At Home at the Swans

December 13, 2010

Dear Friends,

Two months since our last update – you must think we’re dead, or, as we like to think, having too much fun, no time to write. The latter is more true than not. I hesitate to bore you with my perceptions when we aren’t traveling – they tend to involve my clever and doting husband, brilliant sons, perfect daughters-in-law and one-of-a-kind grandchildren. Add in my personal aches and pains and it’s the How-We-Be from hell!

We spent a week in St. Petersburg, Florida in early November. We were busy for five days with the Company Meeting (and a good one it was this year!) We enjoyed the lazy trip down and back. Everything was still green and warm most of November. The winter uglies hit us about ten days ago and it is now brown and scraggly and freezing every night. Jason put in a power box with 50 amps for the bus so we’re toasty but Dave is still talking about researching the Florida Keys.

Who knew oranges fresh from the tree are dirty brown and green, and are “gassed” to turn them “orange?” What a comment on our society that we have to have a product cosmetically attractive before we’ll buy it.

We just finished a job 15 miles down the road by the ocean that has given us a chance to explore the Crystal Coast of North Carolina. Little towns like Swansboro, Cedar Point and Bogue  are full of small frame houses showing the crippling angles of age. Fishing is a livelihood as well as a major sport. Huge RV parks are full of park models, which people buy or rent for a portion of the year, or permanently. A park model is approximately the same size as a single-wide trailer except it has a peak roof, lot of windows and usually a cute little porch. The aren’t meant to be moved once in place.

We have enjoyed trips to Fort Macon, built around 1826 to guard Beaufort Harbor. Confederate troops seized the Fort at the outbreak of the Civil War. Higgins Island, out of Swansboro, is the site of the only unspoiled Confederate earthen fortification on the NC Coast. Our Civil War study is alive and well here.

We are scheduled to work a park in the Northwest part of the state, in the Blue Ridge Mts. in June. I’m especially looking forward to the folk art in that area.

Wishing you all the best in the New Year, and a Very Merry Christmas to start if off! We, as usual as of late, be enjoying our time with the family here.

Sam