I have developed a new problem, recently.
I’m coveting cupolas.
Worshipping weather vanes.
I went to Vermont, you see.
“Verdant Vermont”, as Practical Man and I called it as we ooh’d and aah’d our way through the Spring countryside rolling hills.
We have been there before but this time, we noticed that it was very green.
We’re pretty sure this isn’t how “verdant” is pronounced but for this trip, we decided we should make it rhyme with “Vermont”.
Verdant Vermont, get it?
They are probably going to want to adopt it as a slogan, of course.
“Visit us in Verdant Vermont.”
We amuse ourselves easily, yes sirree.
That’s how you get to 20 years of wedded bliss, dontcha know.
All the verdant was probably on account of the torrential rain the day and night before. During the storm, we were very cozy in our vintage Boler travel trailer, alone in the campground. I am reading my way through my vintage Nancy Drew collection so I was deeply embroiled in The Mystery of the Bungalow (and wondering how one canoes wearing a dress) while I listened to the lovely sound of rain on the Boler roof.
A 13-foot trailer seems so luxurious after a lifetime of camping in tents and when it’s pouring sheets of rain outside.
Maybe the other campers didn’t have a vintage Nancy Drew book to antagonize and entertain them because they had all left. Even the ones in giant motor homes with big-screen TVs and walk-in closets. It seems that the first sign of inclement weather causes those campers to run home to a different big-screen TV and walk-in closet.
That’s okay because it means more ice cream for me.
The morning after the storm, I ate Ben and Jerry’s at 10:00 am, tra-la-la.
There was a factory and it was cultural experience so I had two scoops: fudge brownie something and chocolate peanut-butter something else.
I’ve never had Ben and Jerry’s ice cream before.
I might need to try it again to make sure I like it.
Then, we went to the chocolate factory nearby.
Perhaps you can see why I love Vermont.
So much tra-la-la!
We followed the windy roads and hunted for the covered bridges that were on the map.
We went up the super fun, seasonal road to Smuggler’s Notch and marvelled at the giant boulders all around that had been chucked down the mountain, probably by some demi-god having a temper tantrum.
And, I fell in love with all the houses.
I think there is a Vermont rule: no ugly houses allowed.
The Pinterest addict in me approves.
I also fell in love with the cupolas.
This cupola was in New York state actually, but you get the idea.
Little ones.
Big ones.
Ones with vents.
Ones with weather vanes.
I want one.
My kingdom for a cupola!
We have two sets of louvered doors in one of our (cupola-less) outbuildings, so now, I have dreams and plans for an upcycled cupola of our very own.
Practical Man is on the case. So far, he’s going along with putting a cupola on the workshop building.
That’s how you get to 20 years of wedded bliss, dontcha know.
But, I’m not sure I’m allowed to go back to Vermont.
There is a type of person who aspires to live in weird places.
Like, a lighthouse, say.
Or, a converted barn.
Who me?
Yes me, but not just me. There are other weirdos about.
Behold the Tiny House movement.
Naturally, I would love a Tiny House.
Of course, a vintage Boler is really a kind of Tiny House.
Tra-la-la.
Arlo Guthrie memorialized the cool, weird house back in the 1960s with his song, “Alice’s Restaurant” in which Alice, Ray, and Potcho the Dog lived in an old church.
My dad introduced me to the song when I was about 12. As an adult, my friend and fellow Alice’s Restaurant fan, Bamboo Guy, even owned a church that was very swoon-y. Bruce Cockburn lives there now and how cool is that?
I’ve wanted to live in a church ever since.
And, even before.
In fact, my fascination with weird houses manifested itself as a child when, with every snowstorm, I attempted to build a house made from snow.
Unfortunately, I never learned the Inuit tradition of igloos (although I tried to build one many times!)
Usually, it was just me and my sister with shovels and soggy mittens, making a hole in the snow bank at the end of our driveway and trying to pretend that the result was a cozy as a Hobbit house.
In a melty, collapse-on-your-head kind of way.
My mother was concerned (as all Canadian mothers were) that the snowplow driver would kill us, by accident, with all that gallivanting at the street side.
That meant, my other option was an old margarine container in the back yard.
I would pack the snow in the container tightly, then tip it out carefully on the ground.
Sometimes, it was that dumb sugary snow that wouldn’t hold together.
Boo, hoo, hoo.
Other times, it was close to Spring and my “bricks” had a lot of leaves and twigs in the mix.
It marred the pristine, crystalline, margarine beauty I was going for, but I tried to just pretended it was mortar.
