Riverbend Journal

While going about spring doing spring things, I have also managed to squeeze in some shop time. Because I don't have a great source of walnut, I had to order mine online and because that means I can't choose my boards, I generally have to order some extra too. It certainly isn't efficient and I wish I had a better source but for now it will do. It also doesn't hurt to have some extra lying around for a small project or accent on a larger project. Above is most of the walnut pieces for the 12-drawer dresser project with the joinery already completed. I still need to order walnut for the top but that can be further down the road. This project is more old school because I'm using traditional mortise and tenon joinery. You can see some both in the above photo. Because wood varies to some degree, I always cut things so the joint is a bit too tight and then fine tune each joint individually using chisels to get the proper fit. Once that has been achieved, I label the join...

I wrote earlier as an intro to a different blog topic that my spouse had lost her job. Her entire clinic had closed, the second one in the last year in our town and one of thousands all around the nation. Back in 2010 when the Affordable Care Act passed over 60% of physicians worked in private practices. Fifteen years later that number is under 40% and falling according to latest estimates. I'm not surprised, not because I dislike the ACA. It fixed some serious issues in our healthcare system. But whenever we change something quickly and without much discussion from those in the know, i.e. doctors, there are likely to be side effects that happen that no one saw coming. This was one of those things. It is what it is. Fortunately, though this clinic was by far the largest in our town and likely a 20 mile radius in every direction, there are still some left. When news broke, my wife and I talked it over and after refusing to retire, we decided we didn't want to move with one kid s...

  During my initial conversation with the Salvage store owner, she mentioned a hand drawn family tree which excited me greatly. I have poured a lot of time and effort into tracking down Kuck descendants over the years in hopes of finding pictures to replace the ones likely lost by my great grandparents in the missing semi incident. After maybe 25 years of searching, I found what I was after in a salvage shop of all places but I am not complaining. Another reason for my excitement is that despite all this research, one branch on this side of my family tree remains the shortest one on my entire tree. I have mentioned it many times on here but my third great grandmother, Mary Meyer Kuck, John Kuck's first wife, died young along with five of her children of diphtheria and left very few records behind, so few, I have never been able to identify who her parents were. My hope was that perhaps this hand drawn family tree might identify her parents.  Above is the very hand drawn family...

  Hopefully you can enlarge the above photo enough to see the morel mushrooms hidden like easter eggs everywhere. It is what I call a mushroom machine and I probably picked over 30 large yellow mushrooms within the frame of this picture. It is not something I find every year but when I do, I am thankful. This one tree alone filled up both the bags we had brought with us so I had to carry those two bags back to the car about a half mile away and bring to more bags which we filled maybe half way. It was my best year in a LONG time for morel mushroom hunting. It is hard to show scale of our haul but this is the largest mixing bowl we own and it is full to the top of morel mushrooms, mostly yellow ones this time around. They are soaking for a bit right now and later tonight I'll cut them in half to check for bugs but seeing that it is still a week or before I normally find them, we saw very few bugs and absolutely no ticks which in a typical year can coincide with the latter parts of m...

  Above is a photo in my "box of stuff" and on the back is written: Feb 22, 1901 Room W, Gridley Inmates - Wright and Kuck. I'm not sure how to decipher what is written other than it likely has something to do with John Kuck. I have looked a bit and haven't found any Gridley that lived in Charles City, Iowa in 1901. Curiously though there is definitely a comma after the "W" and before the "Gridley" which makes me want to interpret as "Room W" and "Gridley".  But three things capture my attention that make me think I know exactly where this room is despite what it written on the back. If you embiggen the photo, look at the pictures on the top of the drop leaf secretary desk and you will see one that is quite familiar. I will post it below for you so so you can see it in more detail. Mine didn't come in a large cardboard frame but this is definitely the picture and is of my 3rd great grandfather John Kuck on the left, his wife...