Electrician Sighting at the Lesmeister

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The plumbers have finished their first phase of work at the Lesmeister Guesthouse, with all the underground drain pipes laid and covered. Today gray electrical conduit appeared as the electricians came by to do their underground work. These conduits lie above the plumbing but will be below the concrete floor slab, which will probably be poured soon. It’s nice to see progress taking place every day now.

Gray electrical conduit will bring underground electricity into the building and distribute it throughout the building.

Train Depot Update

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I went by the old Pocahontas train depot today to see the progress. The city road crew is down there re-working the grounds to correct some storm drain problems. They’re also rebuilding the old rail bed to prepare for laying new track to hold the train caboose car the mayor recently purchased for the city.

They have removed the old, deteriorated loading docks to get access to the ground beneath, which they have graded to allow drainage away from the depot and channel it into the concrete storm drain in the foreground.

They have cleared away years of plant overgrowth behind the depot.

Years ago, when the Frisco Railroad ended rail service to Pocahontas, the tracks were removed and the old rail bed grew up in weeds. Now a new crushed stone bed has been prepared, so track can be laid again to support the new caboose the mayor has purchased for the city.

When the Frisco Railroad ended rail service to Pocahontas years ago, the track was removed and the rail bed grew up in weeds. Now a new crushed stone bed has been prepared to hold the new rails that will support the caboose car the mayor has purchased for the city.

Plumbing Progress

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The plumbers are now beginning to make some good progress in getting the underground work in place so a new concrete slab can be poured in the center part of the building. Then walls can begin to go up!

The workers continue to find artifacts as they dig in dirt that has been 3 feet beneath a concrete slab for about 100 years. They have found broken china plates, broken crockery, and a few unbroken bottles, including one today that looks like a beer bottle. I plan to clean up these artifacts and display them in the apartments when they are finished.

In a few months there will be showers and whirlpool bathtubs over these drain pipes!

Tuckpointing: a wonderful thing

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Tuckpointing: The process of repairing a mortar joint in a brick wall. The term comes from the process of tucking mortar into the damaged mortar joint with the point of a trowel called a “pointing trowel.” Tuckpointing is a critical maintenance task and keeps water from entering the brick wall cavity.

Last week was tuckpointing week at the Lesmeister Guesthouse project. One hundred years of weather had eroded the original mortar joints deeply between the bricks of the building, and now all that mortar has been restored. It looks like a brand new 1902 building! In the front they colored the mortar red to match the original. In the back it’s the traditional uncolored mortar.

The plumbers have also begun their work and have the main drain line installed that will drain waste water out of the building. See photos below (click the photos to enlarge them for better viewing, then click the enlarged photo again to enlarge even more. Use your browser’s back button to return here):

All the exposed brick in the rear, and all the stone foundation, has new mortar. They also laid new brick to close up an old window opening (to the right of the white door) since a partition wall was built long ago to divide the buildings basement into two separate rooms. Notice the NEW window opening they have cut to the right of the old bricked-up window. This new window will let light into one of the basement bedrooms.

 

Workers digging the waist-deep trench (the plaster wall in the background ends at floor level) for the main drain pipe for the building.

This large PVC pipe, which will be deep beneath the concrete floor of the building, will carry waste water out of the building. It's the first major new thing in the building. There will be much to follow!

A 39-year load off of my mind

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It was November 2, 1972, my 18th birthday. I was a freshman living in Pomfret Hall at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. When I got home from class that day, the guys in the room next to mine, Scott Mosley and John Sharkey, came to my door with a box for me that had been delivered to their room while I was gone.

It contained a birthday cake, sent to me by my parents who’d had a Fayetteville bakery bake and deliver it. I thanked them, took the cake, went into my room and shut the door. It was months later that I realized I should have offered John and Scott a piece of cake! But by then, I’d moved to an off-campus apartment, and I never saw them again. So for 39 years I’ve felt guilty. Not obsessively so, of course, but it has run through my mind a couple of times a year for each of those 39 years, that on my 18th birthday I was a real jerk!

I had something of an excuse for how I acted that day. You see, on the cake’s box my mom had the baker write, “Happy Birthday, Baby”! I was embarrassed to death that Scott and John saw that (I was the baby of the family, the youngest of three children), and couldn’t get my dorm room door closed fast enough! No excuse, but a sort of explanation.