I wonder if Frank Lloyd Wright ever had these kinds of issues?
I’d lay out the floor plan: kitchen here, library here, secret passageways there.
My projects always seemed to cover the whole back yard.
Not one able to keep to minimalism even then, no siree.
Which meant that either I got discouraged, or the snow melted before my margarine-tub-formed walls were more than about ankle height.
As an adult, I drag Practical Man around to look at every weird building I can find.
Yesterday’s schoolhouse was very fun.
Built in 1847, it counts as “very old” among buildings in Canada.
It was kind of in the boonies, of course, since that’s where country schoolhouses tend to spring up.
It still had slate chalkboards.
Be still my heart.
There were tin ceilings in what used to be the girl’s and boy’s entrance foyers. Oh yes, they were of a time:
And the original schoolhouse lights (SIX!):
Swoon-y swoon, swoon.
As you may have observed, it even had a bell tower.
Ding, ding, ding!
Minus the bell, but I’m sure we could remedy that.
Alas, it had a bidding war planned for Monday and about 10 years of hard labour involved after purchase.
Boo, hoo, hoo.
One of the things stopping me from buying some of these weird buildings (besides a usefully-practical Practical Man) is their one-room schoolhouse size.
Since we can’t usually afford the life-size ones that don’t have 10 years of hard labour, I’ve been collecting small buildings.
Fisher Price vintage ones.
I’m sure you guessed that’s what I meant, since I have no children and I’m pushing 50.
They do take up a bit of space, as you can imagine.
So far, I have a castle:
A farm:
Sesame Street:
an A-frame Cottage:
A Firehouse:
and perhaps best of all,
the School house:
This Schoolhouse was the perfect price and size.
It even has a bell in the bell tower.
Tra-la-la.
It’s nearly Christmas so naturally, we are going camping.
Yes, I know we live in Ontario, home of frosty windows and big, fat snowflakes and other wintery stuff (like -40 antifreeze for the car because we need that, yes, we truly do) but, camping in December is not such a stretch.
We’ve got trees in the forest on our property.
We’ve got a fire pit, around which to toast marshmallows and the like.
We’ve got the super-duper, flannel, camping sheet set and three or twelve duvets (and a partridge in a pear tree.)
Okay, fine.
We’re not camping.
That’s just Practical Man, driving around the lawn on your average Tuesday, towing our vintage Boler travel trailer.
I’m pretty sure the neighbours are whispering about me. They wouldn’t blame it on Practical Man because they all know him. I’m the mysterious person who drives up the driveway into the garage and disappears inside (away from The Nature). He is the guy who is always out in the yard on one tractor or another, or on the roof, or in the forest, or building something or growing something. Plus, he fixes things for the neighbours, regularly. People who fix things don’t drive around the lawn on your average Tuesday in December in Ontario, towing their travel trailer, unless they are very sweet and have been put up to it by an annoyingly festive ELF.
Like this one:
Tra-la-la.
Or, as I like to say at Christmas, when I’m wearing an elf get-up that I made out of a green sweater, some felt, and a pair of socks:
Fa-la-Tra-la-la!
Aren’t you glad you don’t live with me?
(The socks are at my wrists, in case you can’t concentrate, after my costume-making teaser.)
It all began when I joined one of those groups on Facebook–or maybe, I can blame the Facebook algorithm. You know the algorithm: it thinks I need bifocals and wrinkle cream.
Evil algorithm.
Yes, let’s blame it.
Anyhoo, I kept seeing pictures from some group foisted on me by the evil, mind-reading algorithm. Disturbing, provocative pictures–you know the kind–pictures of pretty barns and burlap all swirly-dirly and bells and thing-a-ma-bobs that bring out the inner decorator dictator in me.
Mere minutes scrolling through these groups and I get obsessed with teeny, insignificant details…like angels and angles.
Now that sounded a bit confusing.
That is to say, I’m obsessed with whether the angels on our shelves are at a 45 degree angle to…I’m not sure what.
They looked so good on Pinterest.
There are evil algorithms there, too.
Algorithms and angled angels anon.
(That’s called festive alliteration.)
Lest you think I’m reaching, I’ll have you know that “anon” is the festive word for “and other junk that I feel the need to copy, for reasons that must be based in my primitive, lizard brain because it is un-explainable, even to me, why I would care about this kind of fluff”.
To get back to my point, I was on one of those groups and there were other vintage trailer weirdos like me and well, they don’t live in Ontario. They live in warm climates where there is still green grass visible on the ground, not to mention palm trees (public service announcement: it’s very un-Christmassy to blatantly display aka gloat about your palm trees at this time of year to a Canadian). Then, to add insult to palm-tree injury, they post pictures of their vintage trailers all dicky-doo’d up for the holidays.
