The Blog

    Now that the New Year is upon us, my computer seems to be covered with ads touting various diets and physical fitness schemes. I always thought that this was related to one of those silly New Year’s resolution things where everyone seems to pledge to eat healthier and get more exercise in the new

    Well now that we’ve gotten about a foot of snow on the ground here in Burton (at home, 5 miles South as the crow flies, we’ve got about an inch – they don’t call it the snow belt for nothing!), Winter weather is certainly here. So, of course, it’s time to talk about floodlight

    Last week I talked about the new Jensen steam engines that we just got in for Christmas, well we’ve finally caught up with the calender and decorated the store windows for the season. Our trusty snow men (people?) are in one side and Mary Anne set up a Christmas tree in the other. I

    We’ve been getting set up for the Christmas season at the store, and one of the things on the list that needed tended to was the empty steam toy display case (it wasn’t really empty, but we were running perilously low!). Rectifying this problem involved a telephone call to the good people at the

    Now that I’ve covered the railroad potion of our trip down to Cass, West Virginia, its time to cover the other cool thing we saw. I was perusing the pamphlets at the West Virginia welcome center (as I always do as we travel). Among the fliers pushing Gravity Hill and the world’s only Moth-man

    Last time I wrote about our great trip down to Cass, West Virginia to ride the Cass Scenic Railroad. Of course we rode behind (or in front of) the steam locomotives. These were special logging locomotives called Shays, after their designer. While I touched on it last week, I would like to explain a

    For those of you that are regular followers of my blog (bless your little hearts!), you may have noticed that I didn’t write anything last week. That’s because my wife took me on a special weekend trip to Cass, West Virginia. Why Cass, you may ask? That’s easy, that’s where the Cass Scenic Railway

    Now that the seasons are changing again, it’s not only been getting colder by the day, but it’s also been getting darker too. I especially notice this at the store, all Summer it’s still light out when I leave, but in the Fall and Winter it starts getting dark earlier and earlier and the

    The scarecrows are out, the pumpkins are in and the food is cooked, it’s time for a Fall celebration in Burton! I came up about 11:00 this morning and had trouble getting through town there were so many folks around. I had forgotten that this weekend in Burton brings the Oxtoberfest, the Apple Butter

      Now that Fall is officially here I have decided that it’s about time to get into better physical shape. I’m not much of a runner, and I hate calisthenics, so I’ve decided to get into cycling. I found a classic 1960’s 3-speed cycle under one of the falling down sheds behind the farmhouse and