The picture below is the first with the camera that replaced the Nokia wide angle. This one is a Cannon EOS. I stepped out the back door last evening, a few minutes after sunset and took the picture Westerly in the Auto Mode. It was dark enough out that the flash automatically activated.
The camera came with software to manipulate the photo and I used that to auto adjust the exposure to increase the lightness of the picture.
Examining the photo, I found it interesting from several aspects. The evident slope on the other side of the fence expresses the dry creek depth I ran the mower into this past summer – not on purpose, I assure you. The tree framing the left side is the culprit cracking my concrete patio. It is a Black Walnut Tree, of fifty or more years, and bears excellently most years. It is now thirty or forty feet high and I fully expect it to grow even taller.
Up there, where the truck is, is the old highway. That highway came straight to the point of the trucks location and then hooks a sharp turn to the North (that would be to the right side of the picture). The point where the truck is grades ten degrees to the inside of the turn and will flight your vehicle if one comes over it at much over twenty-five miles per hour.
The white picket fence in the left background is my Renters home. I use Renter in lue of his real name. He owns just over a hundred and forty acres and the house sits in the Northeast corner of the property. It was in the Southern portion of his land the Old Man was killed when he drove over the edge of the embankment, beneath the Osage Orange Trees. I wrote about that incident I believe. As a side note, the place where we found the car with the body has washed undercut and an area of half an acre fell into the flooded dry cut. That happened well after the auto accident however. I had a part in replacing the fencing down there after that.
The white building in the center of the picture, the focal point of the picture, has a rather interesting history. Said history is long, and beyond the telling here, but it use to be a small engine repair shop. The owner eventually died and the building sat vacant. It was vacant for ten years before I arrived and was vacant for another ten years. One could say it is vacant yet, but it does have an owner now, and that owner caused, last year, the building to receive its first coat of paint in over twenty-five years. The little place sits on a tri-angular piece of land. The sides of that piece of land are about thirty feet long, and the North side (by the truck up there) is about six feet off the old highway.
I’m sure the property lines drift over the years.
On the other side of that building, the locals have cut, by driving over it, another spur road, coming off the old highway, and on this side, the county road goes South and is in-line with the old highway pointed off the curve North.
There are a couple of houses hidden left and right in the picture, behind the trees, which have their own stories. I’ll not be telling them here for a goodly while, in due respect to your patience. About six years ago, down in the village, there existed a Feed and Grain Store. One of the best buildings in the village. The owner passed on after a life time of honorable labor. The building sat vacant for a number of months and was finally purchased by a lady out of Fredonia Ks. She segmented the building and opened: 1) An Insurance Agency; 2) a Quick Trip Shop; and 3) a liquor store.
The Insurance Agency failed. Then the liquor store failed. And finally, the Quick Trip Shop failed. The Agency failed because the “Old” insurance business in town was purchased by a local lady and she is well liked. The liquor store failed because the owner lady could not, herself, keep the place open the hours required by drinkers, and could not find hired help to work the hours. And finally, the Quick Trip Shop failed because the tobacco prices and licensing became too steep and her other resupply problems got out of hand time wise and minimum quantity purchase requirements from distributors.
Which meant that the village had no grocery, no QT within three miles, no liquor store within sixteen miles North, South; None within thirty miles East and fourteen West. I use liquor store here to include over-the-counter 3.2 beer also.
Well, the lady's building now sits empty. But the owner of the Greasy? Surely, you know him. I’ve written about the Greasy and the old house on seven acres West of town? The one with the buzzards on the roof?
Yes, of course, him.
He reviewed the facts, before opening the Greasy, and concluded that the village needed a liquor store. So he purchased the Old Building out there on the old highway on the little tri-angular chunk of land. And petitioned the County Council for the liquor license to set the Old Building up as a liquor store.
The petition was denied. The cause of the rejection is the county denial of all such petitions outside of in cooperated city limits. In this case, the Old building, sitting on the West Side of the county North/South road, was on the wrong side of the road that marks the City (village) Limits.
The owner of the Greasy now owns many pieces of property. He owns a building down “town” in which he started a Meat/Butcher Shop in the rear (defunct), his mother runs a T-Shirt Business from home and rents the front of the building, the entire up-stairs is vacant. He owns the home he lives in and two acres on the East side of the village (in the middle of Estascy Heaven), and he owns the Old building. As the other City Council Members swirl remarks of; “He has no money, he owes money every where. No one knows where he gets his money.”
He rents the building the Greasy occupies; which is half a building that was once a Quick Trip/Gas/Restaurant complex. Having failed turning the Old Building into a liquor store, he tried to turn the other half of the Greasy into a liquor store. The owners of that property thought differently, and informed him they would be applying for the license themselves.
That failed. For the same reason the Old Building bid failed.
So the owner of the Greasy remains the proprietor of the Greasy, his ex-wife working for him (or to keep an eye on him and his doings), and the statement of the boyfriend of the ex-wife; “She’s got plenty of money, I’m not worried about that,” causes me to remember she is the older sister of my near neighbor. Who I know to be an illicit pharmacy dealer.
(My near neighbor’s West Side Yard. The East Side is worse; the car does not run and was rejected in the Cash For Clunkers program. The near neighbor is restricted from driving by the State.)
The local Sheriff Deputies choose to hang out at the Greasy.
Small towns are fun – they teach survival skills.
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From the reaches,
Ten Mile