Beavers at Coffee House

Aways down the street from my house, a long way, almost to the Connecticut border, is an area of the State Forest called Coffee House Crossing. At the intersection of South-West Main and High Street was where this road originated. The old road, which is now a State Forest trail, began at the Ninth Massachusetts Turnpike (now Southwest Main), and thence crosses a brook and and the old New Haven Railroad bed (Now called the Southern New England Trunkline Trail). I know this because I have followed it many times by bike, and Lucius Marsh writes of it in his book. Marsh writes, "It has long since been abandoned. The New Haven Railroad where trains once ran, crosses the Coffee House Road Parallel with the Turnpike or Southwest Main Street." The road bears its name from an actual coffee house which stood on this road. Marsh also writes:

The first owner mentioned was Abijah Estes, who sold it to others in 1778. A John Tilley was one of the later owners and a nearby wood-lot bears his name. The Coffee House was not used after 1823. The old horse-sheds stood until about 1848. The Slaters owned is as a wood-land later and others have owned it since. Legend has it that a man was murdered in the cellar of the Coffee House once. Whe it was running as a place to get refreshments , stage-coaches from Providence to Southbridge went by here. The Coffee House section has been the scene of many destructive forest fires. One in 1907 burned for a week.

Well, it is clear that no one has lived here for sometime, and no one will so long as it remains State Forest land. But, I have come to notice it does have one established family, the beavers. I noticed a large amount of flooding on the railroad bed over the last few years in this area, and the other day I went out to investigate. It was then I discovered well-established beaver dams. Upon my return last night to the area I revisited the dam and saw the beaver. It's nearly the size of my Labrador! I failed to get a picture, but I got some pictures of his work.

Lucius Marsh

One of the books I reference frequently in my cemetery hunts and other historical endeavors is a book written by the late Lucius Marsh. He actually wrote three books on the subject; a short history in 1939, one in the early 50's and another updated in the late 60's. The first was just a short history of the town, the second two are quite a bit more detailed. In each, he follows each street in the town of Douglas, and writes about each house on the street. One by one, he follows all the homes, businesses, and other places of interest and describes the history of each one. He pays special attention to any events resulting in a death that happened on these locations. Specifically mentioning a person who may have died in a fire, and two people who died by falling on a railroad track.
His second history was never bound, published or copyrighted. Rather, this old typed document is kept in a binder in the Douglas library. My family and one other have complete photocopies of this document. The second was bound and published and also sits on the shelves in the Douglas Public Library.
Marsh focused on local history because he lived a very local life in Douglas. According to the "About the Author" section of his second book, Marsh graduated from Douglas High School in 1906, held a job in Worcester and served in the army, and then returned to Douglas to serve as the Town Clerk and retired to become the town assessor. He had even worked as an assessor in the 1930's, a job which he found interesting. You could name anyone in the town of Douglas and Marsh would be able to tell you where that person lived.

Douglas Campground

When I was a little girl my family and I often went for long walks, which of course got me into hiking and cemetery exploring later in life. One place we frequently walked to was the Douglas Camp, an old campground less than a quarter mile down the street from my house. In fact, some of the land now part of the campground was given by my grandmother Grace Dudley. Less than a week after my return from Dordt I went for a walk there once again.
When I returned, I found it much in the same slightly run down shape as it had been during my childhood. But there were differences... there was fresh paint, and the bulletin board which once displayed an old map of the camp now displayed a task list with things such as "paint secretary's office, clean roofs, clear brush, hang curtains..." and so on. And I ran into an old couple named Phil and Debby. This couple lived on the top of the hill in the campground and was working to fix it up a bit for this years camp meeting. I introduced myself and asked how I could help. Thus I got involved in volunteering time there, improving the place I enjoyed for much during my childhood.
Here is a bit of a background of the Douglas Camp meeting. According to Lucius Marsh in his untitled history of the town of Douglas. He states, "the Douglas Camp Meeting Association for the purpose of spreading evangelization, was founded by the late George Morse, a Putnam, Ct., manufacturer, in 1874". And later, "The meetings used to be widely attended, but changing population has cut down the number who come".
It is true, to this day the camp meeting, a revival in fact, is held once a year for ten days during the summer. Not many people come, very few as compared to those who came by the train car load in the late 1800's. But, with some work, I think there is hope for great things to happen at the camp once again. Above all, I pray that some will come to accept Christ through the mission that the Douglas Camp Meeting provides.

