The Workshop: The things that go through my head

While putting finishing touches on an ‘Antique Store’ birdhouse, including a Coke machine, old tube radio (minus the electronics), tin signage, windows and doors, my mind got to drifting away, and I somehow ended up in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, the smallest of Canada’s provinces, soon to be the home of two of three of my lovely sisters.


[“Future home of an antique-loving bluebird?”: photo GH]

I saw myself pedaling along Kensington Rd. toward my small store/workshop in a refurbished two-story walk-up, rescued lumber and bag of one-and-a-half inch galvanized nails strapped to my old Schwinn bicycle, knowing a customer might be waiting for me to open up so he could pick up the bluebird house he ordered the week before, and knowing wife Pat might be wondering where I got to when I left an hour after sunrise (I said I’d be back with coffee in two shakes, but she knows my bike stops for yard sales).

I parked my red bike beside the old Coke machine, said hello to Frank - he already had his money ready for the birdhouse in the display window, red ‘sold’ sign hanging from its perch - searched for the keys to the store in the pocket of my dusty ‘workshop jeans’ with one hand, and balanced three coffees in a cardboard tray in the other.

“Frank, I’ll knock a few dollars off the birdhouse if you can help fix a brake line on my old motorcycle,” I said.

“Not a problem,” he said. “I’ll fix it for nothing, the birdhouse looks so good. Where’s the bike, old man?”

“Around the corner here, at the side of the store.”

Off we went, coffees in hand.


[“Frank and I are around the corner, in the lovely shade of the baobab tree.”]

***

Please click here for more from The Workshop.

.