A Face from the Past

 Last week as we continued renovating Tom's house in Farmersville he came upon a penciled image drawn directly onto the wall before the wallpaper was applied. I was in the living room giving pine wainscoting its first coat of white paint when I heard Tom say "Come and look at this".

 It was the profile of a woman. Can you imagine the worker standing there and penciling this on the wall before hanging the wallpaper? It's hard to tell if it goes back to the date of the house construction (1858) or later. My guess is that, though this is an original wall, it's a bit later. The profile reminds me of pictures of my two young grandmothers, born 1891 and 1902.

 This is on the north dining room wall. Only on the east dining room wall was Tom able to salvage even small sections of the original wallpaper, some of which covered this sketch.

 It's hard to envision a large section of the wallpaper but suffice it to say it's a natural pattern with crude leaves and flowers. The flower reminds me of a Tiger Lily, indigenous to this area. However it was applied, the glue (flour paste?) is hard to remove and takes quite a lot of scraping. It comes away (usually) in small strips. Once removed, Tom is scrubbing the wall with various chemicals. Fabric softener seems to work best.

 But the sketch of the lady isn't all he found on that same wall ...

 Tom thinks this is a date. Perhaps May 5 and then a 2. 1902?

 There are figures, too, as though measurements were transferred to the work surface where they'd be safe and readily available.

 In any case, these penciled marks are old, certainly from more than a century ago ... and maybe quite a bit longer. I'd like to think they were placed there when the house was first built, but I think that's probably a stretch.

 As these marks are above where we'll place the wainscoting we'll be covering them with paint and they'll be gone forever.

 But we have to ask who made them and whether they made these marks in a fit of boredom or with thoughts of the future? Soon they applied paste to the wall and pressed wallpaper there and the drawings sunk beneath the surface. And then, in 2020, a man they could not have imagined, unearthed them again.

 The past always speaks but often with a soft, whispered voice.

Snow [quote]

Tom's Retiring

 Last Friday Tom had his much-anticipated appointment with the Social Security Administration in Cincinnati. He tried to start his benefits online but had no luck. When he called, an appointment was made for him with a representative. I believe he called in late November and his appointment was set for January 31.

 So we got up early (6:30 am) and we were on the road by 7:15 am for the 50 mile trip to Cincinnati. Luckily there was only one traffic slow-down but no stoppage. Even though we gave ourselves 1:45 we still didn't arrive on time.

 Why? Well, we parked across the street from the Federal Building and I suggested we take the aerial walkway to stay out of the light snow and rain. Bad  move. We arrived on the second floor (right where we were supposed to be) but at the employee entrance. Who'd have thought?

 So we threaded ourselves through the building as best we could but arrived in an area that was probably another building. We asked someone for directions but he wasn't much help. So we decided to go down to the first floor, exit the building entirely and try to find the street entrance (550 Main Street) of the Federal Building.

 Of course we ended up in the cold and rain (and snow) but found our way to the entrance. We waited in line to go through a metal detector and had to remove coats, belt, everything in our pockets and pull our belts out of our pants. Tom, it seems, had a small folding knife on his key chain (which he forgot about) and we had to take it back to the car.

 So, back across the street and down to level D to leave the knife. Finally back up to the street level and a trudge across the street (in the light snow now) and back into the Federal Building and through security (which we passed this time).

 We arrived at Social Security 15 or 20 minutes past the 9 am appointment time. Just as we arrived at the SSA check-in area, I heard Tom being paged to Booth 14. A security guard led us both back without a wait (first thing that went right all day).

 The man who took Tom's application was efficient, friendly  and fast. Tom's set-up for official retirement now and his life-long federal benefits will start soon.

We drove to Tom's apartment in Northside, fed the cats, picked up an item or two and headed homeward.

 We stopped at Burger King for lunch and were back in Farmersville early afternoon to continue work on his house.