Blessings

Forces beyond my comprehention.

I have debated with myself over the years, whether to reveal to the general populace my stories of coincidence, in that the odds of them actually happening are inconceivable. In the past I have chosen only my closest friends that know me well to tell these stories to because I have felt that most people who don’t know me would think I was an alien abductee. Whether you call it coincidence, universal karma, the force, the secret, a higher power or God, the result is the same, insanely impossible things transpire. I choose to call these blessing, God acting on my desires, hopes, wishes or needs.

These blessings have happen quite frequently over the years, some large some so small as to go unnoticed if I weren’t aware of the phenomena, and I only became aware of it and how often it was occurring around the age of thirty five. I do not plan to list and recount the multitude of these blessings here but the events of the last couple of weeks has lifted this issue to the forefront. Now, I want to be clear here, I’m not talking life changing events or miracles (even though the odds would be indicative of one). I’m talking everyday wants, desires and needs. So I will relate to you the last couple of blessings that God has bestowed upon me.

As you are aware I finally consummated the deal for the rocks with Mack and as we were standing there surveying the piles, I asked Mack if he knew of a rental storage place nearby that when I got the rocks were sorted and in containers that I could store them until the show. I also asked him if he knew of anyone who would slab up the rocks for a fee or if he knew anyone who might have a diamond slab saw for sale. He indicated that he knew nothing of slab saws nor where I might find one, but there is a small storage facility right down the road here. So I hopped on Sic Fiddy and motored down to the storage facility. There was no one in the rental office and the place looked deserted however the gate was open so I decided to cruise through the facility. As I rounded the end of a row of buildings there was a couple moving items from one storage unit into a larger storage unit and there, sitting in the smaller unit was I thought was a 12 inch diamond blade, auto feed, slab saw. Now in all my life, I have never actually seen a slab saw except in pictures in lapidary catalogues and the least expensive with manual feed were priced at around $2,000.00.

I asked the guy if that was a slab saw and he said “Yep, you wanna buy it?”

I told him that I would give him $300.00, and that’s how I came in possession of my twelve inch slab saw.

Thirty minutes before I had not thought about a slab saw and now my needs were met. They were the only people in the complex. There were there only for this one day and they were traveling out of state. They had arrived at the storage complex about twenty minutes before me and were going to be there for about four hours.



Cutter and I take walks at least twice a day and we have several different routes. On one of these routs is what appears to be an abandoned ramshackle trailer on a beautiful piece of property (I think about two acres) that borders the Cullasaga River for about 200 feet. I asked Mack about it and he knows the owners but was unwilling to give out much information. I really don’t have the finances to purchase a piece of property right now, but I was thinking “some day, down the road”, I might like to retire here and that property would be perfect. So I have been dwelling on it and casually asking around as to the location of the owners but not putting a lot of effort into it.

At this point I need to give you an overview of the Old Corundum RV Park. There are two sections, one is the main park where most of the residents live (around 50 trailers) and there is the section where I am up on the hill where there are 8 trailers. Lately, I have been working on getting ready for the show and have spent very little time in the main park. If I went down there twice a day that would be allot. It was around 5pm and I had not been down in the main park all day. I had just completed wire wrapping a stone for a friend of mine and was taking it down to him. On the way down I saw a Blondie talking another woman. Blondie had expressed an interest my wire wrapping so I stopped to show her the stone that I had done for John. She commented on how pretty it was and out of the blue asks if I wanted to buy a trailer. Apparently the lady with whom she was speaking was moving to Colorado and wanted to sell her trailer.

I told her that a guy up on the hill had offered to sell me his for $11,000.00 and she said “I’ll sell you mine for 3,500 dollars”.

I am the proud owner of a 2003 Forest River Sierra model 32’ with two power slide outs and all the amenities. I looked this trailer up on NADA and the used price ranged from $12,000 for low retail and $17,000 high retail. This trailer was sold new, pulled from the sales lot nearby, parked in the campground, where they built a big aluminum canopy over it to protect it from the sun and weather. It was as if God said, that trailer down the road is currently not available how about this one.

Of all the people in the camp ground, the unknown stranger with the three legged dog up on the hill who never comes down to the main park is offered this phenomenal bargain. Mack, the park owner, who usually gets these deals, passed by the two ladies twice while they were talking and never said a word to either one.

Blondie’s husband told me later, “If my wife had told me about it I would have bought the trailer”.

Marie, the lady who sold me the trailer, had only minutes before, arrived from Pennsylvania and had wandered into the campground to stretch her legs when she ran into Blondie.

So, to my son and daughter, friends and relatives if you can arrange a small vacation and you want to stay rent free at my summer home, (I won’t be in it) it will be available from around August 15th through October 31st, call me to confirm. Sleeps six, Queen Master bed.







love ya Dad, Ken, Bro, gOOch.

