, prepared by their daughter.  The parents were both born in 1927.

    The birthday girl is the last survivor of “the cousins”, the grandchildren of Ole and Anna, my great grandparents.  She is the last connecting link to a bygone generation. 

     Last summer, we lost the last of my cousins who actually knew my paternal grandmother, Martha.  While I did visit with Barbara, I lacked a lot of getting everything she had experienced with our grandparents.  I thought of other missed opportunities.  Aunt Dell would have been six years old when the family moved from Minnesota to a homestead in the desert of Eastern Colorado.  She would have remembered that trip, but I never thought to ask her about it.

     I decided it was now or probably never, so we set off on our trip to Boise.  We could have flown.  The Goodwife found fares as low as $60 round trip.  We would have had to go on Tuesday and return Thursday.  It didn’t seem right to make a flying trip.  So we drove.

    It was a two-day trip by automobile.  We left on Tuesday and returned by the following Saturday.

     We arrived in Boise mid-afternoon Wednesday.  We found the 90-year-olds in good shape for having lived nine decades.  Both use walkers, but they get around.  Both are sharp mentally. There have been issues.  Had we visited in November, we probably would have had to visit one of the guests of honor in a hospital or rehab, recovering from spinal surgery.

      We originally intended to rent a motel room for our stay, so as not to be a burden, but they were fully prepared to have us stay with them, so we did. 

       We jumped right in to sharing what we knew about our extended family.  Out came the old suitcase with pictures that don’t see the light of day very often.  We also reviewed the family history book. 

     We dined on lasagna thoughtfully provided by daughter Mary (my second cousin).  Mary’s constant attention makes it possible for her parents to remain in their nice modern home. 

     It was midnight before we gave it up Wednesday.  Among the family “secrets”:  a bootlegger who had a hollow doorframe where pints could easily be hidden and easily removed for sale to customers. She would lie in the dark by the railroad tracks waiting for the train car that would expel a keg.   The keg’s contents would be transferred to pints, the pints hidden in the hollow doorframe.  She may have been a madam as well.  She was one of the few financial success stories in our family.

      Tragedy—the youngest brother died in the flu epidemic during WWI.

      A suicide using the gas from the lamps that provided the light in those olden days.  When the homeowner returned and struck a match to light the lamp, a mini explosion occurred.  Unfortunately, that isn’t the only suicide.  Suicide is a family plague.

      The number of violin or fiddle players in the family.  Music has been a part of the family for a long time, as Ole was the song leader at church where there were no musical instruments.  He apparently had near-perfect pitch.  Many of his children were musicians.

       The self-same Ole was somewhat of a sex fiend who mistreated his wife.  Some of his sons built a house for their mother and forbade Ole to enter therein.

      The homesteaders who ventured from Minnesota to Colorado.  My grandfather and two of his brothers made the first foray in 1907.  Carpenters all, they built a “suitable” dwelling (my older aunts referred to that house where they grew up as “the chicken coop”) and returned to Minnesota for the winter.  In the spring of 1908, the entire family moved to their home on the planes.

     Apparently, all three brothers filed homestead claims.  Two relinquished their claims and returned to Minnesota when Ole died.  They took over the Minnesota farm and cared for their widowed mother.

      A story I was able to add concerned my good Neighborly and a conversation we had one day.  He asked my Grandfather’s name.  I said John or Johannes.  No that wasn’t the right name.  Was it Joe?  No.  How about Ingeman?  That was it.

      The story Neighborly told involved his late wife and a grandson.  They were at an auction where the grandson took a liking to a framed document, which was apparently a charter for an insurance company, maybe Modern Woodsmen or something similar.  Shirley bought the thing for her grandson, who still has it today. The charter is signed by the charter members.  Among the signers was Ingeman, who apparently was around the country long enough to help start the organization.

      “Uncle” Joe, Mary’s grandfather, was a great letter-writer.  I remember a letter or two Papa got from Uncle Joe.  They were indeed entertaining.  He encouraged Papa to keep on living, as he was about to make it to one hundred.  (Papa lacked three or four years of making 100.  He always protested that he never asked to live so long.)  Uncle Joe was the last of Ole and Anna’s family.  He died in 1979.

