Snow Daze - Puzzling Christmas

Item: Christmas in New England seemed appropriate for the Holidays. That's us. Daughter #2 visited from NYC and family joined in for the feast. Christmas dinner was great and everyone got home safe. Than the snow came in the night. Next day nothing moved. We froze and have been for several weeks here in the sunny south. We stayed by the fire. Very puzzling.

So it looks like back yard lounging and outdoor activities are on indefinite hold as are flights to Newark, NJ for Amy. Thursday looks like the rescheduled fly days and to resume life as we know it before the horrors.

Here's an idea. Put the puzzle together that we got for Christmas. Usually this is a January antedate for boredom but that found us in the present trevails. One led to the next and we find ourselves on number 5. Oh well it will be 60 degrees on Friday.

Marble Teeter-Totter Toy (Piggie) + Armand Hammer

Item: Progress on the teeter totter marble toy little pig. This little pig will go to market on the Whimsy Two Etsy shop but first it needs some fine tuning and a stop in the art department. Think this little pig may get a trough.

Biographies and autobiography collaborations seem to have led one to the next. Mitchner begot Pickins begot Hammer begot Thatcher. It's interesting to read about the intersections in each of these lives. Ironically each one does not mention the other in their own story. Irregardless this story is a page turner about ambition and means to do some heavy lifting in Hammers own life and among nations.

While T. Boone Pickens looks like naked aggression for the get, Armand Hammer learns to give to get from a young mans trip to Russia to a gift of Pissaro art to Venezuela yielding an oil field concession for Occidental. Occidental go oil in Libya but helped with water.

Pencils making and pushing paid off. Whiskey, cooper, cattle, horses, art, fertilizer, oil, water, artifact dealing, and dispersing the artifacts of the Czars and William Randoph Hearts billion dollar collection. One thing led to the next says Armand -the bigot's- and always the best returned the most in every effort. Here was a big life.

Marbles Teeter Totter Toy Pig

Item: In process at the Manspace is another little piggy teeter totter marble toy and there are some other things going on around the space while we await the spring thaw. Here is how far I got on the pig. The marble boundry came from an idea that I saw on a 1944 classic marble chaser given my aunt and uncle Paul Hollinger when they got married by their Rev. Henry Becker. (See below)

Than a big ol' limb came out of the tree in front of the house and nearly took out Vollis Simpson's whirlygig so it took some repair on the post mount in the manspace and it is back out in front of the house.


How many times have you heard the check is in the mail. Well it came today. This is the check for the Red Ribbon winner at the State Fair which was the John Deer "Hit & Miss" themed marble roller. Money in the bank - $12.00.

Figure this one out. I think it is and Anglia English Ford along about 1950 or so. Daughter #2 may be looking for a car since the oil won't keep on the dipstick on her Jetta and wants a conventional car without all the stuff. Here seems like a conventional one. By 2050 we may have a PC or "Peoples Car" from GM government issue like this one. VW was a folks wagon recall.

If you happen to be looking for some reading material try catching up with Boone. Interesting

Intercourse + Paradise, PA "Lost"

Item: Let's not dwell long in lamentations for this little village. The irony remains. Past visitors would flock to Intercourse to see Amish folks leading a life far removed from western culture familiar to foreigners. Now the Amish seem to be just in the way of all of the tourist attractions and visitor traffic. The clatter of horse hooves has been replace by the clatter of coin at the souvenir merchants.

Jack Rutt was the insurance man in town and he started it. At least it seems like this is the first "Gift Shop" location for tourists I can recall in town. Jack asked me to build a scale model Amish carriage for display. Good pay for a youngster. On this busy key cross road and intersection interchange the beat began fifty years ago. 1961

If there be any justification for the town and name association it would be to rename it to "Kitchen Kettle Village". This actually turns out to be a highlight for a visit here anyway. Only a helicopter pad for Manhatten is missing. A peer group of my youth spent many a day and time here with the gracious Burnley family who have built from a jam & jelly kitchen to a virtual empire here. Even an entrepreneurial aura for the neighborhood youngsters germinated here. The tide of tourism began here and a rising tide lifts all boats. You will like it here.

Lapps Buggy shop was always a place to earn a few dollars in assembly of one Amish carriage item or other. Abner Lapp would engage his peers to come and spend a few hours to help along the Amish buggy production. Souvenirs are plenty today - buggies not so much - nor the nearby leather shop or the PA Dutch scene 3-D carving artist A.B. Zook had a shop across the street.

This is the old Hess Mill location when it held the corner along with the bus stop and Intercourse post office. We had a good time crawling all over the mill and attending open house activities for the farmers and waiting for the bus and picking up the mail after school. When Norm Smoker saw this as a good location for a hotel he was right but what to do with the post office?? He talked my Dad into selling and bought our property across the street but he could not convince the US Postal Service to allow the move there. Forty years ago this was a bold leap into tourism which encompasses the town now. Intercourse vanished.

