Monday, November 24, 2008

Bells from A'far

I went through an old box in my great-grandfather Perry Durham's barn yesterday. I had seen this box countless times, and I'm sure it's sat right there for fifty years. For whatever reason, I decided to poke around in the rat's nests that filled the old box. For my efforts, I immediately came up with a wooden/iron pulley from a block and tackle..then a few shards of broken pane glass, then an old woodworking hatchet head. These finds lit my enthusiasm, so I probed around a little more, and came up with a wad of metal covered with grass.....I cleaned it off and found it to be an old brass cow's bell, the kind typically worn by a milk cow...I need to ask Grandma what her name was....

Digging around some more, I came across a sharp hook...pulling it out revealed a set of sharpened tongs...the kind for lifting blocks of ice...back in those days an ice box was just that, a box for keeping blocks of ice in to keep milk and other perishables fresh...here was a set of ice tongs that my great-grandparents had used for their ice box.

I had just stopped in at the Old Place before going deer hunting to look around...I tend to find little adventures everywhere if I'll just slow down and take a look-see. Home in GA seems to always be full of adventures. TgE

2 comments:

sam said...

Wow - that was very eloquent. You could have a career in journalism.

Tray said...

Thanks you very much for commenting on my blog. Sometimes I think I'm the only one that reads it..not that I expect this to wind up on '60 Minutes' or such. TgE