        We spent much of the day Thursday immersed in the olden days until we all grew tired and had to take a rest.  Thursday evening, we were guests of Mary and Lance.  The evening was only slightly marred by the malfunction of the meat smoker, and for the locals, a bigger disappointment with Boise State’s defeat in the first round of the Mountain West basketball tournament.

      We took our leave on Friday morning.  Parting is always hard, particularly when you realize this may be the last time to visit each other on this earth. 

     I had hoped to visit Yellowstone on our return trip, but it would have been late afternoon Friday when we arrived.  We had no reservations and I wasn’t sure what the weekend traffic might be, so we opted for a more direct route.

       I had also hoped to find a hot springs to visit, maybe spend the night there.  My wires got crossed.  I thought Soda Springs, ID would be the place.  We went through Lava Springs on our way to Soda Springs.  No hot springs in Soda Springs.  Go back to Lava Springs, the store clerk told us.  We didn’t want to back track, so we pressed on, thinking maybe to stop in Kemmerer, WY for the night.

       We found a better solution, Montpelier, ID.  It had a nice motel at a not-too-bad-a price.  It was much quieter than the motel in Pocatello where we spent a noisy Wednesday night (a place two more than the one that keeps the light on for you).

       After a peaceful rest, we got some advice from the motel lady on which roads to take to Kemmerer.  At Kemmerer, we visited Fossil Buttes, which really took us back into the past, billions of years.  We lunched in Green River, WY, filled with gas at Sinclair, home of Sinclair gasoline refinery.  What a disappointment!  The refinery is less than a mile away, yet gas was $2.55.  (We paid $2.32 in Kemmerer.  We paid a high of $3.19 near Burley, ID.)

     We supped at our used-to-be favorite Korean place in Laramie (Goodwife says she won’t go there again).  We elected to go to Cheyenne and catch I-25 home—probably not the fastest route from Laramie to Loveland.  We arrived home about 9:30 p.m.

      We agreed this was probably the last trip for the old 2001 Chrysler.  Things are starting to fail.  The heater doesn’t work exactly right.  Everything, heat, AC, comes through the defroster now.  We had cold toes a place or two during our trip.   It’s hard to turn loose of the big old thing.  It averaged 30 MPG on our trip of 1600 miles.   But it turned over 189,000 on the odometer, or distance indicator, as we say these days.                

     We were glad we made the trip.  We were glad to be home.

Window Repair Project

    The window sash hangs at a slight angle in the frame.  It has been that way for a couple of years, maybe since we moved in.  I have put off trying to correct the problem for various reasons. 

     I assumed it was poor quality work on the part of the window installers.  The frame must not be square.  Correcting it would mean taking off all the trim, cutting or pulling nails or screws, depending on what the installer used.  If there was caulk involved, it would have to be cut so the window frame could be jiggered into square.

       It was easy to find something more important to do.  After all, it didn’t leak a whole lot of cold air.  The imperfection wasn’t really noticeable there hidden by the curtains.  Lurking in the back of my mind, the possibility that wall studs may be misaligned and require some major surgery to correct the problem.

      Last week, the time arrived when I had nothing on the priority list higher than correcting the window problem.  My confidence had been buoyed by the completion of another project I had put off for the same two years.

      Under the kitchen sink, there were hoses and shutoffs spread across the cabinet floor.  It made it difficult to store the usual suspects, soap, cleansers, spray bottles, dish drainers, trash can, etc.  I took it on one day while the Goodwife was off on an all-day quilter meeting of some sort.  I could live without water at the kitchen sink all day, if needed.

      This job was the result of a former owner’s do-it-yourself installation of washer and dryer in the garage.  The hot and cold water supply and the drain all run for five or six feet horizontally behind the corner kitchen cabinet.  They emerge in a corner of the garage adjacent to the kitchen wall.  I think the job must have been done when they replaced cabinets or at least the counter top. 

      Anyway, to supply water to the washer, the installer used braided hoses.  They connected to the hot and cold water supplies for the kitchen faucet.  Rather than fasten the hoses up out of the way on the back wall of the cabinet, he put the hoses on the cabinet floor and fastened two more shutoffs to 2 X 4’s screwed to the cabinet bottom.  The cabinet floor looked like a plate of spaghetti noodles.

