The Silver Twin's ...Place... In New England Decorative Art - Part Five - "Drilled"

The Silver Twin's ...Place...

In New England Decorative Art

Part Five

"Drilled"

            Nothing is ever just left alone... unless it being left alone is an action

            Too.

            Once ‘left alone’

            It is that.

            Until an action changes that

            Action.

            At the Silver Twin’s Place, “up hill” was an action that took place... at their place.  IT; the place, was the end of the “up hill” action.  Following an ‘up hill’ action were actions like “used” and

            “Left alone”.

            Other actions included ‘lost’, ‘broken’, ‘put away’ and... “given”... “away”.

            And more.

            Although my antiquarian itch respects the action ‘put away’ I secretly study ‘left alone’ as the “best choice” for scratching an antiquarian itch.  So if a something came up hill and was, it was told, “used” and then... ‘put away’ and/or “left alone”... that ‘works for me’.

            What goes up hill; up The Silver Hill Road, to the Silver Hill Place, just below the top of Silver Hill:  What?  A well water bucket?  No... they “made that there”.  A cast iron kettle?  Yes.  It (that first kettle) was probably “carried” up the hill tied to ...the “a cow”.  Maybe tied on an ox?  No... the ox load going up hill was already “full”.  The kettle “got there”; to the Silver Twins homestead...

Four or five generations before the Twins were born.  Maybe it was five or six generations.

            “Who cares?”

            I didn’t.  I bought the old kettle and, after putting it in the back of my truck and turning that truck around, I took that kettle... “down hill”.  That’s an action I took.  Before doing that the kettle appeared to my eye to have been

            “Left alone”

            A very long time.

            “Today”; these days... I always have an old kettle around from ‘some old place’.  They “don’t sell”... I am told... over and over.  No one even asks?  Pretty much.  Sometimes someone will sort of suggest to ask about a that they call ‘those’ and  “IF IT HAD A HOLE IN IT I CAN USE IT FOR MY PLANTS.  IT HAS TO DRAIN.”

            Ok so there needs to be a hole in the kettle that was originally used to “COOK” “WITH”... and was intended to be used to ‘do that’... so some... call ‘em whatever you like... it doesn’t change anything... can

            “PUT IT OUT”

            “IN THE YARD”

            “WITH A (potted) PLANT IN IT”.

            Really:  They look great.  “Crafty”; I am so... that I know it is easier to “SELL” a “DRILLED” kettle (with a drain hole in it) than it is to sell a “working” “antique” “kettle”.  The craft is that I actually keep my eye out for ‘drilled ones’ because they are... actually... rarer than ‘not drilled’ AND ‘do sell’.... AND... by pointing out the “HOLE IN IT” I can, too, suggest it is of “LITTLE” value when I am buying it (“doesn’t work”) AND of “greater” value when I am selling it because it “ALREADY HAS A DRAIN HOLE IN IT”.

            “Jesus” and can we get more stupid?  Even the God damn Silver Twins knew better that to “DRILL” a “HOLE” in an “OLD KETTLE” even though they “KNOW NOTHING” about “ANTIQUES” and ... “HAVE A LOT OF CATS” too.

            Stepping on the (cast iron) kettle old New England design form, I enhance the “function”, “form” and “decorative value” of “OLD” (New England homestead) “KETTLES”... for one to “KEEP” your

            “EYE”

            “OUT”

            For...:

            The ugliest (Old New England cast iron)  kettle... being used as decoration in the household yards of New England these days and... for the past one hundred years (starting at World War One)... is a large cast iron ‘shell’ kettle.  Quite large; five, ten, fifteen even twenty gallons with thin cast iron sides and, usually, a flared lip at the top so as to ‘catch’... what?

            To catch the top of the “brick work” (often just ‘field stone’) built (dry or mortared) fire case that held (enclosed) this cast iron pot AND had a ‘fire hole’ beneath it so the whole furnace could “HEAT” ...”WATER” to provide a steady (and luxurious) supply of “HOT” ... “WATER”.  It was (is?) the old New England Homestead ...hot water heater.

            “Yep” and one does not see them in this old usage setting anymore for most have been... “ripped out”

            With the iron ‘pot’... “chucked”.  They usually just roll them off.  It is “too hard” to break them “UP”.  These days, in an old house where there once ‘was one’... you’d never know it.

            You don’t need to know.  It will be ok for one to know that... a ‘that’... “IS ONE” should one happen to... ah.... be before one... in an old homestead...

