Thursday, December 13, 2012

Fortune and Hick's Eyes

My continuing series on The Book House visit would not be complete without an account of Hick's take on the facility.

The Pony and I only thought he had gone to sit in the car and wait for us. Au contraire. Hick had dumped his bag o' books and returned. He headed upstairs to see if he could find anything old, I suppose. He likes to pick up flea market and auction items that he can use to furnish his creekside cabin.

Hick declared that the railing on the stairs would be in high demand. "People buy those things to put in their houses!" Well. That's certainly deep thinking. I suppose what he meant to express was that it looked like an old piece of history, and antique collectors might clamor for it. Don't worry. I did not let him bring any tools along. So clandestine dismantling while I was clucking at a hen party downstairs was out of the question.

Hick also fancied the clawfoot tub in the bathroom. I think he was just taking himself on an unauthorized tour, not marking his territory. He has a fascination with clawfoot tubs. Notices them in farmers' fields, acting as watering troughs for cattle. Never mind that there is not enough room in his cabin for a clawfoot tub. Or that it doesn't even have a bathroom. Just an outhouse. I shudder to think that Hick is planning to pick up a pair so we can while away our golden years laying side-by-side in bubble-bath-filled clawfeet, watching the sunset. Because there is no sunset down in the woods by the creek. We would have to be in the front yard. A site not conducive to clawfeet courtin'.

Being a safety committee facilitator at work, traveling to safety conventions on the company dime, quoting OSHA bylaws willy-nilly...Hick had a thing or two to say about The Book House decor. "I'm surprised the Fire Marshall hasn't shut them down! That's an accident waiting to happen. All those books crammed in so you can hardly walk. If you're in the basement and a fire breaks out, you're dead." Said the man whose BARn looks much the same way downstairs, yet not nearly so neat, without noticeable walkways, and metal rather than paper as the clutter of choice.

Apparently Hick has also been named a zoning commissioner. "I can't believe that house is sitting in that area. I'm sure they were grandfathered in."

Hick is the kind of person who would tear down paradise to put up a parking lot if it meant he could scavenge paradise for old stuff to put in his cabin.


6 comments:

  1. Yeah, that Book House is a swingin' hot spot. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?

    If I see on the news that this Book House establishment is broken into, resulting in the stair railing being neatly removed, along with boxes of ancient, colorful dusty volumes, I'll know.

    And I am not above lowering myself to blackmailing the culprit...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sioux,
    Whatever you do, don't get the suspect's goat. We only have 11 of the critters. Can't spare one. Must have all plant material, living or dead, gnawed to a nub, barkless, until bare dirt and sticks are all that is left for landscaping.

    We have been in need of a stair railing since, um...1997. The year that Hick built this house with cash money, and the aid of a crew of parolees and survivalists and concrete finishers with ZZ Top beards in Daisy Dukes. People who made my mother ask, "Honey, does Hick know any people who work ON the books?"

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've never understood the double bathtub on the beach in the sunset. It makes no sense in so many ways. Plus my memories of a bath in a clawfoot tub at my gramma's were that the porcelain had been worn down to sandpaper that matched the Lava soap she gave me to wash with. No, not romantic at all.

    Does Hick's cabin look like a pink hotel or a boutique?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Leenie,
    I know this will come as a shocker, but Hick's cabin does NOT look like a pink hotel or a boutique. It looks like a Jed Clampett cabin, before he went a shootin' for some food. And, sadly, lacks the bubblin' crude.

    Hick DID find a six-foot snakeskin in it a while back. And you know what they say about six-foot snakeskins...somewhere, there's a snake bigger than six feet on the loose.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think it's awesome that your husband ventured out with you... I understand his fettish for old things. His cabin sounds awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lynn,
    If only you understood his fetish for goats and chickens, those useless fleabags who bring blight upon our landscape, and eat until the cows come home, and poop until the cows leave again in the morning. Thank goodness we don't have cows.

    ReplyDelete