Approaching three months

I know it is a cliché but, it seems like forever since I left my home in Lake Worth and began this adventure. There is a lot to be said for living with no agenda, no definite place I have to be and no specific time to be there. Not long term anyway. I still have to wash my clothes, cook my meals and get up every morning to a happy dog that wags his tail so hard it sounds like a demolition crew racing through the trailer. He keeps me moving, we walk a mile or two every morning and evening. I am half ashamed to tell you, I was really unsure whether I wanted to bring Cutter along on this adventure. Initially I had planned to go it alone but I could find no graceful way of dumping my friend and disappearing in to the sunset. Thank God for that. He has been my rock, my island of daily reality. Most people remember my name, but when someone is refreshing a friend’s memory they refer to me as “The guy with the three legged dog.” Additionally Cutter has become one of Franklin’s business leaders; here he is in front of his latest entrepreneurial endeavor.



North Georgia and Western North Carolina are beautiful this time of year. My friend Clyde call’s it God’s country. I am inclined to agree. Right now the temperatures are perfect. Low to mid sixty’s at night and mid to high seventies during most of the day, (when it is over 80, I nap). Things are very green. The kudzu has begun its futile campaign to cover the world, only to be eventually defeated by winters freeze.





Blackberries are starting to appear as bunches of little red nubs on the ends of the bush branches. Another month and they will be ripe and ready for the fool hardy picker who would challenge their thorns.

Almost everyone has their vegetable garden whether it is a small patch in the side yard or a acre out back of the barn.



Three months on the road and the lion’s share has been in the N. GA and W. NC area. Hence, through my astute powers of observation, I believe that I have become somewhat of an expert on the psyche of the rural mountain dweller. First and foremost they seem very friendly; they wave at you even if they have no earthly idea who you are. You could be Charles Manson and they would be waving and smiling as if you were their cousin that had been over for dinner the previously evening. On the road is where I notice the most difference between ruralites and city dwellers. One major difference is that they don’t seem to have any particular place to go and they have no particular time to be there. When following one who is planning to make a right turn, their turn signal goes on three miles before the planned turn and a gradual deceleration begins until they reach their turning point where they almost come to a stop as the make their turn. Another asphalt related occurrence is that even if they have the right of way and you are waiting for them to pass you from the opposite direction so that you can make your left hand turn, they stop and wave you in front of them. This habit is very disconcerting, in that, not everyone out here adheres to this policy, thus contributing to a substantial amount of indecision, which by the way, is another apparent rural trait. Even though they seem friendly enough I have noticed that they appear have a secret plot to take over the world. You see, they are multiplying. In the local Wal-Mart it is rare that you don’t see a female of breeding age that is not pulling one, pushing one and cooking one. Hell I hope they succeed, they can’t do worse and a little friendly wave now and then couldn’t hurt. However a lot of them do have guns.

AV

Treasure!!! Treasure... Treasure???

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Leaving Sundowner RV Village and arrived back at Old Corundum Campground to try to make a deal with Mack (the campground owner) for his rocks. I had called him in advance to let him know so he could be prepared. As you may know I tried to cut a deal with him before I left for school but he would not commit. I had decided that I would give him 5 days to make a decision. If we could not make an agreement before Wednesday then I would head to Columbus, OH where my friends Clyde and Claudia live and I thought I would hang with them for awhile. So I arrive Saturday Morning, Mack is out of town and won’t be back until that evening. I set up Cazee and prepare to stay for a couple of days.


Monday, June 9, 2008

Monday noon and still no sign of Mack. I heard he was back but I haven’t seen him but he knows I’m here and where I am, so I go looking for him. I finally found him jawing with another camper that was getting his air conditioner fixed. I semi-confronted him and told him that to show me where the rocks were and I would pull them out myself, that he would not have to do a thing. He tried to put me off till the morning when it was cooler but I insisted that it was now or never and he relented. I spent the next five hours clearing out his shed and dragging boxes and bins of rocks along with cabinets golf clubs fishing poles and God knows what else out of his shed. The cool thing was, I had fun doing it, plus it was great exercise. As I was finishing up Mack wandered by and I asked him how much he wanted for the whole lot of rocks. He refused to give me a figure so finally I made him an offer, and he said “I’ll think about it”, and walks away.

Let me take a minute here to let you know that Mack is a friendly, kind, caring and fairly generous Christian man. I like Mack a lot, as do most people who meet him. There is however, this side of him, the indecisive, inconsiderate side, which makes dealing with him on matters of personal and fairly unique decisions, very frustrating and personally offensive.

So here I am, Tuesday, all day no sign of Mack, Wednesday noon, my deadline day, no Mack. By this time I am so disgusted that I am thinking that I don’t even want the rocks anymore. Maybe I will just buy a few from him and he can do whatever he wants with the rest. So I went to his house and when he comes out he claims he has been looking for me since yesterday. Now I don’t wander too far from my camper and if he was looking for me he was looking at someone else’s camp spot. He agreed to my offer and I accepted. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

Now since the decision has been made Mack is as helpful and generous as can be. He told me to load the front end of the tractor up with the boxes and bins of rocks and he would bring them down to my camp spot so that I could identify and sort them.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

One week, one day and six tractor buckets later I am busting my butt sorting cutting and identifying (as best I can) approximately 4000 pounds of rock. Now I hear you. What in the hell does he need with 4000 pounds of rock, and how will he haul that around with him throughout the USA?