I do love a little festooning and such.
So says the evil algorithm.
Insert lizard brain here.
But, I live in Ontario, home of frosty windows and big, fat snowflakes and other wintery stuff (like -40 antifreeze for the car because we need that, yes, we truly do).
Year-round festooning. What luxury is this?
The luxury is living in San Anbambino or some place where they don’t know what long underwear is–that’s what.
Still, all I see is post after post of cute, vintage trailers with Christmas lights and mistletoe and plaid blankets and stuff.
Sometimes with snow (why oh why doesn’t our snow fall when I have a camera in hand?)
Sometimes without snow (and avec the aforementioned gloat-y palm trees.)
‘Tis the season to be jolly.
Or, as I like to say,
‘Tis the season to be jealous.
At any rate, before I knew it, out on the lawn, there arose such a clatter.
The clatter being due to the fact that I had batted my not-insignificant eyelashes (Rimmel’s Extra Super Lash mascara) and asked Practical Man to hitch up the “sleigh” (aka vintage Boler travel trailer) and move it to a more photogenic location so I could get my festive festooning underway.
On the one day we haven’t had snow in the last 2 months, yessirree.
Practical Man is forever granting my Christmas wishes. Year round.
But, even he can’t summon the snow where the snow won’t be summoned.
Palm trees, either (although with enough notice, I have no doubt he would have grown something from a pineapple nub he got at the grocery store).
The point is, there I was, in the front of the front yard’s brown-ish grass, throw cushions and wreathes in hand, decorator dictatorship rearing its ugly head.
Cue the whispering neighbours.
My lizard brain was desperate to decorate and I love our tiny Boler but, its figurative chair (or vintage, metal lawn chairs, as the case may be) is never at our Christmas table, on account of it’s always put away for the winter at this time of year.
It’s kind of the Tiny Tim of our yard.
Sob.
But now, joy of joys! Thanks to Practical Man and my lizard brain, here was my very own Tiny Tim, in the front yard. So, in the repentant manner of Ebenezer Scrooge, I got busy with the festive festooning while also reflecting on the 2016 ghosts of past, present, and future.
- Practical Man had a near record maple syrup crop in the Spring.
- I learned more songs on the guitar from musicians too-soon taken.
- We met new friends who joined us as I twirled my way through our first Bolerama. And, Practical Man survived!
- We shared wonderful memories (and mosquitoes) with family and friends in the summer.
- We worried about people fleeing violence around the world and here.
- We cried for Practical Man’s Mutti, who died in October. She will be cried about for some long time to come.
- I made a snowman, tobogganned and shovelled snow with some English sweeties, before Winter was really due.
- We are trying to be advocates and people of hope in the wake of an earthquake-y election, even though it wasn’t ours.
I feel so lucky to have a small, safe place like a Boler.
It’s a little nest. A place to curl up and take a nap or maybe just stare around the inside or pretend you’re Laurie Partridge for a while (because when you’re a Boler geek like I am, that’s a fun afternoon).
Of course, the Boler is not my only blessing or refuge, by a long shot. I am sheltered and fed and loved and safe.
Occasionally, I have useful eyelashes.
I am so, so lucky.
I hope you all are, too.
Except for the evil algorithm.
Sorry.
That was my lizard brain again.
A Very Merry Christmas and Happy Everything from our house to yours.
Today was all rusty and sweaty and full of (luckily, not too many) deer flies and one magnificent wild strawberry.
Yes indeedy, I love me a vintage junkyard.
Or, scrapyard, as Practical Man calls it.
Potato, Patahto.
If you are like him and call a junkyard a scrapyard, be sure to convey the word with all the enthusiasm that Practical Man uses when he utters it. My usually reserved, strong-silent type guy can barely contain his glee when it comes to scrapyards. With those mere two syllables, he manages to morph into someone who looks and sounds exactly like a 7 year-old boy on Christmas Eve.
In other words, he kind of resembles…well, ME.
Minus a little of the tra-la-la. But only just.
Not that I mind his enthusiasm for the world of auto wreckers. I am a big fan of old-school scrapyards myself.
Y’know, like most women in their middle of ages.
Well, maybe not.
Anyhoo, ever since my favourite junkyard, Minakers, closed for business, I have been somewhat bereft. Bereft of real-for-true, old-school junkyards, that is.
