(This is the Gnome in slightly better days. We are proud he was not abandoned to the elements, since he has been on duty since at least 1908. He will get his lantern back, we swear!).

It was a day of rescue, pitting the contents of the Office down at The Farm against the machinations of the Federal Reserve. We think that is the case, anyway. Word is that the troublesome inflation thing will requirement more increases in the interest rates, which may be impacting the urgency of the buyers for the delightful little equestrian property we have had the pleasure to own the last 14-years.

We told you the scope of work down there had overcome our remaining energy levels with a couple things left undone. It ws handy to have some covered space for Mom and Dad’s junk from their property overlooking the Bay up in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula. We had vowed to get that imposing pile of boxes reduced. It has been sitting without action for the decade they have been gone, a dozen boxes of old papers and attempted histories done by someone else.

We have arrived at the last hurdle on the sale, making the property someone else’s challenge, and consigning the faily records to the ashes down by the fire-pit. Instead, some of it arrived yesterday after the rains ceased falling and is now jammed into the storage unit at Big Pink down the hall from the new Corporate Headquarters. We swore yesterday we would get to the examination of the material at some point. It is now on the list.

One item was a surprise. The Gnome is now on the Patio. Grace carefully re-painted his exterior surfaces five years ago to brighten her garden area next to the farmhouse. It is family history in the rawest manner possible. There is an ancient black-and-white photo of him standing on a porch in New Jersey. On the back is scrawled the year the picture was taken: “1908.”

He has been standing vigilantly on duty for more than a century, and was reluctant to be abandoned to a rural horse property without a Socotra family member within earshot. The legendary woman who provided the physical labor to load and transport his Gnomeship up north did so unsolicited, and we were startled to see him with his left arm raised to hold the lantern that somehow went missing in the travel. Being a statue is apparently harder work than we can imagine. So, “repair lantern” joins the “look at all this stuff and thin it out” on the top ten.

But to have the Gnome on the Patio defers any regret. Having moved for the third or fourth time in this turbulent residential journey, we are proud to welcome his home!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com