Porter Cable tractor

One of my favorite tools on Dudley Acres is this early 60's vintage Porter-Cable garden tractor. This spring when we tried to start her up she wouldn't start. We adjusted the carburetor to be sure fuel was getting into the intake, and sniffed the exhaust to be sure fuel was going through the cylinder. It became clear the the cylinder was not firing. So, we unscrewed the spark plug and placed it on the engine surface (so that the outer edge would go to ground) to see if it would spark, indeed, there was no spark. After changing the spark plug, there was still no spark. Next we removed the engine cover and flywheel and a cover plate to reveal the point. In old engines, the point is like a switch that contacts at exactly the right time in the engine cycle to transfer electricity from a power source to the spark plug. We cleaned the point contacts in the gap and found the point in good working order. Next we turned to the power source. In pull cord engines with no battery, this power comes from something called a coil. The coil is just a coil of copper wire, protected from the elements by a sealed container. The coil sits in a metal armature which not only holds the coil, but transfers electricity into the coil. The armature gets its charge from the rotation of the fly wheel, which contains two magnets. When you pull the cord on the pull start engine, the two magnets in the fly wheel run past the metal armature, and allow it to build a charge from the electric field which it stores in the coil. At just the right time in the engines rotation, the points contact and transfer that built up charge to the spark plug, which fires the engine. As the points were in good condition, and all the wires were conducting, we decided the coil was to blame for the engine's inability to fire.
I then went on line and found, in .pdf format, the old parts manual for my tractor based on model number on the Briggs and Stratton engine. This document showed the engine with all it's parts, each part was given a number which coincided with a part number. With this new found information, we called Koopman Lumber, our local hardware store. While they could not search for parts based on the engine model number, they could search the correct part number. Soon, a brand new coil for the Porter Cable tractor was purchased and installed. The old removed coil is shown to the right next to the box that the brand new one came in. I am proud to say that after installing this part (being sure the spacing between the armature and flywheel was correct), the Porter Cable ran once again!
Old advertisements for this tractor states, "Suburban tractor makes lawn and garden work a picnic". And it really does. Shown is a picture of an old ad for my tractor. (thanks to username "Rusty Old Junk" on the website mytractorforum.com). Just after fixing it, I used this tractor to haul over 400 pounds of dirt from a drainage ditch in the yard up a steep incline, through fields and woods, to dump it on a flooded pathway in our woods. This tractor has only a 6 horsepower engine, and yet it was able to haul what I could not. Thank the Lord for simple tractors like this one!
Also, when this tractor came out it was sold with accessories, just as a front mounted snow blowing attachment, a pull behind triple gang mower, a plow, and assorted other things. If anyone finds such an implement that looks old and like it would fit on a small garden tractor, shoot me an email. I would love to find the snowblower and the triple gang mower for this.

Wall Removal

Today I removed an old wall in my attic. The attic of my circa 1720 house is where I live. Its been awfully cold in winter and hot in summer up there, so this year we will insulate it. To improve the air flow in that area (since there are no heaters up there) and the overall appearance of the area, we decided to take out this ugly wall. Don't worry fellow engineers, the wall is non load bearing, an I remembered to turn off the power to the outlet and the light before moving wires...I didn't want any surprises of the electric variety. Shown on the left is a before picture of the wall after moving away all the furniture (it is a very ugly wall). And to the right is the after picture. There was a lot of dust in the air afterwards, hence the awkward picture.

Existential Pleasures of Basket Making?

Today, upon my mothers request, I made a basket. Yesterday she went to Old Sturbridge Village for a historical documents class for the library and at the gift shop she bought me a basket making kit and asked me to make her the basket.
Our family, of course, already has more cute baskets in our old house than rational person could possibly need. I think she just wanted me to do a hand-craft, to reconnect with the old ways of doing things. I would argue that the old way of acquiring a basket would involve using a basket we already owned.
Alas, today I enjoyed the pleasure of hand-making a redundant basket. I made it not to produce a necessary product, but to enjoy making something with my own hands. An existential pleasure of hand basket making. It was neither about production nor progress (in fact, it's a little bit about regress); but rather about stepping back to an older time, sitting still, and quiet, and accomplishing something of my own.