I’d searched for John and Scott a few times, over the years, but there are lots of John Sharkeys and Scott Mosleys in the world and I never found anything definite, until today. I decided to do a search through LinkedIn, a website where business people make contact with other business people. After some searching I found one John Sharkey, living in Los Angeles, who had a connection to the University of Arkansas. And his LinkedIn photo looked somewhat like the John Sharkey I remember from 40 years ago.

I made contact and it IS him! Upon hearing my story, John said he’s surprised he and Scott didn’t just eat the cake and deny ever seeing it! But in those days in Arkansas, honor was even more important that cake. Through John I’ve now found Scott Mosley. So I’m in the process of finally passing along my apologies and letting them know I owe them each a cake. What’s the bank interest rate on two pieces of cake, compounded daily for 40 years?

So I’ll sleep well tonight, knowing I’ve finally taken steps toward putting right the greatest wrong of my life! I may even have a piece of cake to celebrate.

Stroll the Square: Bigger and Better Than Ever!

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Live music, ice cream, and fellowship as Randolph County turned out last night for our monthly Stroll the Square event. With beautiful weather to help, we had the biggest crowd since the stroll was conceived by James and Mandy Tinker at Black River Beads and Pottery last fall.

Almost every business in downtown Pocahontas was open from 6 to 8 p.m. as people enjoyed mingled in a wonderful spirit of community. I spent most of the evening helping with the first opening of Carroll’s Variety Store on Marr Street across from the still-under-construction Lesmeister Guesthouse. We had a steady stream of visitors last night. The store was packed at times as people came to see what’s new in Pocahontas!

Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives – National Park Service

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I just got word, through my architect, from the National Park Service that the Lesmeister Guesthouse project has been approved to receive “federal historic preservation tax Incentives“. It’s a long term that means a LOT of money for the project. Thanks to the approval of our application, 20% of the cost of the Lesmeister project will be paid for by the federal government (through tax credits). Since Arkansas also has a 25% preservation tax incentive program, another 25% of the project will be paid for by the state government!

So my total cost of the project was just cut by 45%! And that’s not just on the amount paid to the contractor. It also applies to fees paid to my architect, to the engineer who did the initial survey of the property, and all the other professional costs of the project. Hundreds of thousands of dollars saved! And this money saved will be poured back into other projects here (read: the St. Charles B&B) in Pocahontas as many of us work to make our hometown as good as it can be!

New Downtown Historic Markers

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In another project of our Five Rivers Historic Preservation group, last Saturday David Bowlin and I, with a little help from my brother Bill, installed 8 metal plaques on some of the old buildings in the Pocahontas Commercial Historic District. The historic markers give the name by which each building is known locally, its construction date, and a little historic information. We will put up more markers as money becomes available (they are quite expensive).

Each historic marker has space on it for a QR code. Smartphone users can scan the QR codes with their phone to open a web page giving more information on each building, historic photos, etc.

New historic marker on the not-so-new Sanitary Barber Shop in downtown Pocahontas, Arkansas.

My Lucky Horseshoe

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I went by the Lesmeister Building today, looking to see what progress was made Thursday and Friday of this week (the answer is not much, as far as I can see). While standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, I looked down into the dirt where the workers recently jackhammered away the concrete slab floor of the building where it met the sidewalk.

There in the dirt, where it had been sleeping since before the concrete floor of the building was poured over it ages ago, among the rubble of broken bricks and concrete, I saw a horseshoe with the old rusty square-headed nails that once held it on a horse’s hoof. On the back side of the horseshoe the nails are still as a long ago blacksmith left them, bent over to lock them onto the horse’s foot…until the shoe was “thrown” and lost for about a hundred years under my building.

I’ve got to decide if I should clean it, remove the rust, sandblast it back to “new” condition, or what. I’ll put the horseshoe on the wall of one of the Lesmeister Guesthouse apartments, along with the story of finding it, and hope it brings good luck to the old building for a long time to come!

The bottom, or street side, of the old horseshoe, showing the square-headed, hand-made nails.

The top, or horse side, of the horseshoe, with the tips of the nails bent over to lock them onto the horse's hoof, before it worked loose and was lost so long ago.