Our week started with a trip to Towanda and I took road pictures for you.
Coming down into Wysox there're cliffs where they cut the rock to make the road.
I took a picture of the Susquehanna from there and when I looked at it on my 'puter I realized I could see the Mansion.
It seems to me I've heard this section of road called something before but I couldn't remember what. I had to call my Miss Rosie. "Is there a name for that section of road?"
"Let me see... I know the part of the road there by the Marie Antoinette Overlook is called the Twin Cuts. And I believe the section you're talking about is called the Wysox Narrows. My father was hanging over the side of the cliff to put in the guide rails there on that section of road"
"I didn't realize you could see the big mansion from there. The one at the edge of Wysox that's the Dandy Mini Mart now. Do you know what the name of that is?"
"It's the Piollet Mansion. He was an early Wysox settler and I believe he was French."
I Googled both these things and Miss Rosie's right. That section of road is called the Wysox Narrows and it is the Piollet Mansion you see in the background. And I found out a couple of things I didn't know.
For one, the Piollet's originally owned the big white house across the road from the Mansion. I showed you a picture of that house back in January. I didn't know the Piollet's owned it before it was turned into a motel. At the time, when I showed it to you, I was showing you a house where they'd torn off the big beautiful porch.
The Mansion was built in 1857 and was called Bonneville Manor.
I took a picture of it not too long ago, I thought and went looking for it. Honestly, it would have been a lot easier, and less time-consuming, to swipe one from the internet. I had to peek in some 96 folders before I found a picture I took on November 7, 2018. And the only reason I took it was because Dandy is doing an addition and making a whole new store.
Once I spent the time counting the folders I wondered if I'd taken pictures every day. I Google how many days there were between November 7 and February 20, the dates I searched through to find this picture. There are 105 days.
Anyway. I got sidetracked there.
The Piollet's lived in the house until 1928. It sat empty for a long time and was severely vandalized until it was bought and restored by Fulmer's Shopping Center.
The original cupola was removed in the 1970s with plans to preserve it when it slipped from its hoist and fell 15 feet to its death.
On the webpage I was reading there was an excerpt. It was interesting and I want to share it with you.
"Then down stream again, across the bridge from Towanda to the east bank, and three miles to Wysox where lonely and bold on the view stands the cupola'd mansion of Colonel Victor Emile Piollet, volcanically French, rigidly Puritan and Presbyterian, wealthiest farmer and squire of the township, son of a father who drew honorable wounds on himself fighting with Napoleon at Austerlitz, politician, canal superintendent, employer and friend once of David Wilmot, later unrelenting foe of that statesman, his empty house now more useful for storage than residence, and its affluent builder's memory dying."
That's from Song of a River written by Hubertis M. Cummings in 1952 and that made me curious as well as slightly embarrassed. Curious as to what else it might say and embarrassed because it's not a song. It's a small book, less than 30 pages, about the Susquehanna River.
I skimmed the book and my eyes landed on names from my childhood. Namely the Columbia Wrightsville Bridge. I went on past and recognized other names as he made his way to the area I now live in. I found the section referenced in the article and after leaving Wysox, Hubertis talks about other landmarks as he heads toward our little town of Wyalusing.
"Past Wyalusing Rocks, down from one's view of Paradise into Wyalusing Village, where a queen who never was there is remembered, and where an Indian town which was there — in 1763 quite to the wrath of the Reverend Mr. John Elder of Paxton — now is forgotten."
The queen he's talking about is Marie Antoinette and it's not called Wyalusing Village anymore. It's a landmark called French Azilum. The Queen and her two surviving children were to settle there. You can Google it if you'd like to know more.
In Towanda, and our reason for this trip, Mike had blood drawn for a diabetes test.
"Mind if I take a picture?" I asked Cindy.
"Not at all," she agreed. She never asked me why so I didn't tell her.
"You're not going to pass out like you did last time?" I teased Mike.
Cindy was immediately on alert. "You passed out last time?"
Mike snorted. "NO!" and he scowled at me.
I laughed.
Later that afternoon my phone rings and it's Miss Rosie.
"You want a picture of a truck stuck on the bridge?" she asked.
"Well yeah!"
"Lamar went out and tried to help but he kept sliding sideways. They decided it would be better to get a tow truck before he ends up in the creek."
Mike and I got in the Jeep and went to take a look-see. "This won't happen anymore after they put the new bridge in," Mike reminded me. We didn't stay but long enough to get a couple of shots. The news was getting ready to come on and Mike wanted to see it. Instead of turning around, Mike backs the whole way up to and in our garage.
"Show off!" I told him. I'm not a good backer-upper.
This happened on Monday afternoon and Rosie and I had exercise class that evening. When it came time for me to leave I asked Mike to take me to get Miss Rosie.
"I hate backing up," I begged.