            But these days it is so “that way” that... you don’t need to ‘know that’ either.  That includes the people who have one in their yard as decoration and don’t know what it is... too.

            To get one of those up Silver Hill to the Silver Hill Place... (most probably) didn’t happen.  Hot water has always been a luxury... is the short reason for that.  Other reasons should be obvious ...if you have no money.  If there had been one there; at the ‘place’, I’d have found it and acquired it.  Also... I saw no ‘fire case’ for such a ‘pot’ in the homestead... anyway.  IF... they’d had a “THAT” the fire case would have still been there with the ‘pot’ in place ready to use.  The Silver Twin’s Place never had ‘running water’, ‘indoor plumbing’ or “POWER” (electricity).  For the record.

            “YES” it had an old poop house (outhouse).  If one left its door open when ‘occupied’... one had a “magnificent” view (plane) of “THE VALLEY”.  Try that in one’s own homestead today, especially when ‘the fan’ is ‘on’. 

            “Now what happened?”  I just say... I said?  There was a cast iron pot built into a field stone case that heated water poured into it so the homestead has a constant supply of hot water and that was a luxury.  This took place in a small (six feet by eight feet) “room” (butted on shack) “OFF” the (fireplace) kitchen (in the main house).  Generally these rooms were “OUT BACK” and/or “PART OF THE SHED”. 

How did the water get there?  It was carried from the “spring” or “well” there by

            “Yes”...

            The ‘sap yoke’ (Parts Two-Four)

            That was hung up in the shed to be fetched for uses... such as this. 

In the primitive domestic fireplace kitchen at the Silver Twin’s Place... hot water... was heated in small amounts... sort of... sometimes... “along” by having ‘buckets’ (2) full of water “SAT” (often on a ‘bucket bench’) just outside the kitchen door to the shed for

            Use

            For that (making hot water)

            That way... one does not use very much hot water

            Very much.

            Right?

            Meanwhile the family is using the cast iron cook kettle EVERY SINGLE DAY ALL DAY LONG to ‘cook in’ and EAT OUT OF.  So they do not need a hole drilled in it to “drain’ it so they may put a potted plant in it out in the yard as decoration.  “Anyone who did that is crazy”.  Kind of... right?

            The old Silver Twin’s Place cook kettle, is, when I found it left alone, of foundation and elemental design as an old New England Decorative Art.  It is as primary as “salt”.  It is as luxurious as “sugar”.  It is not as fleeting as those.  In fact it is remarkably resilient and permanent.  It took over two hundred years for that homestead to ‘get rid of’ its “old kettle”

            “What you gonna USE that for?”

            “Drill it.  SELL IT to SOME WOMAN.  SHE’LL PUT A PLANT IN IT.”

            Now just wait a minute.  Is THAT really it?  Yes it is.  IT is THAT.  A few have a ‘one’ by their own ‘old fireplace’; “SAT THERE”.  Most do not even have a “FIREPLACE” let alone a ‘fireplace kitchen’.  This is....  Followed by “WHY” “do that”.  Followed by the specific word; the very specific word:

            “DECORATION”

            That word, two hundred and more years later, determines the fate of an old cast iron fireplace kitchen cook kettle that

            “Everyone’s”

            “Ancestors”

            “ALL”

            “Ate from”.

            An none of them (‘everyone’ today of those ancestors) would “eat from that” today.

            So:

            Might as well drill a drain hole in it.

            “I guess.”

The Silver Twin's ...Place... In New England Decorative Art - Part Four- "Invasive"

The Silver Twin's ...Place...

In New England Decorative Art

Part Four

"Invasive"

            If... I have an itch... do I scratch it?

            If... I scratch this itch... is this itch then... the same itch...

            It was?

            This ponderance became an antiquarian ponderance for I...

Decades ago...

            I think.

            Or do I ponder that too?

            I have the itch and scratch it; the antiquarian itch.

            Old attic itch.

            Old thing itch...

            Hanging there.

            “You know how people gather up Bittersweet berry vines and roll them into (decorative) wreaths?  Then, like, hang them up?  I tried that; cutting the vines out, rolling them up.  And selling them.  They sold.  But, like... the berries were never dense enough on the vines... to me (her eye).  And they (the berries) were always falling off the vines.  Like... REALLY.  So I’d get, like, one good vine wreath and the rest (of the vines) were not good.  To make wreaths out of and sell.  So like... I finally figured it out:  The bittersweet berries and their vine is best (looks the best) where it grows; is growing.  And I was just destroying its natural beauty... by trying to make some dumb-ass wreath... that all the berries fall off of.  So I don’t do that anymore.  Like:  I like it (bittersweet) better growing in a snarl along the road.  It’s invasive you know.  I just leave it alone.”