      The shutoffs strapped to the floor were really superfluous.  He had installed double shutoffs on the pipes that rose up through the cabinet bottom for the sink.  I had prepared for the occasion by buying compression tees and laying in a supply of 3/8” copper tubing.

    The normal sink water supply would have water going to the dishwasher and maybe the refrigerator ice maker.  This one has those branches, plus the supply for the clothes washer in the garage, and a countertop water heater that never worked as long as we owned the house.  Quite a few branches.

       I removed the unneeded shutoffs and the hoses that led to them.  From the double shutoffs on the pipes coming through the floor, I added the compression tees, using copper tubing.  I eliminated the feed to the water heater that never worked.  All the pipes and hoses are now towards the back of the cabinet, and off the cabinet floor.

      Thankfully, the 2 X 4’s that held the hoses and shutoffs to the cabinet floor were held in place with screws, not glue.  They were easily removed.  Voila!  A blank space to put stuff.  It’s still crowded under there, but now, you can move stuff around without hitting pipes and hoses and causing something to leak.

     Buoyed by the success of the kitchen sink reform, I decided it was time to take on the window.  To start, reconnaissance to scout the enemy.  Out came the square.  Well!  The window frame was square.

     I pulled the sash out of its tracks.  These windows are easily removed so you can clean them.  The window sash was very slightly out of square, but not nearly enough to explain the gap in the upper left had corner when the window is closed.

      Back in its tracks, the sash would slide all the way to the top and the gap disappeared.  But when I closed the latch connecting top and bottom sashes, the left side of the top sash sagged, and there was the gap again.

       In the olden days, sash windows had a channel on the outside of the window tracks, where the sash slides up and down.  In that channel were window weights tied to ropes.  The ropes went around a pulley at the top of the window frame and hooked into the top corners of the sash.  The weights served as a counter balance to help raise the sash and keep it in place.   If the installation was done properly, the weights and the window balanced, so that wherever you positioned the sash, it stayed.  If the job was not done so properly and the counterweights and sash were out of balance, the sash would fly up or fall as soon as it was unlatched. 

     In the newer days, spring-loaded strings attached to little gadgets in the window tracks catch the bottom of the sash and help raise the sash.  To keep the sash in place whether opened or closed, the little gadget has a floppy metal clip that acts as a brake on the spring-loaded string. 

      When removing the window, the little gadget does not go flying up like the old fashioned spring-loaded shade.  The metal clip will hold the gadget in place, so when you reinstall the sash, you need to make sure you are putting the bottom of the sash above the gadget in the window tracks. 

     In theory, you get the sash back in its tracks, pull down on the window, thus releasing the gadget, sort of like a ratchet.  The gadget released then assists you in raising the sash and holds the sash wherever you place it.   A closer inspection revealed that the left gadget was not releasing.  It lollygagged down where it was when I lowered the sash to remove it.  The gadget wasn’t doing its job.  Or maybe doing its job too well.

      I have had a painful experience with those little gadgets.  The metal clip has some sharp edges that dig into the window track if things are moving too fast.  If you accidentally release the metal clip, the gadget shoots up like a released rubber band, only with a lot more power.  Once I accidentally released one while trying to clean a window.  Sproing!  The thing went up and caught my finger on the way.  I didn’t bleed too much.

      But I knew enough to take a screw driver to the stuck gadget on this window.  I got it to release and go up where it belonged to help hold the window in place.  No more gap at the top left corner.

     There still needs to be something done to get the thing to work properly.  I don’t know what, yet.  But it isn’t major surgery.  The cold wind shut out, the window has scaled down quite a few notches on the priority list. 

      We have three styles of windows in our house, horizontal sliders, double hung sash, and casement.  The casements are best for closing tightly and sealing out the heat and cold.  They are somewhat of a pain to clean the outside pane.  The sliders are also a pain to clean and leak where the two panes meet.  The sash windows are easiest to clean, but also have problems with leaking.

        I guess I would go with casements.  They are probably most expensive.  Go figure.