Brettuns Village Trunks & Leather

Old Trunks, New Leather.  All from Maine.

September 7, 2008

Holy cow, would you look
at the calendar?  September.  There goes the

summer – it blew away, probably
caused by one of these hurricanes that

are lining up like soldiers. 
Since I know many of you have expressed

grave concerns about the
impact of the hurricanes on our part of Maine

I figured I’d file this
report to help you cope with the concern.

While it’s true that none
of you have actually phoned or e-mailed to

express your worry about
us, I can sense that there’s a big Cloud of

Concern out there somewhere. 
So, the following report is offered to

help you relax:

First, and this comes under
the heading of ‘Interesting

Weather-Related Science’
there are so many hurricanes this year, or

tropical bru-ha-has or neo-latitudinal
depressions or whatever it is

that one guy on the Weather
Channel calls them, that I think a lot of

us are starting to get the
names mixed up.  A is for Apple, sure, but

I think we’re up to L or
M or something in that range of the alphabet.

 I don’t really remember
what happened to Bruce, Chuck, Dave, or

Elaine, but then just a
couple of weeks ago it was Fernando, I think,

just going from memory,
and last weekend our side of the Atlantic

dealt with Gigi or Gus or
Gary Busse or whatever it was, then came

Helen or maybe it was Hank
or Hoo-Hah or Horace Toothaker.  Next was

Ike and that one I’m pretty
sure about because his original intention

was to pound the islands
like the real Ike pounded his wife (Tina) but

in the end he (the human
one)(or inhumane one I guess) just ended up

pounding daisies up which
served him right though a couple of decades

late, and now on the TV
I see a few more storms heading in such as

Jake, Kip, Larry, Moe, etc.

I don’t recall the roof flying
off the barn during the early part of

hurricane season, nor, for
that matter, do I recall seeing any of it

fly away at any time. 
I’ve checked outside recently, but have yet to

find any pelicans blown
off course, no
Haitians floating on a raft

over in the river, no coconuts
plugging up the chimney, no missing

shingles or windows, no
goats driven sideways through the air so that

their horns got stuck in
the big oak tree, no net loss/gain of mobile

homes – if we lost any then
some new ones dropped in their place I

guess – no upside down cars,
no witty signs spray painted on plywood

announcing ‘Fixer Upper
For Sale’ in front of a demolished home, no

piles of new flashlight
batteries in the kitchen – in short, or maybe

too late for that, it just
flat doesn’t look like we’ve had even one

hurricane here this year. 
So that brings me to this point – if I find

out that you folks in other
parts of the country have been hogging up

these storms and keeping
all the fun to yourselves, well, I just

better not find out. 
Let’s leave it at that.  Bottom line – it’s been

pretty quiet hereabouts.

Tourists mostly left last
week, but in another few weeks we’ll get the

Leaf Gawkers.  They’re
good for our state, so we’re glad to have them.

 Some of them stop
by the shop to kick the trunks or the leather

around, figuratively speaking,
and I suppose we’ll see some of them

here pretty soon with twigs
and leaves in their hair – these would be

the folks who hogged up
the hurricanes.  I’ll just act natural.

So, now that some of you
are living in government-supplied housing,

eating who-knows-what although
I suspect it’s mostly those 5-pound

blocks of government cheese,
can’t you see the need for a refinished

trunk in that box you’re
living in?  Sure, they dropped your new home

from a helicopter and it’s
smaller than the crate your last lawn

tractor arrived in, but
a trunk always seems to pull the decor

together.  We’ve got
a mess of them for sale right now, and although

the website has suffered
some heavy wind jostling recently, the last

time I saw the Trunks For
Sale page it was right about here:

http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BrettunsVillage/d027778c89/9818a2f7ed/ef80120e5f

 

For you leather crafters,
particularly those of you who lost your

leather, tools, etc to the
storm(s),  we’ve added a new page to the

site to show (and sell)
some very nice leather items made by one of

our original (and most loyal)
customers:  Fred Schoolik, better known

as The Mountain Man in Pennsylvania. 
Fred makes nice arrow quivers,

does incredible hand tooling,
and invests a lot of hours in every item

he makes.  On the site
right now we have a couple of his quivers (more

to come) and a limited edition
knife series, just in time for hunting

season (here in Maine our
Expanded Archery season opened on Saturday,

but at 80 degrees with a
lot of mosquitoes buzzing around it didn’t

feel much like hunting season). 
Check out Fred’s stuff here:

(old link removed)

 

Some new leathers show on
the site, particularly on the

Lightweight/Thin Leathers
page, and a whole mess of new additions to

both the Clearance page
and the Metal Spots and Decorations page.

After all, we haven’t had
to board up windows, nor fill the bath tub

with drinking water, nor
lash down the chickens, boat, camper, pole

barn, hay loft, spare pickup
truck, neighbor’s kids, or even That Dog.

 It’s been quiet. 
Storm hogs. Knock it off.

I hope to gosh you folks
know when I’m kidding.

Thanks-

Churchill

BrettunsVillage.com

Old Trunks, New Leather,
All From Maine