Minakers was even better than a regular junkyard because it had been around a long, long time and was chock-a-block with antique cars. Wanderers there were hard pressed to find anything newer than about 1970.
It was scrapyard nirvana.
There were 1940s bread vans with trees growing through the engines. Sedan deliveries and original Beetles and ’30s gangster cars with swoopy running boards. I spent most of my time there running around, stumbling over thing-a-ma-bobs from 1953 and squealing, from one wreck to the next.
What? You’ve never heard a grown woman squeal in a junk yard before?
Maybe that’s because you’ve only ever darkened the doors of a modern-day junkyard. You know the kind (or maybe you don’t, in which case I’m here to help): there is no “wandering” amid the wreckage. You have to know what you want before you go in! Then, they go and FETCH IT FOR YOU.
Junkyard Joy Stealers: that’s what they are. They rob you of every little bit of the tripping and squinting and dreaming and squealing.
There is no squealing in a modern-day junkyard. Only safety vests and liability clauses and steel-toed boots.
And, people who call you “ma’am”.
It’s tragic, really.
But, we spotted what looked like an old-school, rural junkyard on a recent trip and today was the day to go and explore. Our vintage Boler travel trailer could use a few bits and bobs and we have a derelict boat that needs a windscreen and who knows what other treasures we might find?
Yes indeedy, I love the smell of broken safety glass and grease in the mornings.
First, I put on my lucky socks. It’s very important to have lucky socks on when you are wandering and tripping and squinting and squealing.
Also, some hole-y, derelict, work boots circa 1991, which I still happen to have for occasions such as this.
When we got there–to my very own version of Canada’s Wonderland–I said hello to my first love at the gate:
Toyota Land Cruiser – SWOON!
After I bid my first love a tearful goodbye, we went in. We were armed with bug juice, hats, water (not nearly enough for a junkyard extravaganza, it turned out), a gigantic toolbox and an additional bag of tools (and some socket sets and a first aid kit that we left in the car “just in case”.)
I was with Practical Man, after all. Who needs safety vests and liability clauses when I have him?
Soon enough, I found my second love:
Soooo pretty, pretty.
And then, my third love:
How can my second love compete with my third love? Third love is really a Colin Firth kind of truck and you know you don’t find those trucks every old day of the week. I think our vintage Boler travel trailer really needs a vintage truck companion, don’t you? A Colin Firth kind of vintage truck companion (I hope I’m not getting above myself).
Then, there was a very exciting PILE. You have to have a heart of stone, not to love a junkyard PILE.
We were looking for trailers so that we could source a screen door (to re-make into a teeny, tiny Boler-sized screen door) and maybe even some outside cubby doors. There were lots and lots of cars. There were only a few trailers and they were scattered far and wide through the junkyard.
All the better to ensure the tripping and wandering and dreaming and squealing.
There were fallen-down trees (this junkyard was kind of in a forest) and tall grass (all the better to hide lyme-disease carrying ticks in) and lots and lots of poison ivy.
But, there were also beautiful sparkles of broken safety glass:
And lace-like patterns shining in the sun:
There were old soul vehicles: the ones that rest quietly among the trees and grass, like silent guardians over a sacred place.
We finally settled on our donor vehicles and got to work. Practical Man’s modern-day tools made short work of the harvesting of parts in this old-timey junkyard. No aching wrists from manually unscrewing scores of rusted hardware. Just a few short bursts from the cordless drill and we were victorious: two cubby doors and an RV screen door for our Boler!
And in this place where beauty and ruin are best of friends, I found the unlikeliest of treasures:
One succulent explosion of summertime flavour.
It’s strawberry season at the scrapyard.
Tra-la-la.
Last week, I traded maple syrup for mold.
What, what, what?
Yep. You see, around these parts, it’s maple syrup season. I wrote about the details of this rural Canadian pastime last year. Basically, it means a whole lotta:
- gathering of sap
- obsessively clicking The Weather Network’s website to see if the conditions will be right for sap flow
- collecting sap into barrels and piling snow from around the yard against them so the sap won’t spoil
- obsessively clicking The Weather Network’s website to see if the conditions will be right for sap boiling
- spending from early morning until evening standing over a giant, homemade, sap-boiling extravaganza while sticky steam gives you a sort of reverse facial and, if you’re me, you somehow get a sunburn on your legs, even though you’re not really an outdoor girl and you probably only helped for a grand total of 15 minutes AND you were wearing two layers of clothing
- skimming and scooping and skimming and scooping and thwacking the thing that you used for skimming to get the sludge off and then some more skimming and scooping
- and so on and so on…for about 4-6 weeks
Practical Man l-o-o-oves this time of year. He is in his element. That is, out in The Nature, that I love not quite so much, and making something out of mostly nothing.
