Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Eagles Have Landed!

Today we saw another Eagle Scout Project completed at what's starting to look like The Smock House Shrine. This time, it's a tool shed in the back yard of Smock House (The photo was taken from the porch of Morback House. Click on the photo to make it larger). The interesting part is that none of the busy buggers you see in this photo are from Sherwood. Tyler Johnson, the Eagle Scout in charge of everyone (he's the one pointing, far right) is from Newberg. Most everybody else is from Lake Oswego. The Sherwood Historical Society welcomes anyone and everyone to the Smock House Shrine, Oregon's (not just Sherwood's) tribute to the 1890s, when small town America was all there was, and you needn't bother running for President of these United States if you could not brag about your small American town roots.

16 comments:

Lilly Morgen said...

I can't wait to put our tools on display!

Anonymous said...

I have some old planes you may have for your display. One is made from a burl from a tree. The blade is too loose to use on my chairs any more. I may just have to come down and build some furniture down there at your toolshed! --John Brown

JayCeeSmock said...

Hey you there, Mister John Brown. You remind me of one of those TeeVee shows I saw one time, where two things are happening at once. In the first scene we see a woman at a yard sale examining some old piece of furniture. In the next scene we see the man who made the article. All through the show he's moanin' and a-groanin' about how he wants to make something, just one thing, that the world will remember. And it's this piece of furniture the woman is looking at, and we have to wonder if she-- think of her as President Polly of the Sherwood Historical Society-- will be sensitive and smart enough to see the agony the man went through in order to manufacture the object which she is holding in her hands.

It was the kind of show that makes us menfolk want to up-chuck when our wives set us down and we have to watch it. But I'll admit, that particular show really caught my attention.

Tell us, Mr. Brown, how would you like the SHSociety to treat your manufacturies?

Anonymous said...

Why is the house a tribute to 1890?

Unknown said...

Because...
The Sherwood Historical Society is dedicated to preserving and interpreting the history of Sherwood and Oregon, linking past events to an enhanced understanding of the present, and presenting it in diverse educational formats.
--Our Mission Statement

In other words, everything we do here is about the history of all of us and how important it is to each one of us.

Anonymous said...

Well, I make everyday household objects. Chairs and tables, mostly.
I know of many a household who would settle for a sturdy chair that would not break beneath them; that would sit on the front porch to put on the boots,or hang some wet hats and gloves upon before a fire. Those chairs would be very old by now, having escaped being used for kindling in a particularly cold winter. --John Brown

JayCeeSmock said...

John Brown, You are so very lucky to have the Sherwood Historical Society to rescue you. Here we are in the 21st Century and thanks to Historian June Reynolds and her Mentor Elizabeth Rhodes of Parrett Mountain Farm-- you are and always will be (at least we hope so) remembered. There is some point in the future when even Abraham Lincoln and George Washington will be forgotten of course. Nevertheless, for the time being, as long as the world as we know it lasts, thank you June and Liz. And God's grace to you John Brown-- not to be confused with THE John Brown of Harpers Ferry Fame, of course.

Anonymous said...

No, however, he was a hero of mine. We both hate slavery. However, where we part ways is on the issue of war. "Old Osawatomie Brown" took up arms to attack the proslavery faction. That would not be my way. After Harper's Ferry, the Northerners tried to have him declared insane, but they hung him anyway.--John Brown

Anonymous said...

Ahem. Allow me to rise from the dead for a moment long enough to assure everyone that, although the legendary John Brown (the one of Harpers Ferry fame) stood in opposition to me and my sort of gentleman slave owners-- nevertheless, I assure you Mr. Brown was an honorable man. How do I know this? When we hanged him, we made a careful inspection of the body and found that his face still wore the expression of rigid determination as when he was alive. We always "read" the corpse of someone famous, as you know, and publish our findings in the local newspaper in this manner. John Brown passed the test. He was tragically wrong, but still one of us, the sort of person who "stands" for office (we never "run") and opposed civil rights legislation and laws against lynching and all that. Oh yes, we belong to one great fraternity here in the Great Beyond. I haven't stood next to Mr. Brown lately, but I'm sure he would say he's proud to be included in our number.

Anonymous said...

I don't see any egals. Are they building a pen for them in the shed? Why are egals important in Sherwood? Tim G.

JayCeeSmock said...

It's eagles, Tim, not egals. Egals is girls you meet on the internet. Eagles don't live in cages. They live in aeries, which you would know if you, poor child, did not fritter your time away playing Computer Games instead of doing Cross Word Puzzles, the way respectable grown up people do.

Aeries exist high up in the air, as in the song about Sherwood's water tower:

"The top of this here water tower,
It reached up to the sky.
The eagles built their nest in it.
You could hear the young ones cry."

Anonymous said...

I wnat to see some of the tools they used back then. Do you have a picture of that?

Ben and Jim

JayCeeSmock said...

Not yet. I don't think the Sherwood Historical Society knows what tools to put in the tool shed. Could you help us? We would not see anything that runs on electricity or gasoline.

Anonymous said...

You could have a saw and hammer and a nail. And a toolbox wod be cool. I could wok with the wood and the naillls.

We could build a tree house for the tree.

Jim Ben

Anonymous said...

Not many people know how to do that anymore. You could show us how!

Anonymous said...

A tree house? When I was a kid, I wanted to build a raft. I would put the raft on Cedar Creek and then I would climb onto the raft and pretend to go to sleep while the raft carried me down Cedar Creek to the Tualatin River and then to the Willamette River and then to the Columbia and then out to the Pacific Ocean to China and Japan.

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