Reflections, and things to think about...

Im in Austin getting over some nasty bug and getting ready for a Labor day Music festival, where I will be selling hats.  I was looking at photos that I took last time I was there and thought I would post some more...
I suppose I am my father's Daughter. Made from the same stuff I guess. He was kindof a slob, Im kindof a slob. He had ADD, Im sure I have ADD I know. easily distractable and having a tendancy to wander from project to project...

More cleaning photos, some of this is a result of this stuff sitting for a long while, some is just slobbiness, some is ADD. (sidenote - Ive been listening to AWOLNATION lately, Sail lave a listen-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPtSKimbjOU)

Anyway...

 Aint this the truth!

 Like a creepy Haunted Gun shop, so many big spider webs


This little mole critter has a tiny fedora- hes going to be my cleanup mascot- hes cute but needs a life!

 I straightened out the front counter, then Tom starts asking if I want to move all the counters, take them out, re arrange, start over? When I have a blank slate its a little overwhelming thinking about what I want. Hmmmm..

 There are lots of gun and rangelands magazines, but this one was interesting; "Varmint Hunter"  Wow.

And the best find of this day was this: a tube of stuff stuck to the top of the workbench in the back room, "Glop Type 8". makes me wonder what glop types 1 through 7 are used for, and how many Glop types are there? 9? 13? 536?

It was super sticky after years of being up there, I had to chisel it off.

The cool thing about this shop is that there are more cool work benches and so many shelves that I will have so much room to put everything!

So the next trip is more cleaning, but soon I will have to start thinking about what colors to paint, what I want the shop to look like, how it will work. 

How many puzzles?

In the retail end of the shop there was quite a stack of puzzles. Big 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. Boxes and boxes,  teetering stacks of boxes of puzzles. I took a count before i started sorting them and counted 120 boxes. I filled a big box with the puzzles that had been noted to be incomplete. then as I was looking I noted that there were 2 or three years of puzzles where Dad had come to the shop and put the last completed puzzle on a stack, and they were dated and sometimes had little note like "difficult" or "nice puzzle" so that a stack was the evidence of how he had spent months of his life.

He was averaging one puzzle a month or so. I found myself wondering what was i doing during those months. I found a lot of them dated 1998, which was when Tom and I were working a lot and Maxine was small.


One puzzle in particular looked familiar and i realized that he was doing it when I had come for a visit when Maxine was about a year and a half old and we came down for my Parent's 50th wedding anniversary. I kept that one, the one that said "nice puzzle" and a few more that struck my fancy, one that was from the 60's and one of a bunch of russian eggs.  Im thinking at some point i may do them and think about my dad.

Im looking forward to coming here full time to take care of my Mom. I think Tom is too. I am struck at how time feels different here than in Austin. Not slower exactly, just less busy... maybe I will find i have time to do puzzles...

Der Gunmeister: Origins

  In 1976 we moved from college station TX to Harper. I was going to be a freshman in high school, and Harper was such a small town compared to what i was used to. But for my mom and Dad it was a new beginning. My Dad had been a professor, a rancher, a pilot during world war 2, and then a gunsmith. He had been a national skeet shooter as well. So when he opened Der Gunmeister the local paper featured it with some photos and a little story.  I found the original papers folded up in a little shelf as I was cleaning up the puzzles... My dad looks happy and proud of himself in this photo, and so much younger than he did at thanks giving. I wonder if they will write up a little story about my shop when its ready to open?
So Im back at the shop this weekend and so much happened in 2 days that it will take more than 1 post to cover, so this post will focus on my Dad the Gunmeister himself.

One of the odd things about cleaning up is finding things around like he was in the middle of doing something when he just closed up the shop and left, like an empty wallet with his social security card, tax documents and membership cards, in a pile on one of the gun racks.

 Somebody made the little shop scene for dad, (did I?) and he has it in a place of prominence, along with a carved Der Gunmeister wood plaque, both of which i will keep along with the newspaper clippings in a kind of memory corner. I found a number of Printed targets too... My husband Tom who is practicing his target shooting will probably use them.

There are so many things that feel like they were important once, and at what time do things that were important, loose their importance? Is it as simple as a decision, a redirecting of your life, or was this stuff all important to my dad and the moment he passed away, they lost importance because the one person who cared about them was no longer on the same plane as these things. And if his spirit is somewhere aware of his life and that is is over, as such, how does he feel about these things now? What is really important?

I will try not to wax philosophical too much, but Im afraid it might happen anyway. Perhaps everyone who goes through their parent's things goes through the same kind of processes. There is something I am discovering about myself while doing this, in a way discovering things I never knew about my dad, and about myself. Too bad my Dad cant learn who I really am, or maybe it is more important for me to let my daughter know who I am. Hmmm.