October is full of birthdays. Budda turns two, the gallery turns nine and I turn . . .
And I turn one year older. And except for Budda we are all showing our age.
I would tell you my actual age (I may have already somewhere on this blog) but I’m feeling a little paranoid about handing out that kind of info on-line.
I have never been ashamed of my age. I figure it’s a miracle I’ve lived this long, (yes, death has tried to take me more than once) so I’m grateful. I like to think of all this gray hair as highlights. (ooh it’s so sparkly) I mean women pay good money to have that done . . . don’t they?
My brother who is four years my senior (and has a birthday this month as well) says it’s a sign of hard livin’. (not to mention our genetics) He recently had someone complement him on his good-looking grand kids. And yes you guessed it . . . they were his kids, nothing grand involved.
A huge thanks to Brenda from Sioux Land Bricks for helping us get bricks that were almost a perfect match to our building.
The gallery building is showing her age a bit as well. I’ve been here 9 years but the building is nearly 100. Mike has been hard at work tuck-pointing her. (That’s where the mortar gets scraped out and replaced.) A hugely time consuming job. But it will be good to fix a few cracks in the bricks before winter sets in.
Old buildings like this need a lot of love. But they have so much more character than new construction. Most of the visitors we have come in and touch all the old woodwork. And oh and ah. Which is almost always followed by the question “Was this a bank?”
We recently went through a bunch of old postcards showing Rolfe in the 1910-1930 era’s. None of them had a good view of our building. I’ve heard a rumor that someone in town has a early photo of our place back when it was a car dealership, which is what it was built to be. Oddly enough it had a bunch of Ford tractors parked out front.
I got a little off topic there. I’m easily distracted. So anyway, Happy Birthday to all of us. The business, the Budda and me.
PS Next post will hopefully be of a finished horse painting.
Tags: About Me
Congratulations and all the Best to you!
Thanks Ulla
Happy Birthday to you Mona, your brother and Budda! I have a “feel” for your age, I feel like I have read all of your posts and do not remember you ever stating your exact age. At any rate, I am squeamish about stating it exactly on the net, also. Your Friesian is coming along nicely. I especially love the shine you have encorporated to his coat. Did you ever get some of the frisket paper? I am curious to see what you are going to do with the background.
Just a little trivia about your building. Yes, it was a Chevrolet dealership. When I was really young, the dealership was owned by “Slim” Davidson. After that the dealership was owned by Bill Brinkman who had previously owned the Standard Oil station that’s now ROPA’s.
One of my memories of Brinkman Auto occurred about this time of year–during the World Series. This would also have been about the time new car models came out each year. When I was in high school, we had a full hour for lunch (on the days we didn’t have band). On those days we could walk up town to Webb’s Drug Store or Brinkman Auto to see the new models. I recall Brinkman Auto giving visitors new yardsticks when we came to the store. What they had to do with new cars, I don’t know.
Happy Birthday Mona! I hope that you are able to take it easy on your birthday and you get lots of nice cake and goodies : )
Angela, No frisket paper yet. We didn’t make it to Hobby Lobby the last trip out of town but we are planning on going in the next day or so, so I’m gonna look. For this project I just went on without it. I’m working with the background yet and will hopefully be able to post something soon.
Clara, Thanks so much for your thoughts on the building. We were looking at the abstract the other day and the earliest recorded sale the property was 1881. Unfortunately no idea when the building was built. We’ll just keep asking everyone. We didn’t know Brinkmans owned the oil station next door though. Mike was digging around in the attic yesterday and there were no clues up there. I’ve been in the basement (it was the oil pit and coal storage) and don’t remember seeing anything down there. Our house has the date in the foundation (1906) which is kinda cool. I keep hoping we’ll find something like that.
Thanks Mel, I made a sugar free pound cake with strawberries and whipped cream. Being a diabetic limits those fun goodies. But it was pretty good just the same.