What could be better?
He looks cute in his lumberjack shirt and he smells of yummy wood smoke after a day of boiling sap, so I go along with it.
What can I say? I am weak for wood smoke and plaid clothing.
Anyway, the whole maple syrup thing, while quaint and stereotypical for some of us rural Canucks, is a LOT of work. There are many more bullet points I left out of my list above, because I thought you’d get tired of reading them (and I know I get tired just writing them) and I definitely get tired doing more than a few of them, so I am pretty much only a sporadic cheerleader, inept and inconsistent skimmer, lunch runner and such.
I’m basically maple syrup middle management.
Luckily, Practical Man is not a complainer by nature. Even though he’s married to a person who is a complainer about The Nature.
During one of the sap boils this season, I realized I had a bonafide excuse for getting out of maple syrup work and I gleefully embarked on it.
Dressed to kill, as you can see:
We have recently met some new Boler Buddies–people who are in love with the cute, vintage, marshmallow-shaped trailers known as Bolers in Canada and Scamps in the US–and we have offered to fix up their trailer a little, so they could try camping in it this summer.
This is our Boler Buddies’ Boler…but I’m sort of pretending it’s ours, even though I’m obviously giving it back once we’ve finished with its spa treatments.
Having two Bolers on our property made me as giddy as a Practical Man, boiling sap.
Tra-la-la!
So giddy, that I didn’t mind at all the first job involved with the little jewel: scraping the un-adhered interior paint, applied by a previous owner, where it had been disguising some fairly extensive surface mold.
Mmmmm. Mold.
And you thought my breathing apparatus getup was just for fun.
Scraaaaape.
Scraaaaape.
Scraaaaape.
I was scraping with a cool, rounded scraper thingy that only a Practical Man would own. It didn’t damage any of the interior insulation (called Ensolite) but it niftily scraped off the loose paint.
From outside the little Boler, it sounded as if a very large rodent was trying to claw its way out. But really, it was just a very large rodent who was not helping with the sap boil, whatsoever.
Ha!
Inside the Boler, there was lots of flaking paint. Lots of surface mold. But, the definite bonus was that I could pretend I was Darth Vader with a sunburn.
I do recall he was pasty like me, when they took his mask off.
Anyway, my arms jiggly from the scraping (yep, that’s why they’re jiggly), I then got to use one of my favourite tools: the shop vac.
Wee-whoo! I love me a shop vac.
Lady Gaga and I shop vac’d the flaking paint up a storm (and chipmunk droppings accumulated during the Boler’s 14 years bravely surviving The Nature). There may have been some gyrating hips, I do confess.
What happens in the Boler, stays in the Boler.
Tra-la-la.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2016. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
Tra la la. It’s finally happening: the heady days of March in southern Ontario.
Oh sure, there have been blizzard warnings (and worse–actual blizzards!) the last three Wednesdays in a row, but that can’t drag me down because I know, with a cheesy song in my heart, that Spring is just around the corner.
Practical Man, out in the Spring weather.
Yes, indeedy.
That mythical, magical time that we collectively fool ourselves into thinking is in March–when actually, let’s face it people, it’s really May–but no matter, it’s time to start psyching ourselves up for it. Watching for any sign, no matter how teensy-weensy.
Ahhhhhh. Spring!
Is that an above zero Celcius breeze I feel tickling my neck?
Is that the asphalt/gravel on my driveway peeking through already?
How time flies (when one is pretending one is on vacation with the rest of the country, in the Caribbean)!
This is how we Canadians survive the winter: we pretend we live in Victoria, BC. We pretend winter only lasts from after Christmas until late February, unless of course that pesky rodent–friend to no one but The Weather Network (I mean, how can they lose?) on February 2–dooms us to what we all know is inevitable anyway:
that is, It’s Still Winter.
But, let’s not go there.
Surely, Spring is on its way. Just around the corner. Past that eight-foot high pile of dirty snow in the parking lot.
Surely.
I can tell that Spring is nearly here by the way the complaining from my fellow Ontarians gets louder around this time in March. Even though we’ve barely had three weeks of real winter this year, it’s already begun with a vengeance. Yes indeedy, we love us some complaining about the weather.
It’s too CO-O-O-O-L-D! (Only Rolling Up The Rim appears to provoke any joy when it’s cold outside.)
Too much S-N-O-W-W-W-W-W!
