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