            That itch is no longer scratched, she says?

            I did not ponder much of any of this that day that I stood

            “FINALLY” inside the Silver Twin’s Place (homestead).  It had been a very long and hard to ‘get in there’?  Sort of.  The ‘place’ was ‘abandoned’.  Actually... several descendents “lived nearby”:  The homestead (“place”) was still “owned by the family” and was, by their description “CLOSED UP” (not ‘abandoned’).  No one ‘lived there’ or ...cared about that; no one living there.  We all went by the place.  It was ‘closed up’.  For as long as I could remember.

            And I can remember a long time... about these things.  It is an itch and I ponder... ‘should I scratch it?’.  And... “HOW?” to do it; scratch

            “THAT”.

            The first thing I found out about that itch was that I was not the only one who knew about the Silver Twin’s Place, its antiquarian itch and the ‘scratch it’.  Someone did that:

            This old bitch.

            She wasn’t that but she was.  Okay?  That kind of bitch.  And she was up there (inside the Silver Twins Place) before I could even know someone could do that; go in there and ...scratch that antiquarian itch.  She was in there twenty-five years before I...

            “Got in”.

            And she ‘got stuff’; real antiques from the Silver Twin’s Place.  RIGHT FROM THE SILVER TWINS themselves.  That’s right:  She ‘bought’ from the ACTUAL Twins.  They were “very old then”.  Neither ever married and both ...had “lots of cats”  “in there”.  The old bitch got in there way before twenty-five years ago.  She was “always in there” when “I was growing up” she... always told.  She only went to scratching the antiquarian itch after she, herself, GOT the antiquarian itch and... discovered she could scratch it

            In the Silver Twin’s Place.

            She did.

            She didn’t know what she was doing.  Meaning that I know what I’m doing.  She scratched the itch in there... but not like I would have.  The Twins didn’t know what they were doing either.  So... that was ‘some scratch’ in there... then.  The only thing that was good about it was that old bitch did actually (in fact) “KEEP” all of the “ANTIQUES” she “GOT OUT OF THERE”.  She did.

            I saw them.  All.  Over and over.  Eventually I owned them.  That’s another story.  Why can that be another story?  Because... those antiques were ALL antiques that were brought up hill to the Silver Twin’s Place “after” they “settled” (Part One).  SOME very few were actually “OLD” (Colonial settlement era) but... “VERY FEW”.  And ...stuff like... the old sap spiles and sap yoke... “weren’t antiques” back then.  Nope.  This first scratch of the antiquarian itch in the Silver Twins Place’s ATTIC was ‘just antiques’... so... by today’s standard of New England Decorative Art... “a lot” “was left” ...behind.

            That does not hide the first scratching.  A (six drawer) Chippendale chest (of drawers).  Two (bow back) Windsor chairs.  A “cricket” (foot stool).  Pewter (“old pewter”).  A... no... no paintings.  No early china.  No glassware.  No.  All that; the early fine antiques of colonial settlement... had to come up hill to get there (Part One).  That didn’t happen.  No one who lived in the Silver Twins Place ever had a silver spoon.  Ever.  A silver spoon had to come up hill to get there.  A silver spoon and such... never went up hill there.  The only ‘silver’ up there... ever... were the ‘spoken of’ (“it is told”) small trade broaches (Part Two)... ‘it is told’.  So... this ‘settlement’ contents, with its ‘antiques’ taken off... actually left a lot of ‘stuff’ “in there”.  Undisturbed.  Most of this was still there when I ‘got in’.

            Getting in was not like visiting your living room.  For Example:

            When I looked up and against the wall of the shed and discerned the sap yoke hanging there on the wall of the shed... in the light, I could turn and face the opposite wall with its ‘hung there’ contents too.  Many objects hanging there that day had hung there a very long time but... ‘in the light’?  Well... there was light... in this connecting shed... between the main house’s kitchen and the barn because... above where I stood the roof of this connecting shed “had collapsed”.  And “been that way for years”.

            So.... what was preserving the old sap yoke was that it had been always hung up high enough ‘under’ the roof line that... when the snow collapsed the roof... where the yoke was hung up... the roof above ‘there’ was “still there” so sheltered and protected the hung up sap yoke and... many other objects.

