NaNoWriMo 7

The couple settled into a comfortable habit of rising together in the mornings. While Tom dressed and shaved she made the bed and started his breakfast. After breakfast he went down to open the store while she puttered in the house. She straightened the parlor, scooped the ashes from the fireplace laying in wood for the evening fire. She tidied the kitchen, started the bigger portion of their supper as well as planning Tom’s noon time dinner. With her tasks finished she would go down to the store and relieve Carl for his dinner and anything Tom might need his help with. She found she liked the time she spent behind the counter in the store. She was meeting people in the village and met others as they passed through on the train and got off to stretch their legs or to make a purchase or to give rambunctious children a time to run off their energy. She swept out the back storeroom and tidied the shelves. She took over the inventory and kept Tom abreast of needed stock as well as a suggestion of other items that women would be interested in. As she had taken in sewing to provide for her welfare in the past she also encouraged Tom to expand the millinery goods and notions. Making room in a far corner of the store that had housed and odd mix of items that were not selling well she began to create her own niche. The bolts of fabrics expend and soon filled not one shelf but three. She also stocked spools of thread and buttons to accent the colors in the fabrics they now were carrying. Instead of selling all of the buttons on little cards she put in a small supply of plain standard shirt buttons for replacing those on men’s and boy’s shirts making it easier for the wives and mothers to purchase exactly what they needed without the fuss of having four other buttons they didn’t need at the time. She brought in laces and ribbons, taking time to tie pretty bows and advertising them for girl’s hair dressings to match their daily ware. The sales in this portion of the store had more than doubled in the week since she had stocked the product women needed as well as wanted for their daily fashions. She also made herself invaluable to her customers by giving them examples and demonstrations of fancier stitches, French seams and ideas for embroidery embellishments. Little did she know she had created a buzz in the village and everyone wanted to have “Tom’s wife, Abbey� as a part of their social set. On Tuesday afternoons she walked down to the village church and joined the ladies for Bible study. Occasionally she would be invited for tea at the home of one of the neighbor ladies. She was welcomed into the life of the village and the lives of the people. She wanted to be as gracious a hostess and invite the ladies to her home for tea. The only thing holding her back was the fact she had a kitchen table with two chairs and the rocker and chair in the parlor. At the moment it really wasn’t fitting to have a ladies social. It was with anticipation she awaited the furnishings Tom was being shipped from his uncle’s estate. When the shipment was delivered by train the week before Thanksgiving Abbey could not believe her eyes nor their blessing. She wasn’t sure what exactly she was expecting but she most assuredly wasn’t expecting the quantity and quality of household goods packed up in crates and barrels and wrapped in thick padded blankets and tied with sturdy ropes. As the train car was unloaded Tom needed a trio of wagons to begin hauling things up to the house. Even then the items being offloaded where stacked and piled high on the front shelter of the store, some things sat on the bare ground. She gave up trying to keep up with it all and hurried up to the house to make way for each piece to find its place in their home. She was excited to say the least. The flush on her cheeks told Tom more than words ever could. The furnishings had been tagged so that each piece of a set could be easily identified. There were four bedsteads with matching bureaus and wardrobes. Each of the rooms upstairs would be beautifully accented by the red mahogany pieces. There were also room sized rugs made of wool that had been exceptionally well cared for. Each room was first the recipient of a beautiful rug then the furnishings were brought up piece by piece. The beds were set up with thick mattresses of horsehair padded with cotton and sown into thick coverings of cotton ticking. A long carpet was unrolled down the length of the upstairs hall. Three of the small tables were placed along its length. She just couldn’t imagine someone collecting all of these beautiful pieces in a lifetime. To think they now belonged to her and Tom and filled their home beyond the norm of comfort was thrilling. One of the men called up the staircase asking her to come down they needed her to tell them where to put the pieces being pulled off the wagon that just came up from the store. Out on the porch she was shock to see what appeared to be a giant bed nearly twice the size of the beds upstairs. Merciful heavens the bed was huge beyond any stretch of imagination -the girl who grew up sleeping on a tiny cot