I made some more phone calls today. Left voicemails with different people. Finally got the gentleman I needed. He seemed helpful. He required of me a one page document, some other files and a couple of weeks of waiting. So at least that was resolved. Somewhat.
I also had a nice 31-mile bike ride this evening. Just me, myself and the endless hum of my wheels on the road. Even made a dorky little video abut it.
Every road on this route was a familiar one, and that’s OK. It was a day to be aware of the time, and that doesn’t always allow for exploration. Indeed, the pause to make that video took about three minutes and I questioned that in the moment. But I got back to the most familiar roads — the nine-mile square out in front of us, here where the heavy land and the green sands meet — and started the last 12 miles in the gloaming, which gave way to the final five miles in the early darkness. Most of that were on sleep little subdivision roads. But the part just before it, and just before the darkness, I was surrounded by farmland, and this is why I enjoy riding at that time of night.
That, my friends, is worth all of the little bugs you’re trying not to swallow when you ride between two fields.
We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays. For this feature, I’m riding my bike around the county to discover the local historical markers. This is the 47th installment, and the 79th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series.
On a drowsy downtown street, in a town of low slung buildings, this one isn’t too much taller, not really, but it surely does feel like it when you stand back just a bit.
The church is celebrating 165 years. They’ve got a Salvation Army office on the premises and they also do all of the services and ceremonies and mission work you expect of an active congregation.
Their pride is the pipe organ, installed in 1880 after six years of fund raising. A Boston outfit built and installed the thing. Hook and Hastings, we learned in April they installed an organ at the Presbyterian church, which is down the street and around the corner, just three-tenths of a mile away. That organ went in in 1879, and maybe that’s how the company got this commission, as well. The original organ at Broadway church had 2 manuals and 20 stops. Wind was pumped first by hand, then water. They went electric in 1912. Updates in 1929 brought the organ up to 1,306 pipes.
A rebuild in 1961 gave the organ 52 stops and 1,462 pipes, the smallest is about the size of a straw, the largest is a booming 12 by 12-foot wooden box that stands 10 feet tall.
Broadway says theirs is one of the last large pipe organs in the region that is still in continuous weekly service. The man who plays it today has done so for more than two decades.
Next week, we’ll look at a historic house and, hopefully, find out why it is on the national register of historic places.
If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.
