A moving experience. Also an orange Kubota.

The participants in this particular adventure told me that they did not want to see a post called “Four Old Guys and a Kubota.”  They know me so well.  OK, early on a coolish summer day four experienced Wilkinson museum volunteers of the male persuasion assembled at the Sheltons’ cottage in Torch Lake Village.  Their mission: to remove a valuable donation from its longtime location and transport it a couple miles up the highway to the museum.

There were, of course, challenges.  As the solutions involved trucks, chainsaws and a Kubota, the guys had a wonderful time.  I don’t believe you can find six guys in the whole Township who could resist that particular combination.

I’ll bet the slideshow’s loaded by now.  Here you go.

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Thanks and congratulations to the volunteers: Daugherty Johnson, Dick Claar, Jim Mottern, and Dick Hendershott.  Thanks to the motorists who slowed to pass our cavalcade as it processed regally up the shoulder of US-31.  And thanks to the Sheltons, who were happy to see their family heirloom go to a good home.

So the Wilkinson Homestead Historical Society is the proud possessor of a vintage privy.  At its August meeting it will have to sort out the best way to display the new acquisition and write up some rules about it.  And you thought all we did around here in the summertime was to drift along in our bass boats admiring the sunsets.

There is, of course, a moral to our story.  No matter where you live, you will eventually have occasion to deposit items you no longer require into an appropriate waste and/or recycling receptacle.  Over the years, we have made certain advances in our understanding of “appropriate” in this context.  As it happens, you will have an entirely appropriate opportunity to deal with pesky unwanted items like oil paint and household batteries and expired pharmaceuticals on

. . . which has been recycled itself into Torch Lake Yoga.  (Mike Collins, who purchased the property earlier in the summer and has been fixing it up to good effect, was very nice about letting the event go forward at the planned location.  Very nice.)

If you oversleep and miss the Eastport collection, you can trundle down US-31 to Elk Rapids and participate in the afternoon HHW collection at the government complex on Bridge Street.  If you want to know more, please call the Antrim Conservation District at 231.533.8363.  I have already told you all I know and maybe then some.  Anything more would be inspired guesswork on my part.