With summer traffic now in full force through our little town it was time to do a little repair work on the automatic front gates and get them functioning once again. One of the hinges had seized over the winter and welding on a new one had been long on my to-do list. I pulled out the welder and tools tonight and in a couple hours had things repair and functioning perfectly once more. When the gates are left open we get a lot of traffic down the driveway, with the largest portion being people who are merely curious and just looking. Closed gates discourage the lookie-loos and the 'by-appointment' sign encourages the more serious to make an appointment.
A fun mural from long ago
Over a period of about ten years (1985-95) I made a living painting historical murals. There were more than a hundred murals that we painted across Canada and the USA. One of my favourites was painted in Lompoc California. A friend from California recently was in the town for a wedding and saw it was still there.
The mural called 'TEMPERANCE' was inspired by the prohibition years in the town. A group of mostly ladies enforced the movement. There were no pictures for me to go by but instead there was a vivid description from the archives. These ladies ruled the town, breaking up bars and smashing the liquor they found. One episode described how they had pulled a building off it's foundation, threatened a lynching and generally terrorized the town. One of the fellows they accused was asleep when they knocked on his door and not well dressed when he answered. All of this was recorded in great detail and was a great story to tell visually. This was a fun mural to design and paint. I had well over a hundred feet of wall to tell the story.
I had friends and acquaintances pose for me as I designed. The fellow begging the ladies to stop pulling his building with the rope is none other than COZMIC Ray Renooy - a good friend and sign painter from Winnipeg.
Phoebemobile rides again!
Just before Phoebe, our first grand daughter was born I began work on our train project. It was an ambitious dream to build a riding railroad around our yard, 1,200 feet of track in all plus all of the motive power and cars. I began with the steam outline engine and an inspection car we dubbed the Phoebemobile, once Phoebe arrived. It was a little three wheeled, cartoon model 'A' complete with sidecar. Once I got as far as making the chassis roll I laid some track and gave it a test push. It worked great - until it came to the first corner... and then my brainy idea of having three wheels turned out to not work nearly as cool as it looked. It needed to go back to the drawing board for a little more engineering.
I put that project aside and worked on the train engine and laid more track as we were able. The engine still needed power but while we waited we played on one of the rail cars. Phoebe and I spent countless hours together in those years and I pushed her up and down the short track we had laid. Each time I pushed it to the top of the hill and coated down Phoebe would beg me to do it again and again and again. The laying of the complete loop of track would have to wait for the building of our house, and then Becke's house too. This summer will hopefully be the time at last!
With a busy summer in the works we needed some motive power to roll on the tracks to test them. The engine still needs some serious work and there isn't enough time to do it all so I took another look at the Phoebemobile today. I decided that would be pretty easy to cut up one of the railcars and mount the body of the Phoebemobile to it. We have a spare single cylinder engine in the parts bin... and a bunch of parts to hook things up. I could easily fabricate the rest of what is needed in a hurry. I set to work this afternoon and in a couple of hours had a rolling chassis with the main body mounted. I lowered the centre of gravity considerably to make it a whole lot more stable this time. Phoebe's momma worries about such things :) The sidecar will be next and then I'll work on the drivetrain. Phoebe sat in the rail truck for a photo... she has grown a little since the last picture!
