When One Road Closes…
Since we live out of town, we try to plan ahead for our trips into town. With the prices of gas today, it is prudent to not make those 25 mile round trips just because we want a pint of Hagen Daaz. So about Sunday, we took inventory of the coffee, milk and rum and planned on going into town on Wednesday. Tuesday the phone rings. It is a call from the sheriffs department with a warning to not hang up. Turns out it was a reverse 911 call telling us that there has been a slide and the road into town is closed at the one place where there is not an official secondary route. It was estimated to be closed for only a few hours.
Later we get another call telling us the situation is a bit worse than thought and the state engineers were being called in. The road is closed until further notice, thank you and good bye.
The alternate routes were given as going west to the ferry that takes you across the river into Oregon and then drive east to the bridge that takes you back across the river into Washington if you have to do business in Longview or east of the slide. By the way, the ferry can only hold 12 cars a trip. Even though they are now going to extend the hours and run twice as many crossings 24 hours a day the delay can be up to three hours. There are some old logging roads and easements across property that can be taken to get into town, but you should only travel if you have AWD and high ground clearance. Besides there is one guy up in the hills who does not like the idea of the easement on his property and he may cut down trees to block the road.
Washington is an interesting place. We live along the Lewis & Clark Trail. For another thread on this see:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...y-Won-The-West
I have heard that this state was actually named due to a misunderstanding. The natives in the area supposedly called it wetshitton which translates 'wet falls from sky a ton'. Lewis & Clark thought that somehow back in 1805 the natives had somehow heard of the great leader of America, Washington.
The reason it is the evergreen state is because it is raining three days out of four.
Which is also the reason the hillside collapsed and blocked the road into town the day before we planned on going into town. BTW, that fourth day, it is usually misty or drizzly.
Just an aside, I have kind of grown used to "sky water." I will be outside and not realize it is raining. Then I will go into the greenhouse and hear the rain pelting. That is when it becomes noticeable that it is raining.
Those Eskimos that have 40 different names to describe snow, that's nothing. We have 40 different kinds of rain on days when it is forecast to be partially cloudy.
Anyway, more to the point we were getting low on milk, cat food and coffee. The three essentials to motivate us in to get off the farm action. Since the road to town has not yet been opened, we decided to take the alternate of going to the coast and then south on US 101 into Oregon to replenish our pantry.
Normally the trip across on the ferry costs $5. The time and gas saved makes it a break even. Due to the road closing, the state has waved the fees and everyone rides for free. Shuttle busses have been set up for some companies to encourage people to ride the ferry as walk ons. Today, even though we arrived at a time when there would normally not be much traffic, there would have been about a one hour wait. That means there were maybe a couple dozen cars ahead of us. We decided to turn around and go the long way.
It is interesting what different days of the week can do. Every time in the past this one antique shop between mile post 32 and 31 has been closed. Today it was open so we decided to take a look. Turns out that they only open regularly Thursday through Saturday or Sunday. Some of the stuff is on display out side. In the land of eternal (infernal) wetness that means it is RUUUUUUSSSTTTYY. Some of the stuff seemed a bit high to me. There was a peavy at $35. (for those not familiar with such, a peavy has a point that presses into a log and a hook that grabs the log so it can then be rolled.) I mentioned that I needed one, but that is more than I wanted to pay. His response was that a replacement handle for one cost that much, stalemate.
We were testing each other in that dance of the hagglers. He was good at it. He clearly has a few years on me.
Candy, my wife, spotted a few crocks of 10 and 12 gallon size. My only need of those would be to brew my own beer. Maybe if I could get some sugar cane to ferment and then distill into rum… that is a different story. We then made our way into the shop and the proprietor told us the story of how he came to be the owner of so many crocks and old jugs. A woman was a collector of such and when she passed on, her husband remarried. The new wife didn't want anything to do with the first wife in the home, so it was all sold off and Muary bought the pieces he liked.
I mentioned my woodworking and my quest to find tools that could be put to use. He said he only had a few in the back of the shop. After I looked around a bit I asked about the tools. We walked through the shop and into a back counter with a few planes. One looked like a #3 but not quite. I asked to see it. He removed it from the case and handed it to me. It wasn't a #3.
2 side.jpg
The price tag said $35.
I handled the plane and pointed out that the tote wasn't original and told him that Stanley used rosewood. The knob was rosewood. The blade is a bit on the short side. I removed the blade and looked at the frog. The frog screws looked like they were wire brushed.
I mentioned that one of the things I do not like to see on and old plane is screws that look brand new. He said, that was the way things are sometimes, dang he was good.
Trying my best to not look like a kid with a $100 bill in a candy store, I peered into my wallet.
I knew in my heart that I shouldn't start at $15, but just felt that I had to. A little clearing here. You can tell a bit about a person by offering less than half of the asking price. Before making this offer I could see this person was not going to get offended. Some people will. A good haggler won't. They do not want to tip their hand. He just said no and didn't make a counter offer. Most of the time when a counter offer is made, another offer a bit below that will seal the deal.
My first comment was that $35 was more than I really wanted to pay. His reply was that he would try to find out how much he had in it so he could come down.
He did not have a record number on the tag, so he had no way to know how much it cost him. He would not take $15 so my next offer was $20. He said no and that he had to get $25. I said OK.
He then said that since it didn't have a recording number his wife didn't know about it and we could do it at $25 even.
The down side or the sad part, someone had decided to make a moving filletster plane out of this plane at one time.
2 sole.jpg
Two of the holes are threaded.
We dealt on a few more items that Candy wanted, $2 total, and from our conversation my best guess is he mostly buys things and then doubles what he paid for them to set his price. On some things he is very much like me, he knows that someday they will sell, but until that day he wants to hold on to them so the price is a bit higher. There are many items that would be easy to sell, but then the money gets spent and that special treasure is gone.
Times with money and no special treasures are more difficult than the times with no money that can be spent with an accumulation of treasures.
So after all this, sometimes it is a nice inconvenience that the road is closed and we had to take the road less traveled to gather our provisions.
jtk
Epilog - Muary mentioned that he bought another box of stuff that had a plane in it that was just a little bigger than this one. He had a #4 and a #5 in the case so I am curious if it could be a #4-1/2? He looked but could not find it while we were there.
Maybe that road will stay closed just a little longer.
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