            Of course the collapsed roof made quite a mess on the “floor” of the shed.  That floor now TOO was collapsed after becoming ‘rotten’ of its too “been that way for years”.  So I had to step around carefully while I bought the old sap yoke and took it off it’s wall for “five bucks for that” (I paid cash right then).

            The center key words are “took it off its wall”.  I did that.  I knew I was doing it.  What was I going to do?  CALL YOU on your smart phone and ASK YOU what I should do?  Your never around when I need YOU when I’m doing this... I promise.  So now we have advantage of expectations and qualifications (Part Three but starting in Part Two) but that day I just had my antiquarian throttle wide open.  I dispensed with the wander and wonder.  I had ‘the family’ there.  They were not wandering or wondering either.  Every time I gave one of the women a five dollar... ten dollar... twenty dollar... ONE dollar... bill...:

            GET IT?

            And don’t fall through the floor either.

            The wooden sap spiles were clustered in their ‘bucket’.  I bought them.  I sold them.  I sold the bucket separately.  When the bucket with the spile cluster tried to hug me with conscious observation of its precious state of art; of it being ‘old New England design’; an old New England Decorative Art.  In place.  In... that... PLACE.  I... what?

“Are not we in a Bastard after all.” I said to you already (Part Three).  I put the sap spile cluster, separated from it’s bucket ...in my mind... back into that separated-in-my-mind bucket and, never touching the spiles and only thumb gripping the full (dry white pine so ‘light’) ...whole of this... old New England Decorative Art object... I “SAT IT” ‘up’ in the truck bed with the sap yoke there too...

That morning, as I “TOOK OFF”

“ALL THAT I COULD” from the shed

And barn

            That day.

            I did not “GET IN” “THE HOUSE” that day.  It was... and remained

            “CLOSED UP”.

 That day, my antiquarian eye was ‘smitten’ with the Silver Twins Place and its

            ...PLACE...

            In New England Decorative Art.

            There was no one around to talk to about ‘that’.  I was alone?  I was in a dream? 

            Each everything was rolling in my mind.  My truck ...full... reached the bottom of the Silver Hill Road.  I crossed the intersection and went ‘up Mill Hill’ and

            Everything in that truck

            Was hung on the wall

            Of my mind.  I just could not get away from the GALLERY SHOW

Of old New England Decorative Art

I had just ‘taken down’.

As I drove away

            The truck load was not yet a coiled up vine... with its berries falling off...

Made into a wreath

“It’s invasive you know”.

The Silver Twin's ...Place... In New England Decorative Art - Part Three - "Wander and Wonder"

The Silver Twin's ...Place...

In New England Decorative Art

Part Three

"Wander and Wonder"

            Returning... with enhanced senses of wander and wonder... and with these, too, bringing enhanced senses of... expectations and qualifications... to the Silver Twin’s Place ...homestead site... I

            Open my eyes

            And mind

            To the

            Art.

            That is there.

            The creepy apology of “I like going in old attics”... that suffices to lay down... the lay antiquarian ‘enthusiast’ (“buff”)... is not good enough

            Especially these days

            Of jaded

            Of the

            Old New England “Yeah, yeah”.

            They be.

            “They no longer see?”

            You ask if... I say.

            Yes... and of the sorts that I have already spoken; the coffee can of clothespins...

            Was the woman’s art (Part Two).

            It is art still in my eye.  (I keep my eye fresh).  (“Yes I do”).

            But the ‘they’

            Have gone away.

            I poke this.  Merely a step into the homestead’s ‘attached shed’ (running between the back or ‘kitchen’ door.... “OUT” to the barn.  Hanging there

            Without a care

            Is an old

            “Yoke”... once worn by a (young) man... for eleven generations (!).  The Jaded ‘they’ walks... right... by... that... “these days”.  “CANNOT SELL THEM” they say... in their special antiquarian way

            That typically translates ‘all that be’ of ‘homestead’ “ATTIC” into

            “Cash” (“money”) (‘coin of the realm’ value).

            I always thought you would anyway... and when ...I... look back over the forty years YOU have ‘been at this’... I do have affirmation

Of my qualifications

            Of my expectations

            FOR YOU to be exactly

            “THAT”.

            Go away.

            Go out behind the wood pile and pee.

            Then get back in your truck and

            Go away.

            I, for my part (in the shed) have already found a jewel and show now... how to see it; expectations and... qualifications.

