Body English

...through the window door. The molding trim on the outside  of the door warped and it didn't seem to serve much purpose so John took it off.  It's not surprising that it was warped because getting it off revealed that it was made out of some something that looked almost like cardboard.  It turned out that removing it created a gap through which water leaked,  so John replaced it with a piece of molding we had left over from an indoor job. 

The new board is wider than the old one and looks better except for one small detail. The handle on the screen door hits the new board and the screen won't stay closed, so John chiseled out a slot for the handle, hitting his finger with the chisel, bleeding profusely all over the place and raising the question of whether he needed a tetanus shot. By the time he got around to calling his doctor it was Saturday and the doctor was probably out playing golf, so he was told that somebody would call him back. When he finally got a call on Sunday it turned out to be the doctor's nurse who was able to check the record and tell him that he had a tetanus shot three years ago. Crisis averted.

It is supposed to rain tonight and the substance revealed by the chisel wasn't wood either and looked like the same fate would befall it if water got into the exposed wood substance, so my picture through the bedroom door shows him painting the small slot with waterproof deck sealer. This involved rearranging the whole area and littering it with tools, tarps and a table. It is now a race with time to see if he can get three coats of sealer and a couple of paint before the rain sets in.

It's amazing how a very small project can create quite an array of ancillary issues....

When we lived in Berkeley, there was a small, family owned grocery store called Star Grocery which had been in the neighborhood for decades. they had a real butcher an excellent produce department and everything one was likely to need in an aging building with a leaky roof and a patchwork of flooring reminiscent of an archaeological site. John and our dog Ozzie would walk up there just about every and John would procure the items needed for dinner while Ozzie waited outside tied to the drainpipe. We still miss that store and I'm sure it is still going with very little change.

In Sebastopol there was a somewhat larger but similar in feeling to Star Grocery called Fircrest Market. We were only in Sebastopol on weekends but we got into the habit of getting their large and delicious deli sandwiches and eating them on our deck. Fircrest was owned by two brothers, twins, who were always there in wild Aloha shirts and great good humor. It wasn't quite walking distance but it was a short drive and we loved it too.

Now we have discovered a third locally owned market called Molsberry Market which is in Larkfield, not even in the same town as us, but it is on the way to Kathy's so Mondays often find us in there getting something for dinner. Today they had two guys out in front barbequing chicken and ribs. Guess which one we got for dinner?

One thing that makes all of these local markets so good is that they always seem to come through in a crisis. Old Mr Pappas was said to have carried a lot of local people during the depression. It is still the only market I've ever been in that would allow patrons to buy things on credit and send a bill at the end of the month. Fircrest opened its doors early and stayed open late when a lot of people fled there from the Tubbs fire, and Molsberry somehow kept the lights on and the doors open when the same fire burned down almost the entire neighborhood.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't think I'm the only one who mourns small, locally owned family businesses that seem to be a very endangered species.