Skip to main content

Revisting an old Inspiration

Sometimes on the side of the road there are historic places that almost everyone passes by without realizing they're still present. While out on our drive my guy and I stopped to revisit one, the remains of a sugar mill from 1825.

The only thing that protects the place is a chain-link fence, through which I took these pics. It's incredible to stand so close to something so old.

Compared to modern factories the ruins seem so small, barely larger than a house. Local lore tells us while using the first steam-powered cane-crushing mill in the region, Dummitt produced sugar and rum at the mill with the help of approximately 40 local Indians and 100 slaves. In turn, the Indians traded fresh game for the mill’s products.

It's a very quiet spot. Each time I go there I try to imagine 140 people working at the mill, most not by choice.

This is another place for which I want to write a story one day; perhaps a mystery of something found at the mill by a slave. It has that kind of slightly eerie presence when you look at it, a ruin still concealing an old secret.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gifts

This is a story that starts out very sadly, so if you're depressed by the holidays you might want to skip the first part. As far back as I can remember I've dreaded the holidays. Being poor, having constant family troubles and belonging to a strict religion made that time of year always pretty unhappy. I just hunkered down and hoped to get through without being yelled at or punished because I didn't do something I was expected to do, like sit in church for hours without moving or making a sound while a priest spoke mass in Latin. Gifts were uniformly disappointing, too. My mother usually gave me dolls or socks or underwear for Christmas. I understand now as an adult that she was doing the best she could, and trying to save money at the same time, but as a kid I'd been told good children got what they wanted for Christmas. I was a pretty good kid, but while my friends received new bikes and cool toys and lots of treats from Santa, I didn't. I thought San

We Have Backsplash!

Yesterday my guy and I decided to chose this natural stone as the backsplash tiles for our new kitchen counters (which will be in the same quartz I'm holding at the bottom of the photo.) Since all the bids for installing the backsplash came in very high my guy is going to put it in himself; he's done a bit of tile work in the past, too. I swear there is nothing this guy can't do. :)

Detoxing Results

For twenty-four hours I left these five vintage cigar boxes sit with detoxing agents (baking soda, coffee grinds, dryer sheets, vinegar and Febreze) inside them to see which worked best to remove the tobacco/storage odors that came with them. I then removed the agents and did a sniff test. Before we get into the results, a reminder: none of what I do is ever meant to be expert advice, as I am certainly not an expert at anything. Follow my methods at your own risk, and please first consult an actual antique expert conservator or restorer to detox items that have value for you. Okay, let's see how my experiment worked. Baking soda (left) did nothing to remove the odors. I think if I let it sit for a longer period of time it might have done something, but for a 24-hour test it was a complete fail. Coffee grinds (right) removed 100% of the odors, and left behind definite coffee scent. I like that and think it goes very well with wood, but if you don't like the smel