            “Be that there handmade here (at this homestead) and hung there?  For how many generations ‘hung there’?  Yes we know that now.  One man one day two hundred years ago made that one day once one only ...with his hatchet.

            Had fun enough doing that he did... that day.  “Task” it was “They needed one”.

            For what?

            “Well woman... well water... carry that”... and it is STILL all up hill from the spring

            On the hillside of the Silver Twin’s Place.

            But they ‘could also’

            In (Maple) sap season ‘carry those’ sap ‘buckets’.  The colloquial name sticks there:  I am highlighting the Colonial New England ‘Sap Yoke’.

            But darling... that is just one short part of one short season of one short work.  Many times in the late summer or late fall... or late spring... “one of the BOYS” “came out” to the “MEN” with the yoke on and carrying their... “noon time meal”

            Have you ever had a ‘noon time meal’.

            I suppose it depends on where... and how... “you grew up”

            In New England.

            So already I’ve found three seasons and/or daily uses meaning the old yoke ‘saw service’ daily with.... “What about the WINTER?”.  No... not much there; “IT” “hung in the shed” for “that” (winter)?  Oh no... they DID, on the good days (storm free), “CUT” down below the pasture and... out came the yoke with the ‘noon time meal’.  Again.  The boy wore snowshoes.  So did the men

            Have you ever ‘cut’ (trees down with a chain saw) wearing snowshoes?  I didn’t think so.  If you do sometime happen to, you’ll have revised qualifications and expectations of your ‘noon time meal’.

            Let your hand reach out and touch the old yoke.  The man who made it... with his hatchet... has been dead for two hundred years.  This is the only yoke he ever made.  He made this one.  It ‘passed’ in the shed... of the Silver Twin’s place for eleven generations.  Now someone is going to buy it from me and ‘hang it in’ their ‘camp’?  “Not unless it’s cheap”.  They assure me.

            “Are not we in a Bastard after all”.  It is easier for one to just put this all down and “GO” to the .... and “BUY” one of those; a pair of camouflaged pattern printed camp “water buckets”

            “But where are your yokes for sale?  Sir?”

            “OH WE JUST USE THE BUCKETS AT CAMP.  WE WANT THE YOKE FOR DECORATION”.

            Well you cannot have it.

            Mary Earle Gould in her “EARLY AMERICAN WOODEN WARE” ‘touches’ “sap yokes’ very slightly in her ‘sap’ sections (pgs. 104-106, 185-187).  She has two photographic illustration of ‘sap yokes’ too.  And then she moves on.  One has to explore for more than ‘a little’ in an effort to find “treatment” (qualification, expectations and... affirmation) of “sap” yokes.  That’s okay... for I already said... “go away”.  If one does go to doing this effort one will find a time travel helps.  Back one should go to the nineteen seventies when

            Discovery was made

            By such and such luminaries as Eric Sloane; who illuminated mysteries from a homestead past... upon New England coffee tables (“I WONDER WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE BOOKS?”)

            “I KNOW HE HAD A (sap) YOKE IN IT” (his books).

            But when you get back there (1970’s) LOOK AROUND.  One funny one once upon a time...

            ...I find the curious gallery show:  “AMERICAN DESIGN IN THE RUARL NEW ENGLAND HOME”.  And in its critical write up it includes an old yoke hung as sculpture on a gallery wall: “gives a large space to a sap yoke dated 1850 which came from along the Maine New Hampshire border near Crawford Notch.  An important of seasonal and hard use, the yoke has been through a lot and we can see something of its history by looking at its layers.  It was repaired once by ‘sewing’ a split off piece along the length with leather thongs.  The repair would have been preferable to carving out a new yoke.  Later it was painted blue, a beautiful flat medium blue, leather and wood.  Later yet it sat unused, probably in a barn and was chewed a little by mice.  It is still perfectly usable although the left shoulder needs a new rope and hook.  Now it’s on the wall (hung as sculpture)”.

            Opening that essay the writer states, of the rural New England design premise, “The show is a disturbance to the plasticity and controlled desperation of daily life:  ...Where are such manifestations of unabashed originality and individuality in our own rural life?”.

            Care to go inside an old shed and find out?  After discovering the old yoke hanging on the wall for service, take it ‘down’ and look at it.  Wander and wonder it.  For yourself.  Not for dollars.  Not.  That is right:  JUST “not”.

            Why?  Because it (the old yoke) is better than you are.  It is that simple.