The autumn morning sun falls directly onto Lina and Dave’s porch and often these days Lina’s mother, Carol, sits there reading.  Or more like trying to read.  The scene is so inviting that passers-by stop to say “hello” and chat awhile.  Yesterday it was us.

She asked us to come sit and soon  Tucker joined us.  Of course, we stayed longer than intended talking about this and that.  Not surprisingly, the most important topic was the siding on their new addition – beginning to go up as we chatted.  Shingles, which they will allow to weather to that soft gray of old, unpainted buildings.

That’s a bit ironic in a way.  When adding to historic structures in Oysterville, the ‘rule’ is to make the new part different enough from the original so that there is a clear differentiation between them.  In the case of the Wachsmuth cabin, the original siding is horizontal clapboard painted gray so the shingled addition will be clearly distinctive.

We talked, too, about duck hunting.  Apparently they’d had young, duck-hunting relatives visiting and there had been a couple of complaints from the neighbors.  The pop-pop-pop of shotguns along the bay is such a familiar sound in the fall, it always surprises me when someone poses an objection.  In this case, there were concerns of possible trespass and an objection by someone who confused the shotgun with a rifle.   Another sad commentary on changing times…

While the men talked about their own duck hunting experiences, Carol and I chatted about books and book clubs and the local library.  I found myself being quite braggy about our Timberland Library system – how they can get you almost any book you want, even if it’s not in the ‘system’ and how you can order online and pick up your book right at the Ocean Park Library.

As we got ready to leave, Carol pointed out that Nyel and Tucker were dressed somewhat alike and we laughed about the “Oysterville uniform” of retired guys. About then, Tucker got antsy to actually see the shingles going up so we took a walk around the corner with him, finally leaving Carol to her book.