I watched the package delivery (as I do all package deliveries since you know when) of EIGHT of these thingies last week. I was expecting terlet paper and this looked like about the right size box for what I ordered (I did get the TP so we should be gootchy until about August even factoring in a summer moomincabin supply).

Our own Landfill seems to have become the Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore North Country Trail chapter’s clearing house (I am NOT complaining). At least we’re the southern terminus. A bunch of crapola made its way up to Iggy or wherever over the weekend. These saws will be distributed to trail maintainer type volunteers.

The leather is left over from my old coot’s stint as a Sault Ste. Siberia tannery worker in the 1940s. It was a job he obtained after his stint as a WWII flight instructor and he worked there until before I was born. This was part of the trajectory of careers that later in his life led him to label himself as a Successful Failure. My career trajectory is not all that different.

From everything I remember hearing about that time of dad’s life (since I wasn’t born yet), he liked working with the people at the tannery but, as factory work often goes, it didn’t pay enough to raise children and send them to college (I’m guessing here). By the time I was born, he was established in a low-level job at the bank his dad presided over. His career trajectory went up from there but Successful Failure is a good description of his life.

I grew up in a shabby little bungalow on Superior Street in Sault Ste. Siberia. We had a second story but there were eaves, making the walls slanted on the sides. But the eaves also provided storage space and at the top of the stairs in what became my brother’s room, several drawers were embedded into the eaves and those drawers held pieces of LEATHER. Scraps from the tannery. I was fascinated by those as a young child.

Again I am guessing but I *think* The Commander had some designs on those leather pieces. Most of them never came into being (because kids, finally), except maybe for a footstool(?) she may have recovered. It may be at Houghton Lake now?

I own all the leather now. I am so rich. I will probably never do anything with any of it but the GG dredged some of it up today with the idea to make sheathes for these highly dangerous kniffy/saws. That wouldda been fine with me but apparently he found some ready-made sheathes that would fit online somewhere so we’ll see what he does.

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