"Oh, you'll be fine."
"I know! And I can do a three-point turn in the road too but if you take me then you can see the wrecker and I have to come right back past the house anyway so I can drop you off."
Mike relented and took me. The wrecker wasn't there yet despite hours having passed.
Lamar brought Rosie to the Jeep because it was still a bit slick outside.
"You can turn around in our yard," Rosie told Mike after she was belted in. "They've been turning around in our yard all day long."
"That's all right," Mike said, put the Jeep in reverse, and started backing up. We hadn't gone too far when Mike pulled to the side and let a wrecker get past. "That's not the big one," he said. "I doubt it's big enough to do the job."
"And he's going to have to turn around someplace," Rosie said.
He was driving in and all of his winching gear's on the back.
"As many times as they've been here, you'd think they'd know that by now," Mike said.
Once the truck passed, Mike backed the rest of the way to our house.
"He's such a show-off!" I told Miss Rosie.
"Especially to those of us who can't back up very well."
Once Mike was out I got in the driver's seat and Rosie and I headed the long way around to go to class. Just past the Robinson's house, we passed the big wrecker as he backed up the half-mile or so to the bridge.
"Did he back the whole way in?" Rosie wondered.
"If it's the same guy as before he turned around there at the top of the hill. And he told me he could back up as easy as he drives forward. I'll miss the excitement of trucks stuck on the bridge when they put the new one in."
Rosie laughed. "I won't miss them taking out our mailboxes!"
I went out to burn our burnables and took a picture of the sky and trees reflected in a quiet puddle.
You could almost step through into another world, I thought. Is that how he came up with the idea for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?
A couple of times this week I took Ginger out with me when I checked the mail. We even walked a little way down the road. She really seemed to enjoy it.
We had another super moon this past week. I didn't take pictures the first night because, in general, I'm disappointed with the results. My equipment just isn't powerful enough to get a good picture of the moon. Besides, to really appreciate a super moon you need to have other elements in the picture to compare it to.
Coming home from exercise class on Tuesday night the moon wasn't quite as big as the night before but I thought to take a few shots through the branches of a tree. These pictures don't look anything like what I saw through the viewfinder but this is what I got.
Then we got more snow. Just a couple of inches, no big deal. I took Ginger to the mailbox with me again and wondered if she'd mind the snow. She didn't seem to and trotted happily at the end of her leash. I took a few snow pictures for you.
We made a trip to Dickson City to do some shopping. Road pictures anyone?
We passed this accident scene then heard about it on the news that night. A semi lost control and destroyed eight cars at this dealership before coming back on the road and crashing into the embankment on the other side. No one was seriously hurt and they don't know why he lost control.
Our local Penny Saver ran an ad for Trovato's Meat Market. They were having a three-day meat sale. It was on our way so we thought we'd stop and look.
"They have ground chuck at $2.59 if you buy ten pounds," Mike told me.
When my kids were little I'd often buy meat on sale and in bulk. Once you get it home you have to divvy it up into smaller portions before you freeze it. Not my favorite part. "I wonder if they'll pack it in smaller bags for me?"
"I bet they won't," Mike said.
"Why not? I've been to places before that would do that for me."
We were greeted when we walked in. It's always nice when a merchant acknowledges you.
"We're here because we saw your ad in the Penny Saver," I told her. Advertisers always like to know their advertising dollars are well spent. We walked around a little before deciding to buy ten pounds of ground chuck.
"Can you pack that in smaller packages for me?" I asked the gal behind the meat counter.
"Sure. How do you want them?"
"Two pounds each?" I asked.
"Yeah. I can do that for you."
While she did that we picked up another pack of meat then went back to wait for the hamburger. Conversationally, I told the gal, "My husband didn't think you'd do that for me."
"As long as we're not too busy I don't mind." She paused then went on, "It never hurts to ask."
"That's right," I agreed. "It never hurts to ask."
"Besides, what's the worse that would 'a happened?"
"You've have told me no," I replied.
The town of Clarks Summit just had their winter festival called Festival of Ice. This year's theme was Star Wars but all kinds of ice sculptures were created. I snapped pictures as fast as I could as Mike drove through town at a hundred miles an hour.
In all fairness though, he did offer to stop. I declined.
Mist rising from beyond the tall bridge.
Camping World always puts out the biggest flags!
In Dickson City, we shopped at Lowe's, Sam's Club, and Aldi's. We had lunch at Sam's Club. They have the best hot dogs! I believe they're Nathan's. We can get two hot dogs and a slice of pizza for under five dollars.
"What about a drink?" you ask.
We just drink water and most places don't charge for that. Although once I did catch the gal charging me for a drink.
"I thought water was free?" I challenged.
"It's just fifteen cents," she said like I should stop acting like a baby.