Well here’s my plan. On July 23 there is another (bigger) gem, rock & mineral show here in Franklin. I have purchased a spot to sell my stuff at one of the venues. In addition I will have Jo send me her jewelry, plus I will make as much wire jewelry as I can and cut up some of the rock into slabs. (They are easier to sell that way.) Whatever rocks I don’t sell, I will try to make a deal with a wholesaler for the remaining lot minus some premium stuff for me. Things rarely go as planned, but hey, this is an adventure right?

Here is my treasure.



On the left is a bucket of slabs that I have already cut up.



This stuff is sorted



This is stuff left to be cut and sorted



The red bin on the right is 60 pounds of Rose Quartz



These are several sorted boxes of nice rock



This is what a rock looks like before I slab it. This is a 8 pound piece of picture Jasper. it is about 6 inches in diameter



This is the 12 inch self feed diamond saw that I cut it up in.



This is what it looks like aftre I slab it. These are 1/4 inch thick slabs sliced iff of the rock.



And the adventure continues.

AV

Last week at WHS

Last week of school. The blooms have all fallen off of the blackberry bushed and the honeysuckle is so pungent that you would think you were in a perfume factory. The temprature is on the low side of 90 degrees. Hot, hot, hot. It sure has been great taking classes at William Holland School for the Lapidary arts. This week, as in other weeks, there have been some fun people here at the school. Two guys from Kentucky kept the fused glass class howling. One morning they came down to the cafeteria and placed their right forefinger and thumb on their forehead depicting the classic “looser” symbol and cheerily greeted everyone with “Greetings fellow Lapidarians” I highly recommend this school for your next vacation. Where could you possibly go and for around $500.00, learn a craft, get fed three country meals a day, 6 nights lodging, develop a truck load of new friends and have a ball doing it? Can’t be done.

I had Silver 1 class this week and it seemed like it might be a little slow going, but in no time I convinced the teacher that I had abilities far superior to the average beginner that she pretty much cut me loose and let me do side projects as long as I did the class projects and kept up. One of the things that I wanted to do was to make a pendant that had the initials of the school "William Holland School" (WHS) out if silver and donate it to the school for their Tuesday night auction. It was a challenging project in that each stroke of the letters were individual pieces that had to be soldered together then mounted into the pendant oval. I ended up making two of them one slightly larger than the other just in time for the auction.



The larger one sold for $35.00 and the smaller sold for $45.00. Needless to say I was quite surprised that they sold at such a high price and the same person ended buying both of them. The man who bought them was a teacher at the school and I wondered why he was so anxious to get the pendants. I thought it was because he wanted to support the school and have an item with the school’s initials. Later I found out the real reason. This gentleman grew up during the WWII, all kinds of things were rationed and in short supply. Metal of all types were hard to get and his high school class did not have an opportunity to get class rings or for that matter any school memento other than his certificate of graduation. The name of his school was “Woodstock High School” (WHS).

Earlier I mentioned the Fused Glass class. They produced an obscene quanity of beautiful projects. here are four of the seven student's work.









Wire 1 did a good job too.


Wire 2 class seemed to lack focus, but the work was first class






Cabochons was well represented






Chain class had some very unique projects




Glass beads had a very interesting project in addition to making their normal amount of fantastic beads. Each student was to find a photograph and make a bead that blended or represented that photo. I was impressed with their results.
I'm noy sure if you can see it but sitting in the middle of the photo is a bead that almost blends with the picture.




There were two new classes that have not been represented on my blog they are “Polymer Clay” and “Intarsia” Polymer clay is a plastic clay that is worked much like clay or play dough then baked at low temperatures. I realy had little knowledge of this craft but I was impressed with their projects.






Intarsia is a class that I want to take some day. It is the precision assembling of small pieces of stone, wood, metal and almost any other durable product into a small display, ie. pendant, pin, ring, plak or almost any thing you can come up with. It is like a mini puzzle. Some are way cool.


These pieces are assembled but not cut and polished


Then there is our Silver 1 class


These are my projects close up.








And this was my favorite. It was more difficult to make than it should have been because I did not have any flat silver that was wide enough so I had to solder two pieces together and at the same time incorporate the round 10 gauge wire down the middle. The decorative wrapping is 14 gauge sterling wire. I am pleased with the result.






This morning I sat down and played with some 21 gauge, square, half hard, copper wire and knocked out these


I left Sundowner RV Park Saturday Morning and went back to Franklin NC to see if I could make a deal with the Old Corundum campground owner for some rocks that he said he wanted to sell. I will get with him Monday and see what I can do.

Till then. Wear fins

AV