21 June
On
In Madison County, Old Buildings
With

The Madison Flooring Company was started in 1946 by my father and a few partners.  Our family bought out the partners in the early 70’s.  I started working there in the summers when I was 14 years old, and continued the summer time employment all the way through college.  My brother and I ended up running the place after we got out of college and continued there until we finally sold the place to Mountain Lumber Company several years ago.  They have now moved all of their operations back to Ruckersville due to the economy, and the land and buildings are up for sale.  I stopped by and took a few photos one day a couple of weeks ago.

Sawdust bin and trailer loading system for the excess sawdust that we produced.

This building housed the lumber stacker. It was old and worn out when I got there but we continued to use it. A good crew of four people could stack about three tractor trailer loads of lumber in a day. Which is nothing compared to a modern day stacker, but it was enough for us.

Cat 944 loader. We bought it used and it was used to put up logs on the sawmill when I started there around 1974. The engine finally gave out a year or so ago. That piece of machinery did an incredible amount of work over the years. I’m not sure how we would have gotten along without it.
Water treatment and makeup water tank for the old Cole boiler. The boiler was made in 1925 and we used it up until the day the plant closed. The boiler supplied heat for the dry kilns and also space heat for the manufacturing plant. The boiler’s fuel was the sawdust and waste wood produced in the flooring manufacturing process.
Two dry kilns, each capable of drying approximately 60,000 board feet of lumber.

14 June
On
In Mission Trips
With

A few photos from our Mission Trip this year to SOS Memphis.  SOS, by the way, stands for Service Over Self.

It’s about a 12 hour drive from Madison to Memphis, which takes about 14+ hours after food and bathroom breaks.  We spent the night in Knoxville, which is about half way, to give the drivers a little break so we weren’t so tired for the week ahead.

Just passing the time on another Knoxville Saturday night….

The house we worked on for the week. We had the steepest roof of any of the houses they’re working on this summer. The harnesses made it safe, but it’s a lot slower working on a steep roof vs a less steep one.
Our group. Mt Zion had two groups there this week, for a total of 13.
The knot that holds us on the roof. Quite simple and effective.
It always seems we have a chimney to work around on the roof. The side we worked on had not only the chimney, but three plumbing stacks, a hot water heater vent, and two other vents. Our ropes were constantly tangled on some protrusion out of the roof.

The most purchased food in Binghampton convenience stores?  Yep, Cheetos.  UrbanFarmsMemphis.org is trying to change that.  There are no large grocery stores in the Binghampton neighborhood (Food Lion, etc.) and a lot of the residents have to walk to do their grocery shopping.  The only stores available to them are small, neighborhood convenience stores, which have very little fresh fruits and vegetables.

On Wednesday, we only have to work a half day.  So, on our afternoon off, we headed down to the Mississippi River and Beale Street.

Elvis was there.

We try to let the kids try all aspects of construction when possible. We had a few sheeting boards on the roof that needed to be replaced.
Cutting around one of those plumbing vents.
We put tar paper up one side of the roof and started putting on shingles later in the week. Note the nail can perched on the roof vent. If you set the can on the roof without something to hold it there, it just slid right off…..which happend quite a few times…nails everywhere!
Nails in the cross….
04 June
On
In Personal
With

I spent several days scanning photos (slow! scanner) for this….and hunting up older digital photos.

Ellen’s life up to graduation compressed into 3 minutes and 46 seconds.  Those first 18 years just flew by….

18 May
On
In Flowers
With

…in our yard.  I little color for a change since I’ve been posting mostly black and white lately.

07 May
On
In iPhone
With

Sorry, haven’t updated in a while….all iPhone stuff this time, including a little sports..

This first one is by far my favorite.

Even shot a few iPhone photos at the Madison vs Strasburg varsity softball game on Thursday night.

And cows of course.

Waiting while the buses left Waverly Yowell.

Girls soccer vs Strasburg, at halftime.

And finally, baseball vs Strasburg.