Then, a few short months later:
It’s too HO-T-T-T-T!
It’s so H-U-U-U-U-MID!
No wonder Mother Nature is confused.
I can also tell it’s nearly Spring by the way the light changes. The changing light signals my urge to compulsively start sewing things for our vintage Boler travel trailer and our vintage, Fiat 500.
Useful things, like bunting and flowery pillow head rests.
Bunting I am making to festoon the Boler. I love festooning!
I’m like a pregnant woman in her third trimester (or a Canadian on the brink of March).
I’m nesting, yep. God knows there are no birds doing that yet, even though, it’s practically (insert hysterical giggle here) Spring!
And, lest you think this is some sort of vintage-inspired female hysteria, men are not immune, either. Practical Man has been sniffing the air for weeks now. Air sniffing and more recently, hole drilling. Nary a maple tree in these parts is safe from his scrutiny.
It’s March after all. The season of joy, the season of nature’s bounty, the season of MAPLE SYRUP!
Oh sure, you need an ideal temperature of 3-4 degrees above zero during the day and 3-4 degrees below zero at night to produce the sap flow necessary for nature’s bounty.
No matter that it’s still -9 plus a windchill.
That doesn’t stop Practical Man from obsessively clicking over to The Weather Network and wielding his trusty tools until there is a tidy sap line just poised for a thaw.
One of Practical Man’s many sap lines, 2016
Tra la la Spring: we are READY for you.
See you in May.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2016. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
We were camping last weekend in the Boler.
AKA Twinkle Tows: the vintage travel trailer that I l-o-o-o-ve.
It needs a paint job on the outside but we re-did the inside a few years ago.
Pretty, pretty.
The owner of the mega-apartment-building-sized, it’s got walk-in-closets-kind-of-slide-outs trailer parked next to us last weekend came over for a little chat. He was all “oh, isn’t that just too cute” and “you don’t see many of these anymore”.
In other words, J-E-A-L-OUS.
Even though he has a walk-in closet and on board shower and a/c facilities.
The Boler has that effect on people.
I fall hard for the Boler every time I see it, too.
I love the wind-out windows that you can keep fully open during a hot night’s rain.
Pitter patter, pitter patter.
I love the original avocado green stove.
And range hood.
Very vintage, 70s – tra, la, la!
Practical Man and my dad made the doors from ash trees on our property.
They added the flowers with a minimal amount of sighing.
Before I go to sleep in the Boler, I like to wiggle my toes while lying on the dinette/bed and stare in wonderment around the little marshmallow-shaped interior.
Y’know, just for maybe an hour or so.
Wiggle, wiggle. Giggle, giggle.
Ditto for the mornings.
Wiggle, wiggle. Giggle, giggle.
Practical Man just smiles (and sometimes rolls his eyes the teeniest bit) while I’m doing this.
But, he loves the Boler, too.
I can tell by the way he doesn’t really complain about the (optimistically-named) “double” bed being slightly squishy even though he has to share it with someone who tends towards active dreaming (about buying more Bolers) and snoring and stealing the covers.
I can tell by the way he keeps a running list of “stuff the Boler needs”.
I can tell by the way he agrees to pay for camping, even though he’s a northern Ontario boy who defines camping as “parking on Crown land because why oh why would you ever pay for camping?”
And then, when I twirl happily to the creek side on our (NOT free) campsite, wearing my snazzy new trailer/Boler pants (check out the ankle ruffles!) that my aunt, Heather-the-Feather, gave me:
Okay, there might be a little more eye rolling but that quickly turns into twinkles.
Twinkles are the universal sign for “I love you, even though you’re fairly kooky”.
Tra-la-la.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2015. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana, who?
I interrupt this vintage joke to ask an important question:
Do you like orange?
It seems like one of those colours that people have a love it or hate it thing for.
Lately, I’ve been cozied up in this burnt orange scarf.
I’m on the side of love it. Maybe that’s because I learned the magical, mystical power of orange when my friend, Grover, introduced me to Ugly Orange Sweater, way back in 1986.
Y’see, not only is orange the colour of creamsicles and beach vacation toenail polish, it is one of the few colours Grover can really identify, on account of the fact that he has colour blindness.
And, even though he is super talented and great at lots of things including but not limited to gift giving and swinging on non-pinchy-bum swings, Grover couldn’t really appreciate the nuances of periwinkle blue, Tiffany blue, or the colour of a certain Leonard Cohen raincoat.
So, orange it was.