And she's right. The difference in price between a hot dog and a hot dog with a drink is only fifteen cents but the price was never the issue. If I wanted a drink, I could and would pay for a drink. But we only drink water when we're out. It's been years since either one of us has had a sugary beverage. I dropped it and let her keep the fifteen cents.
We made a couple of stops on the way home. One was at Carpet 4 Less. We bought a remnant for the half bath. And we finished up our shopping at Wal Mart in Tunkhannock. Then home to unload our booty.
Mike stood the carpet remnant up in the V created between a chair and the table. It wasn't long until Smudge climbed it. I took his picture and he jumped down ahead of me telling him to get down. And when he did he knocked the carpet down. Luckily, it wasn't tall enough to smash into a shelf or room divider so no harm was done and I left it down, just moving it out of the middle of the floor.
Mike knows Smudge climbs. Mike knows he can't leave a ladder set up anywhere he doesn't want Smudge to go so how Mike thought standing that piece of carpet up was a good idea, I'll never know.
Cat's climb. I was at the kitchen sink and saw Spitfire climbing our partially finished awning. Smudge at the top, encouraging.
Then they headed for the playground aka roof and chased each other around up there for a while.
I could hear them.
"Peg, it seems to me that you're always at the kitchen sink," you say.
I know, right! I have a cup of coffee in front of me all day long! Since I drink instant coffee I'm always getting water to refill my coffee cup.
Putting groceries away, I took my just-bought bag of flour into the pantry and opened the tub I keep my spare flour in. Inside was a spare bag of flour and my spare bag of sugar. I was puzzled. My system is to always have an extra of my baking and cooking needs on hand. When my flour tub's empty and I open my spare bag of flour, I put it on the grocery list — even though it might be weeks until I actually run out of flour. If my system works the way it's supposed to there shouldn't've been a bag of flour in the tub.
I shrugged. I goofed. I didn't dwell. There was room in the tub for two extra bags of flour so I slid it in, closed the lid, and pushed the tub back under the shelf with my foot, then went on with life.
Putting extra butter into the freezer is when it hit me. I had two full jars of grease and had to start a third. It was time to make bird suet. Flour was on the list because I wanted to look for cornmeal or wheat flour or something more nutritious for the birds than my white flour. And I, mistakenly so it seems, thought just flour on the list would be enough to jog my memory to look for bird flour.
It wasn't.
We were home and there wasn't anything I could do about it now.
I didn't dwell.
Coming back from filling the bird feeder an image comes unbidden into my mind. I saw an infomercial where a guy made a blender so powerful he could grind up a cell phone. He ground up a bunch of other things too but I wondered. Could my blender grind up Mike's deer corn?
I Googled it and sure enough, there was a guy grinding shell corn in a blender. He didn't even put the lid on the blender while grinding.
So I tried it. It works fabulous and you don't need the lid. It never comes out the top. I did have to sort the corn though because there were rocks in it. And I know why it's called deer corn or shell corn. It's not people grade. There were lots of ucky kernels in there.
I got a new batch of suet made for the birds with peanut butter, crushed graham crackers, raisins, chopped nuts, oatmeal, bird seed, and my freshly ground cornmeal. I never thought about adding an apple until right this moment and it's too late now.
But I don't dwell.
This guy has been coming in once or twice a week. He doesn't come every night. He cleans up the leftover cat food and he does a good job of it too.
"Peg, why not give the cats less food?" you ask.
I know, right! I tried that. Then if he comes and there's nothing for him to eat I feel sorry for him and give him a little cat food.
"Ewww, possums are nasty!"
No, they're not! Possums are mostly immune to rabies. Besides fruits and grains, they eat mice, insects, snails, slugs, frogs, and tons of ticks! Plus they clean up the leftover cat food. Who needs old nasty cat food hanging around anyway!
Possums have superpowers against snakes. They have partial or total immunity to snake venom and eat snakes. Lastly, possums have an unusually high need for calcium so they eat the skeletons of rodents and the road kill they consume. They're the sanitation workers of the wild.
I got the best surprise this week!
A delivery truck pulled into the driveway. "What did you order now?" I asked Mike.
"Nothing."
But I didn't believe him.
When he opened the box, there was this gift inside.
"What is it?" you ask.
It's a rare mother wrench feeding her young. LOL! I can't tell you how much this tickles my funny bone! Every single time I look at it I smile if not laugh right out loud!
The only other thing in the box was a slip of paper. Because I love you! was written on it along with a heart. No signature. But I knew where it came from. This had tickled me so much when I saw it on the internet that I shared it with my mother, my sister Patti, and my brother Richard. Patti made it for me! It's so well done that it could easily be mistaken for professional.
Even though Patti may deny it, she's an artist in her own right. She's created many beautiful things. And I feel so honored and blessed that she made this piece especially for me! I could just cry!
Isn't it just fabulous!
Let's call this one done!
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