Acting Governor Earl Ray Tomblin to 'Meet & Greet' at The 123

Meet & greet with the Governor of our great state of West Virginia

Questions?
You can get answers here:

The Grafton 123
Thursday September 29, 2011
3-4pm

Meghan King Johnson

Meghan King Johnson has a beautiful voice.
It's taken me quite some time to post these pictures, but only because we've been busy (yay!).

If you didn't see Meghan last week, I'm sorry you missed it.
However, you're in luck:
We liked it so much, we wanted to do it again.

March 7 beginning at 7pm, Meghan has agreed to play for us again.
Don't miss it this time; it'll be worth it.

My favorite parts were the sing-along songs ;)

Railroad Night Report: The Past & Future

We had a double turn out.
An early crowd:

And a later crowd:

A woman engineer/designer for the B&O when women in jobs of such import was unheard of, jewelry/watch shops in downtown Grafton, cinders covering the town...

Our railroad history is a fascinating and valuable part of our past; it can be a part of our future, too.

While the railroad memorabilia (The Wonder Drink Company!) and memories were worthwhile & fascinating....

...the greatest part of the evening, for me, was what can best be described as 'generativity.'

To use Erik Erikson's word, 'Generativity' is the need to do something productive and worthwhile with one's life in order that there be something to give to the next generation.

The past: Grafton was a railroad boom town that burgeoned with industry & ideas.

The future: Grafton's rich history is the foundation for building a solid tourism-based economy that will allow us to share our memories and keep them alive.

We can look over our shoulder at where we've been, but we have to look toward the future to give something worthwhile to our children and grandchildren.

Grafton was, is, and will be a good place to call home (or if you're not so lucky, just stop in for a visit when you can).

Thank you, Ray, for sharing with us.

I hope that you'll consider doing it again.

The Grafton 123 Coffee

The Grafton 123 Private Label Coffee is simply the best.
Exclusively blended and freshly roasted for The 123, our coffee is world-class.

Whole Beans are available for purchase at a competitive price.

also available:
Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans


The Grafton 123's new Web Store is currently in the planning stages.

Taylor Made

Wow.
The Taylor Made concert on Saturday was magnificent!

The best part:
On such short notice, everyone pulled together to make it happen.
We had a great turnout (300-500 people) and the music was well worth it.

I'll post pictures soon.

Thank you!

Tourism

Blogger's photo upload isn't working right now, so this post isn't what I thought it was....

Over at MKStover.com, I've been posting about my trip to Oregon.
I went to Oregon for a Coffee Business/Barista Training and took a gazillion pictures of neat things.
Mainly, I was interested in the little town and its history and attractions because Grafton has the potential to be a major tourist attraction (International Mother's Day Shrine, The B&O Railroad Heritage Center, Tygart Lake, Grafton National Cemetery, The West Virginia National Cemetery, and more - see The Taylor County West Virginia site for links and info) and it's good to see other places who have made that potential a reality. Grafton has made major strides towards realizing this economic foundation and I like to think I'm helping it along a little bit.
As a matter of fact, I've been posting so much about the little Oregon town that I have not even touched on the Coffee side of the trip; I plan to, but not in depth. Instead, you'll have to visit us when we open and taste for yourself.

Entryway Construction - Part 3

PC, PR, & Curtis opened up the doorway last weekend.
Here's PR:






This has been the plan all along, but it's one thing to visualize an idea and something else to actually see it become reality. I was excited when I went down Saturday morning and walked through the wall for the first time.
Look at that! A doorway!


I'm still fascinated with the brick work from more than a century ago.
Here's the cross section of the cut in the wall:

If you look closely, you can see wooden wedges in some of these brick courses (more on this later...).

And inside looking out:

The line of sight looking down Main Street is amazing! This is exactly what we wanted to see even before the very first inspection hole PC cut in the brick.
[See the red caboose?]

Exciting!

Entryway Construction - Part 2

This brick is at least 118 years old:

These bricks are solid and heavy and now they're in a pile in the parking lot.

