Day 34... Things keep getting in My Way... Jobs

I have not cast the special pottery piece yet... maybe next week.  I think it would be great to have no job, no outside job that is.  I would stay home and weed the gardens, pick off and put asparagus beetles into the "Jar of Death", visit with friends, take naps, cook out on the fire pit, weave, read and watch the grass grow.

The only job my grandfather ever had was here on the farm. Farming is busy and hard work, long hours and dirty. But it is also rewarding. Grampa liked Sunday drives. On Sunday, in the afternoons, when we didn't go fishing with Dad, we would go on  joy rides.  My grampa had bought a brand new Rambler station wagon in 1960. He paid about $2,000 for this beautiful blue wagon with white top. He kept plastic seat covers on it.  It still smelled new in 1971 when he died and left the car to my mom. We drove it for awhile before it died and Stewards Auto Parts in New Hartford CT has it now. It is still on his lot. 

My dad was an automobile mechanic, so we had used cars. Only once got a new car. In 1961 we bought a new Corvair!

Grampa would take us all to Brooklyn NY once in a while to visit the relatives. He was born in Brooklyn in 1889 to German immigrant parents.  He raised chickens, cows, grew flowers and vegetables. He bought the new Rambler to cart around plants, and us kids.

Before him, Alpha Davis, a renter, worked as machinist at the Torrington Brass Company. Back when a family man could have a job, a house, raise children on a factory salary and his wife could stay home and take care of the kids and house. They had a set of twins. Reginald and Winthop were born in 1904.  Ten years later, Alpha moved to Fairfield CT where he was still a machinist at a factory and his wife was still unemployed.

Not to say factory work was great. It's not for me. I packaged syringes at a factor at 19 and though I would die of boredom.

In 1880, Martha Birge, the surviving daughter of Nathaniel, was keeping house for her father here. He was 71, and I don't know how much farming he was doing. He was the first recorded owner of the house and was a "joiner" on the 1850 and 1860 census. A joiner was a man who made mortise and tendon joints for boxes, drawers and such. My property then was valued at $1,500. Ten years later, the census had Nat down as a farmer and the property had jumped to $2,000.

Before Nat was his father, Simeon.  I don't know what Simeon did for a living. In the 1850 census, Nat was the only person on this side of the highway who was listed as anything other than Joiner.  The rest were farmers. Simeon had fought with his brother in the Revolutionary War. I assume he was farming in between wandering around fighting the British.

Through all this, the women would be "keeping house". I would have like to be my "house keeper". As it is, I have to run around doing odd jobs to fill in gaps in the pottery business. I hope to get the special pot done this coming month if I am not pulled into too many directions. I do hope so.




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