Then came the day that his mom (if I’m remembering the legend correctly) knitted him a gigantic orange sweater. It was (let me emphasize again) gigantic and orange and the wool kind of pilled up and the sweater ended up looking like a gigantic and orange, wearable muppet. Grover (who I also think of as a lovely, wearable muppet, hence his nom de plum) named it Ugly Orange Sweater (U.O.S.) and it became a Thing.
If you don’t get the significance of a Thing to teenagers, you need to stop everything and read more John Green books.
Anyway, ever since 1986, I have loved Grover and U.O.S. and orange.
I found these two melamine plates recently and even though I have enough vintage melamine to host the entire cast of the Mary Tyler Moore show, they had to come home with me.
On account of the orange.
Yep, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Even though I keep putting “tiny house” pics on Pinterest and we’re supposed to be downsizing, not bringing even more stuff that Practical Man gave away in 1976, into the house. And, even though the orange in these awesome plates is not really the same colour as the orange in U.O.S.
Anyhoo.
These are vintage Maplex (from Toronto, Canada). And, even though I’m definitely down-sizing, I just love their funky, flower-power motif.
Of course I do.
They go so well with the vintage daisy Pyrex (that my friend Shades gave me) and the vintage orange melamine (that we found in the melamine-mecca of Ompah, Ontario two years ago) and the little Japanese creamer that almost looks like the same flower-power pattern (that I found for 10 cents on a sunny morning of yard sale-ing with my sister-in-law in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, four years ago).
It’s as if they were all meant to be together, from the beginning. So, if you happen to find this Maplex pattern anywhere (I can’t find it, even online), please save it for me because, these would look great in our vintage Boler trailer.
Yes Indeedy, I am incurable.
It might be Grover’s fault. Too much cozy orange scarf and not enough non-pinchy-bum swings or U.O.S. sightings.
Or something.
But in the end, all that really matters, of course, is:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?!
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Copyright Christine Fader, 2015. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet
One more confirmation this week and with that post title:
Yes, indeedy, I am one of those strange, childless people.
Stop snickering.
Case in point: it’s October in southern Canada. The leaves have tarnished to beautiful shades of russet, scarlet, sunflower and indigo and the darkness has started descending before 7:00 pm. That’s right around the time my body starts poking me with messages of “why aren’t we in bed? It’s dark! Darkness means we should be in bed!”
Flower decal on our Boler travel trailer. Practical Man tolerates this flourish with only minor rolling of eyes
My body is rather bossy when it comes to sleep. October also means that the time for hot summer nights with the sunroof open and the music loud, having my summer romance with my car is over, over, over.
Our vintage Fiat 500 has to snore away the winter in a cozy building (luckily, it only takes a tiny, tiny corner). 
No more waking up in the morning to open my eyes and admire the inside of our pudgy Boler travel trailer, resplendent in its vintage loveliness.
No air conditioning, tiny bed, avocado green appliances. A world of retro goodness all wrapped up in an adorable fibreglass shell. 
Love it, love it. This summer has been busy, what with re-building after the fire last November and the giant mole that’s been digging holes all across our lawn.
At least, I think it’s a giant mole.
A very large rodent has apparently been digging in our lawn
It looks a lot like Practical Man grinning, atop a borrowed Kubota tractor, as he digs a ditch for a new power cable to the shop building.
All too soon, it will be winter. My vintage babies will be stowed away in their buildings, like hibernating bear cubs.
I picture them snoring which is perhaps unlikely, but so cute.
Doesn’t our Boler look lonely?
There they snore and sleep and sigh the winter away, cozy and warm. But, not as accessible to my every whim of affection.
The season of separation has barely begun but already I need to visit them, way across the yard, near the forest and all the nature.
And, possibly a man-eating cow.
I make the treacherous journey and then, I sit in them. I talk to them. I giggle a lot.
In the Boler, I dance and lounge on the couch and sometimes pretend I am Laurie Partridge from The Partridge Family.
This couch turns into a bunk bed suitable for people who are not 5’9 like I am
Shoop, shoop. Sometimes, Zzzzzz, Zzzzz, if it’s nearly dark and my bossy body is insisting I should be in bed.
In the Fiat, I review double clutching (and sweat a bit about my first attempts at this next summer) and caress the steering wheel a little.
Look at that sophisticated dashboard!
Okay, there might be some kissing involved.
But just on the door.
And the roof.
Strictly first base stuff.
I l-o-o-o-ve my vintage babies. I love real babies too. But, weird and childless as I am, I have noticed that vintage babies don’t grow up, leaving me in their newly-sophisticated dust. Vintage babies stay cute and portly, forever.