for most of her life. There wasn’t much else to do but to have them set it up on the room directly across from the evening parlor. First the men had to bring out her trunks, lay another large rug then bring in the bed parts. There were other pieces of furniture that went with the bed, a tall mule chest, an armoire, a dresser, an oval wall mirror and 2 bedside tables. It took her a moment to layout a floor plan in her head but soon each piece was in place and the room looked comfortable. There was a handsome piano, sofa, chairs, glass door barrister cabinets and small tables that soon filled the front parlor. The opposite front room became the home to a large dining table that easily would seat eight guests along with a side board and two china hutches. Still there were pieces of furniture to be placed. Another small sofa, chair, foot stool, table and glass fronted bookcases were put into the evening parlor she and Tom used nightly. A linen chest was squeezed into the central storage closet downstairs and another similar was placed up stairs in the small work room between the two back bedrooms. A long thin console table was set in the hall along the long wall and much to her astonishment there was a relatively new sewing machine brought in. She had the men put it in the tiny alcove created by the stair risers in the front hall. There was a larger sturdier table and chair set that replaced the tiny table in the kitchen. The current table being placed on the side entrance porch. Not knowing what to do with the other odd bits and pieces she had them take those up to the attic. She would have to deal with those later. There were still the crates and barrels and trunks of household goods to unpack and sort through. Those would have to wait till the morrow. She had the workmen stack them along the front porch and around on the side porch. She would get to them later but right now she had to get Tom’s supper and she intended to hurry down to the store for the ingredients for a good bees wax furniture polish. Every stick of wood would have to be cleaned and polished before any of the other goods could be unpacked. After supper when the dishes had been cleaned and Tom was sitting in his chair by the fire reading the newspaper that had come from Richmond earlier that day, she gathered the ingredients for the polish in her kitchen. Into an empty large coffee can she shaved bees wax and paraffin wax. Setting it on the stove she watched for it to begin melting and gently stirred with a wooden spoon until each scrap had turned to liquid. With a thick cloth she took the can out on the back porch where the air was moving and let the liquid cool just a bit, not letting it begin to solidify but cool down to a temperature that would not ignite when she poured in the turpentine. As the wax and spirits mix cooled she added lemon oil then used the spoon to whip it into a cream smooth paste. She poured the waxes into small tins and covered them with a cloth and left them to sit in the night air and cool. The following morning she would use it polish the entire lot of furnishings that filled the house. Back in the kitchen she had to pull out her grandmother’s recipe book to double check the ingredients for the furniture cleaner she intended to use. If there was something she did know it was that good wood furniture needed to be cleaned and the wood fed before it was polished to shine with wax. Tom’s uncles furniture had been in storage in a train car and sat in an old house for years before it arrive at her door step and she knew it needed both cleaning and feeding. On the stove she set a pot of water to boil. Over it placed a slightly larger pan and to it added olive oil, lemon balm and let it gently steep to draw out the scents and extracts. Once her base oil was finished she removed it to a work space and added to it beeswax and carnauba wax shavings. With those melted she added vinegar and grain alcohol mixing everything well. She knew she could not rush the production of this wood cleaner and took her time to carefully complete each step. Working with flammable materials could be very dangerous and she didn’t fancy a fire in her kitchen. Each step served a purpose. The oils feed the wood, the vinegar cleans the wood, spirits allow the wood to absorb the oils and the wax seals the wood. She wanted to take proper care of the wood furnishings and this was the only way she knew how to do so properly. A couple of times in her efforts Tom popped his head in wondering about the smells. He saw her adding the grain alcohol to the mix and asked if she was preparing a nightly hot toddy. They both laughed at what the ladies at the church would think. As she finished up her recipes and placed them on the table on the porch to settle till morning she prepare Tom and evening drink and she did so from the recipe in her grandmother’s book. Together by the fire they sat in quiet comfort sipping hot buttered rum. Tom passed her a section of the paper and she propped up her feet and enjoyed the ambiance of late evening, the warmth of the fire, the headiness of the drink and comfort of their home.