“This, milord, is my family’s axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y’know. Pretty good.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
Since 1831 there have been many fixes to the old building that we are working so lovingly and hard on in Rabbit Hash. The sign has changed with various owners, it has been repainted and re-roofed, main beams and pillars have been switched out. Tongue in groove siding went up to hide the old aging barge timbers that were once it’s only walls. Additions were added to create space for increased commerce, as were iron bars to hold it in place when the waters rose and filled the store to the attic. Whatever ravages were left behind with the receding floods were accessed and corrected.
In this way our store is like our family’s axe. We can’t restore it to it’s brand new condition, because it had already been gently changed throughout the years. We do promise, however, to bring it back to the way it was on the afternoon of February 13th, 2016. And it will be a pretty good store.