Even when they look slightly nose-y when shot at an angle that does not elevate their best features.
The fiat’s “moustache” view, complete with dent. Re-built workshop will be the scene of much TLC and pampering of our little Fiat this winter.
Zzzzzzzzzzz. Can’t wait for Spring.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2013. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet You might also like my latest book.
“Could you call me Cordelia?”
Such was the plea of literary character, Anne of Green Gables, who disliked her plain name and was often in “the depths of despair”.
I’m not quite in “the depths” (it takes lack of sunshine and being out of ice cream to put me there), but I do get nervous when it comes to naming. After all, bad name-related things can happen to anyone, in real life and in literature . Kevin Henke’s loveable mouse, Chrysanthemum, who had always basked in her moniker, had a crisis when she went to school.
Who knew kindergarten mice could be so cruel?
I perhaps do more naming than the average person, although I don’t have children or pets. I write children’s stories (lots of loaded naming decisions there) and disguise my friends’ names for this blog (lots of amusing naming decisions there) and I have a mini collection of vintage vehicles. A vintage vehicle has such personality that I think it just naturally begs for a name.
If you think that’s ridiculous, remember, I have named derelict buildings that have tried to kill me and that I’ve known for a mere 30 seconds, too.
So, name the vehicles, I do. Even though, there are some that advise against it. They seem to think that
- it’s tacky and low-brow, or
- it’s sort of like naming a farmyard chicken or cow that you’re later going to eat for dinner.
Professional distance is the sensible advice one is given.
But, I’ve never been one for sensible advice. Even though, I have discovered that naming a car can be more than slightly dangerous to my heart, in case they happen to be lost in a fire.
Still, I persist. And now, I need your help.
First, a little background:
Naming our 1973 Beetle was easy: it was yellow and white and daisies are my favourite flower.
Such a cutie. Gone to the great motorway in the sky.
Said beloved car, lost in fire last November 24th. Slight pause for tissues here…
Okay, I’m back.
Our 1974 Boler travel trailer had an obvious in-memoriam-inspired name because it was purchased with the help of our Grandma Helen.
Still deciding on what colour to paint the exterior.
I’m pretty sure her spirit hangs out in the Boler when we’re not using it.
That makes me happy.
Another slight pause for tissues…
Our not-vintage, red, small SUV started off as “The Chariot of Fire” and got refined to “Harriet the Chariot” and now, simply shortened to “Harriet.”
Even Practical Man sometimes goes along with the naming of a practical vehicle. Especially when an attack deer hit Harriet last year and we nearly lost her, even though she had saved our lives just the day before in a wilderness survival dilemma of mythic proportions.
I really should buy stock in tissues.
Now, to the subject of my dilemma: our 1970 Fiat 500.
Object in picture is (even) smaller than it appears!
I wanted to pick a name that fit its diminutive size, Italian origins and my lean to the whimsical.
I ended up with Thumbellina, like Hans Christian Andersen’s tiny fairy. We spelled it deliberately wrong so we could use Bellina for everyday.
Bellina means approximately “small, cute, beauty”, in Italian.
But, now that the Fiat has been around for a while, it’s becoming more and more apparent that its name doesn’t quite suit.
Our 2013 Fiat 500 seems more like the Bellina of the family – small, cute, beautiful and BOSSY. She’s got a raging case of “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!-you-have-had-your-seatbelt-off-for-exactly-2-seconds-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!-to-drive-up-the-driveway-with-the-mail-and-I-am-going-to-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP-until-you-put-it-back-on-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!”
2013 Fiat 500 (left) – The Bossy One
She just seems like a Bellina.
Bossy, bossy Bellina.
It even has alliteration, to which, you may remember, I am addicted.
For the 1970 Fiat, I’m leaning now towards Gnocchi.
It’s kind of shaped like a little gnocchi, isn’t it? And, I l-o-o-o-o-ove gnocchi. They’re like eating little pillows of heaven.
Even though, I realize that’s not grammatically-correct Italian. One car: but “gnocchi” is plural.
Little pillow (singular) of heaven, then.
So cute.
Now, I’m befuddled. Is it low-brow and tacky to change a car’s name after it’s already been anointed?
I don’t know how you parents, with babies to name, can possibly commit. Should I:
- Stick with Bellina?
- Change to Gnocchi?
- Or, or, or, what about Polkadot?
As long as you don’t suggest Cordelia, I’m taking votes.
Copyright Christine Fader, 2013. Did you enjoy this post from A Vintage Life? Share on Facebook Tweet You might also like my latest book.
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