Brick Fail

Getting Mondays off is conducive to cleaning house and running errands; not so much to a social life. Except that Percy teaches night classes, so having Mondays off is conducive to late morning and early afternoon adventures with him.

Earlier in the year, we discovered that the brickyard in CW has helpers : tourists who decide that a part of their ideal vacation includes stomping around in mud. I'm not sure that would be part of my ideal vacation, but it certainly makes the 'burg a cooler place to live. Percy and I decided to spend a Monday churning clay into mud with our bare feet for the purpose of creating bricks.

On our first foray into brickland, the nice lady in the hoop skirt and bonnet told us that they had just fired up the kiln, and it was too hot for anyone to go near the brickyard. She advised us to come back after September 20th. (I have discovered that the nice people who work there are very good at telling people to come back for things.) So this past Monday, Percy and I came back.

When we walked into the brickyard, I saw the two pits that were obviously used for mud stomping. And these two pits were obviously dry. As the friendly brickmaker told the crowd (which consisted of two families with small children, plus the pair of us) they were done with the brickmaking until the summer. Now they just had a stack of bricks waiting to fire.

So Percy and I learned about bricks and brickmaking and the bricks that the friendly brickmaker is making for Mr. Jefferson's school up the road. And planned our next trip to the brickmakers -- next summer. Unless I decide to go back for the firing of the kiln on December 8.