See?


It's the first layer of bricks in what will be the doorway.




Looking up:


There are rafters since the last time I posted!






I wanted to get a view from the caboose park so you can see our front entry way from there:


Next time I think I'll go even further down the street and snap a few pictures, too.

I'm getting ready to write a post over at the Taylor County West Virginia Blog about the Caboose Park and I'll add a link that hooks in over here (*link added), too. The caboose is a part of the Civil War Discovery Trail.
Here's a link to West Virginia Tourism's Civil War Discovery Trail page. It doesn't even list this as a stop. It does list the Grafton National Cemetery, though.

Not So Weird Load and Unforeseen Circumstances

Over at MKStover.com (in this post) I mentioned weird loads, or, more properly, 'Weird Load.'

Well, this load wasn't so weird, but it's worth mentioning again -not because of the weird factor, but because of the pain-in-the-you-know-what factor- even though you already know what the cargo was used to build.

It's poplar wood, freshly cut to order, loaded up and ready to go:



Only PC's truck decided it wasn't going anywhere (this is the pain-in-the-you-know-what factor I was talking about):


The radiator blew up - cracked beyond repair.

PC is a mechanical genius -among other types of genius. If something has to go wrong, PC is the guy you want to have around because he can fix it (or build it or whatever needs to be done).



I'm throwing this picture in here, too, because of the trailer sitting next to PC's.
See it?


'Eager Beaver' automatically qualifies anything that's hauled on that trailer as a candidate for the 'Weird Load' label.

Entryway Construction

The trees from the caboose park (I'll come back and add a link for the caboose park here* edited to add link) cast long shadows that climb up the western side of The 123 in the early evening calm. From this distance, if you're looking, you can see the timber framed skeleton of the new entryway's gable:


The sky is a beautiful, brilliant blue against the emerald green of the hills (yep, those are the real, vivid colors - I didn't photo-shop anything).

Here's the close-up with the temporary bracing:




After the main timbers were set, PC drills into the fresh, clean poplar wood in preparation for tightening everything down with lag bolts:




This is a wider view that shows just the two main timbers. The other fellow in the picture is Curtis, who has been helping with the entire exterior construction process (Thank you, Curtis!):




The timbers are supported not only by the columns, but will also become a permanent extension of the old building's brick construction. The first layer of brick was pulled away to allow the butt-end of the timber into the wall:


The older-than-a-century brick and mortar is tenacious; it is painstaking work to chip out a small hole like this, a tribute to the construction techniques of stone masons of the past (last year, September, probably, I did a post on the three-bricks-thick interlocking building method of the 1800s).

Four Columns

Here are the pictures with all four columns:



My trusty old mini-van sits quietly in the parking lot.
I haven't been driving it a whole lot because it only gets about 18 miles (20 highway) to the gallon. At $4/gallon, that doesn't get me very far.
I'm fortunate to have a little-bitty car that gets almost 35miles/gallon, so my van only gets used when I need a truck because, although it only get 18mpg, PC's truck gets even less.








I can't wait to get the roof on this!

Front Door - Overhang Support Columns

Here's where I get to show you how those squares of concrete with anchor bolts are put to use.

PC stood these columns Saturday morning in the rain. He was happy to get them out of our garage and we are both excited about more visible progress (my interior progress is much slower, though not quite invisible - I'll tell you more about inside later this week).

Here's the first one standing:



He had the base plates of each column lined up perfectly on the trailer so that he could pull them over the edge and line them up exactly where they needed to be to get the anchor bolts in place before standing them.



Perfect fit!
PC did a great job planning everything out (I'm not surprised; he's very good at this type of thing).








Yep, they all four went up, but these are all the pictures for today. May is a very busy month and I have a million other things I have to get done today - including a couple of hours of sanding at The 123.

Check out the TaylorCountyWestVirginia.blogspot.com to see a sampling of the international attention Grafton has been getting and why May is so busy - and there's lots more to come!