This is our little house on Queen St. in Intercourse which was destined to be a post office when the new hotel took over the Hess Feed Mill sight. The big tree remains and memories of a great little town to grow up in and a great community. Now it joins the legion of tourist attractions here and the Longeneckers vanished too.

"A new broom sweeps clean" - Amish saying

Item: The Duchess wondered what her daily routine would be like if we were Amish. One thing may be an enterprise at home rather than working away. Look what is just beyond the Pequea Valley H.S.. If your old broom is not sweeping too well there is this place located outside of Intercourse in Kinzers just off Rt. 772 on the way to Gap (Paradise is just over the hill). Amish don't allow photographs and it would have been of interest to see the machines that are powered manually to make a whisk broom a light or a heavy broom. It takes about 10 minutes to finish one downstairs and upstairs you can hear other operations in process to prepare the stock materials. Contact Moses F. Stoltzfus by mail for wholesale or retail at 39 Pequea Valley Road, Kinzers, PA 17535 or if you are in a hurry call 717.442.8411 for a price list but I'm surprised that Moses has a phone contact and it may be an "English" neighbor answering for him.




The livestock needs attention and the poultry ("Yard Birds" in NC). Everything in Lancaster County is so orderly. For dinner tonight one of these birds may lose his head and have his feathers plucked and wind up in hot water.



There is the wash to be done. Wash day is Wednesday and it's an all day affair. Here is the dryer - as many wash lines as you can rig. Gardening in the foreground needs some attention in the mean time.



The other thing to do over winter is get the tobacco down out of the barn and into the tobacco cellar for moisture in the leaves and than into the stripping room to pull off the leaves and size them and bale than and put them back into the tobacco cellar until spring when the buyer comes for the Burley tobacco market used in chew, cigar and pipe tobacco.



Going to Zimmermans Hardware in Intercourse could take half a day and cost half a days wages because for the Amish it's one mule pulling a one row plow all day to make a dollar and that has to go a long way.



I suppose there is a lot for an Amish family to do at home within their circle encompassing everything but TV, radio, fiction, periodicals, Facebook, X-Box, wrestle mania, McDonalds, and "Farmville" for them is waiting just outside every morning. All of these may be new today but forgotten over time just as a new broom sweeps clean.

Lady GaGa, Obama and Borat might be welcome but unknown as Henri, Chou, Che, Achmed, Ivan or Gupta and "Saturday Night Live" is not entertainment. In these large farm homes and as seen in Photo above of Moses F. Stoltzfus home can be found accommodations for elderly relatives and parents too.

PA Dutch Country + Strasburg RR

Item: The little engine that could - you know about that childrens story. Also consider the little dutch girl that could. With just a little wagon Amish cargo can move and sometimes a 100 ton locomotive just gets in the way.

The little Amish girl rides to the side with one leg in the wagon and the other propelling along her and the cargo with the wagon tongue to steer. I think I can - I think I can (she is never a doubt for her). She knows she can, and will - until faced with ol" #90 at the RR crossing. She awaits (lower right side in the photo).

There goes the Strasburg RR tour train now, down the line to the picnic grove. It's a 30 min. pull to get there and just as long for the steam locomotive to push back down the track to the Strasburg RR Museum.

Here is the Red Caboose Hotel and restaurant which is nearby the Strasburg RR and doggone if it has not grown since just about the six caboose cars to the restaurant's left side bought at auction by Don Denlinger was it's beginning. You can have lunch here and choose from one of the many RR cars for motel accomocations while in Strasburg if you care to.

We'll have to mention the Red Rose Trolley that will get you into and around Lancaster, PA and the Red Rose city if you are in the PA Dutch country.

Amish Freightliners + F.U.B.U. in Intercourse, PA

Item: The classic Amish Freightliner, one horsepower + ATV + bench seats + spring suspension + drum brakes + 12V DC lighting + GPS of sorts (the horse knows the way) + tilt windows + rear view mirrors. This rig is the model where one make fits all. In the future of the USA we may not have a Chevrolet but a GM or government model in this fashion and if it gets the job done we will have a national car. The YUGO comes to mind and the VW. Ours may be the PC (Peoples Car) made by GM (Government Motors). Why not. Maintaining one of those would be a whole lot less complicated and the nation would have commonality of parts and OPEC free plus cruelty and chemical free.

This is the main location for W.L. Zimmerman store and the hardware store is in the next block. Think of this as the Wal-Mart back in the day and this store outlasted all the others including Kauffmans in New Holland (nie-hollant) as well as others in Bird-In-Hand, Blue Balls, Paradise and at Gap. An auction took place in the sheds behind the store with Ronald Kling calling and gaveling the sale. I made a dollar running the sale sheets and spent it right there and still have an old trunk from the sale at the house.

This is Amish F.U.B.U. hotspot with Amish appropriate goods for making their own clothing and other necessities in the Amish culture. It's "For Us By US". Think of China Town in Philadelphia or NYC. This is it.

Don't mind this rig. It's a bus.