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The Well-Traveled Playhouse

Sixty years ago, and a hundred miles west, Mari's grandfather built his grand-daughters a play house on the farm.  It is probably--scarcely--eight by ten feet in size; maybe seven by nine.  Once ago, the lower half of the rear wall rotted out, and was replaced.  Everything else recalls how that rear wall felt.  

Inside, Mari, her sister, Bonnie, and a cousin, Jane, wrote their names in pencil on the wall to the right.  Only if you know to look can you find the place where the stilt-like letters have left shadows.  

When Mari's dad, Parnell, sold the farm and moved into the town of Lake Mills, he took the playhouse with him, and it became a yard-tool shed, on runners.  And when Parnell died, we drove to Lake Mills, with Per from Lillehammer, and found a way to get the play house up onto a big trailer.  

It is a well traveled playhouse.  I gave it new runners, a graveled base to sit upon, and a front deck.  I think it may never travel, again.  But poor thing!  Its responsibilities, at our log house, are few, but few as they are, it deserved better than it had gotten.

Patti and Mari schemed an overnight trip to the log house, and informed their respective husbands that we were going to paint the playhouse.  Their respective husbands amassed the necessary tools and beverages, and there we were, beating back the Virginia Creeper, scraping what appeared to be a sixty-year old paint job, and disguising, as best we could, what times does to us all!

We did a pretty good job!  Not shy, we chose colors from the log house itself--colors earlier stolen from something Scandinavian--and prettied the Old Lady on about her 60th year.  


 The short day's work done, we took pictures of the craftsmen--and craftier women--and set in earnest to beverage our way toward grilling steaks in the dark, and to telling each other all about those days of yore, when grandfathers built play houses, and what a fine job we had done.

We are available for quality restoration work.  All we need is time to get the necessary tools and beverages together.  Our work is guaranteed, for the life of the paint.  

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