The People We Meet

57°f, 13.9°C. Clear, low humidity, another beautiful morning.

I've been out in the garden again this morning, tilling up the ground where the beets and onions were. What to plant next? Hmmm. I still have pepper and leek plants, need new lettuce, maybe turnips? We shall see. That will be tomorrow morning's work, I think. I picked cucumbers, lettuce, a couple tomatoes, radish, squash, and dill, so it will be salad for lunch.

Yesterday after I got those beets pickled and processed and the barbecue canned, we made a trip out to pick up a couple things we had found for sale on Facebook Marketplace: a porcelain top table, which we buy whenever we find one reasonably priced,  and a bench made from an old horse-drawn wagon seat.

This isn't the one we bought; she had 2 and I picked the one with cooler hardware,  but it is pretty similar. No pic of the table, yet, as both are still in the van.

Both of the couples we met were just nice, interesting people.  The ones with the table had just got home from Charleston,  where the husband had had surgery to remove skin cancer from his nose. He goes back today to meet with a plastic surgeon.  He said, "I get to choose the nose I want this time!" The wife works nights, so when she got off work she took him to his appointments.  When that sweet lady slept i don't know. He also has prostate cancer,  so they run the road to Charleston for that treatment as well. But with all of that going on, they remain upbeat and enjoying their country home.

The second couple, with the wagon seat, also lived off the beaten track--which is pretty common in our county, actually. Nice, modest homes, tucked back in these hills and out of sight. I remembered the husband, Dana--he was the school bus driver on our road when our youngest was in school.  I had never met his wife, Diana, but she had once lived on our road briefly in a small house that used to be rented out. So she knew many of our neighbors, and since she is also a bus driver, she knew several of our friends who also drive school busses. This county is a small world indeed.

But as we were talking, Larry asked about an old Barracuda car frame that was by their garage. Turned out the Dana does a lot of custom car work---and that Diana drives race cars! That was a surprise.  Here are some photos from her Facebook page.

Her car is called Quick Draw, and she is pretty successful in the region, with her car being voted into the 2022 West Virginia Drag Racing Hall of Fame as a Featured Car, and as 1st place Gasser in the 2023 Summit Piston Power Show in Cleveland,  Ohio.  Now, I know very little about racing, and have never been to a race, but maybe it's time? Sure would be fun to watch Diana run.

We never know who we will meet when we buy stuff. Once it was a computer game creator, another time a writer, once a young clothes designer, and once a distant cousin of Larry's. It makes this part of what we do so interesting, and in a small way makes me feel better about this country of ours. For all its troubles, there are still more good people than bad. That's a thought I will hold on to.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.