Sandy Dreams

 The big debate to buy a new modern door or try to salvage the 70+ year old original door for the wine cellar.  I took the original lock off the door and took it up to Coopers locksmith in Stillwater. In no time they had two new skeleton keys made and I am back in business with the original door. The new Keys! The North wall  As you walk down the staircase the North wall was poured concrete. The forms they used were boards. The imprint from the boards to the concrete is really good. The wall looked like concrete boards. So we stained the whole wall to look like wood. It turned out really well.  So now we have a real fake concrete wood wall! All that is left is to paint some fake nail heads on the boards.

 I finally finished the South wall of the Wine Cellar. Now all I have to do is go buy around 400 bottles of wine/whiskey!! There is lots of history of the different wood I used. The wood used to build the X's are from the original shelves in the cellar. The house was finished in 1950 so I'm guessing the wood is from the mid 40's. The shelves besides the mirror, in front of the mirror, the top shelf and the wine display shelf came from the smoke house on the Brixey place from around 1880. The original log cabin and smoke house was built by Barney Brixey my great great grandfather. The smoke house. The legs between the shelves came from the trellises down at the Cimmeron River. They were built by Franklin D. Roosevelt's WPA program sometime between 1935 and 1944 to help with erosion when the river floods. They are heavily treated with creosote and will probably last another 100 years. The mirror was my grandmothers. I'm not exactly sure how old it is. I do know it was...

 I took 618 our lear 40 up to 51,000 feet. That is the service ceiling of the plane. It is challenging to get the plane up there. I am close to a stall and over speed at the same time. Once I get there my fuel burn is around 430lbs a side vs 600 a side in the lower 40's. Incredible fuel savings. 51000! I've only been up there 3 or 4 times! I didn't get a picture outside because it was night time. But you can see the curvature of the earth or the edge of the earth depending on what you believe in!

 I had to fly a trip to Oxford MS today for an old Miss football game. Once in Oxford we realized the hotel rooms were over 800.00 a night and no rental cars to be found!  So what do you do in that situation? You rent a U-Haul and drive to Memphis! The U-Haul rental was way cheaper than a regular rental car. 130 dollars for three days! I'm glad they had a van! Beale Street  Of course I went to a piano bar!

 The original water well on Twin Oaks farm was hand dug by Frank Eaton (AKA pistol Pete) and William Knipe who was one of the founders of Perkins, and a high school kid name unknown. Legend has it they left the kid down in the well while they went for lunch!  The original well is still there but is no longer operational. It always worked when I was a kid. Anyways fast forward about a hundred years and I decided if they could hand dig a well then I could too.  The drilling process. Removing dirt. A large pile of dirt! The casing down in the ground. Pouring concrete. Building the well house. The pump. I used old tin so it would match the shop. I installed a sink because the shop doesn't have water. The original well about 50 feet from the new well. It's not quite finished but I think it is going to produce about 800 gallons a day.

The Wine Cellar is coming along nicely. It's slow work especially going up and down the stairs. We painted the whole room with Drylok paint made to seal concrete. I'll let you know if it's sealed if it ever rains again. We had to lay some bricks to re enforce the South wall. The mirror and bricks. It's starting to come together.