> cool it was in summer .  It all went swell playing chief in the wig 
-wam until
 > one of the girls parent showed up and took the tearful half naked 
girl away
 > threatening to call the cops and put the Kibosh on the party   PY  .

I met my wife, Radha, at the hippy comune in the Birkshire hills of 
western Massachusettes, the town was North Leverett, but so sparcely 
settled you wouldn't recognize much of a town center. The stoney farm 
fields had been stingy to eight generations of old time Yankees, and the 
Hippies were not having it any easier. There was yurt and teepee on the 
edge of the upper field, and an old farmhouse and barn down by the road. 
Between raising their organic vegitables and hemp, the Hippies had 
pulled down half their 200 year old timber framed goat barn, trying to 
repair it, but when it came time to put it all back together they were 
stimied by the pegged mortise & tenon joints and it became apparent to 
them that the timbers really were not tinker toys. I lived down the road 
with the historic house restoration crew, which was busy restoring an 
18th century farm house in Colrane. Well, it was getting into October 
and even the Hippies knew the snow would be flying soon, so they came to 
our crew for help and I got the assignment. Long story short: I carved 
scrolls on the rafter tails one day when the hippies thought it was 
raining too hard to work, I saved Radha's 18-month old son, JonKrishna, 
from certian death when he was discoved crawling across a 10" beam 22' 
off the ground; Radha and I held hands at the bonfire on Thanksgiving 
Day which was lit to get rid of all the rotten timbers and celebrate the 
completion of the goat barn reconstruction. The end of November I left 
the restoration crew to set up my own woodworking shop on Cape Anne, the 
little spit of land reaching out into the Atlantic on the easterly 
waters of Massachusettes Bay, north of Boston. The day before Christmas 
Radha and JonKrishna arrived on Cape Anne knocking at my door with 
fourteen bushels of organic squash, carrots, turnips, rutabagas and 
kolrabi. I though anyone ariving with a winter's larder would be worth 
taking in. Radha worked with me as an appretice in the shop, but by 
summer our relationship had become, shall we say, somewhat more 
intimate. We've been together ever since.



John
by hammer and hand great works do stand
by pen and thought best words are wrought


John Leeke, American Preservationeer
Historic HomeWorks
26 Higgins St.
Portland, ME  04103
207 773-2306
[log in to unmask]
www.HistoricHomeWorks.com

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