You just never know who you’re going to run into at the end of your driveway.
This past Tuesday, I was already having a great day watching Fanset Construction rip up the end of my driveway to put in a new drainage system.
Bye ditches, bye frozen blocked culvert. Hello flawless flow.
The reason this is so exciting?
Anyone with a gravel road in front of their home will understand. And I’ve had a gravel road out front for the 30-plus years I’ve lived here.
When it’s dry, all the dust raised from within a kilometre invades your home and settles only where dust is most obvious, which you really intend to clean, but that’s when someone makes a surprise visit and sees everything. The shame.
When it’s wet, that gooey gravelly mixture coats the underside of the car you’ve just spent $8 scrubbing at the car wash, then drops off on your recently cleaned garage floor.
Rusts the heck out of the car, too.
So, this drainage system.
Once it is eventually fully installed and landscaped, the next step will be asphalting my street, ending the dust and mud madness always and forever.
Currently, the asphalt stops a block and a bit away, making half my street heaven, and the other half hell.
I mean, I’m a classic car guy. It’s just downright mean to pave the first half of anyone’s street and stop there. Nasty.
So, I am grateful to the universe and our rural municipality for this development.
I’m also grateful for something else that happened at the end of my driveway yesterday. This is kind of mind-blowing.
One of the crew walked over to me, smiled and said, "You’re Laurie Mustard, aren’t you? I read you in the paper all the time."
"Oh, great, thanks," I respond.
Then he said, "Your grandmother was Annie Stilwell (Mustard), right? My grandfather was your grandmother’s brother.
"I’m George Stilwell."
"What?" I said, shocked at what I just heard.
"Yeah," he said with a smile. "Our grandparents were brother and sister."
I am gobsmacked.
Whatever that means.
My Grandma Annie, whom I never met, died of a heart attack in my Dad’s arms in 1933.
That heart gave birth to and raised 10 children. She worked for decades farming until her heart finally had nothing left to give. Grandpa died in 1939. I didn’t get to meet either of them.
There was always lots of conversation about the Mustard side of the family, including my Grandpa Arthur leaving his family in Ontario and running off to the Wild West at the age of 13.
He later homesteaded with Annie. But the Mustard side never, to my knowledge, knew very much about the Stilwell side.
No more. In the spirit of Obama, "Change has come, at the end of my driveway."
George, a devoted family history guy, tells me he has documented all the genealogy for his side of the family and would love us to get together, as would I, and catch up on our collective history.
"Let’s wait until the winter when we have more time," he said.
He’s a busy man. That definitely reflects the energy and spirit Grandma Annie was known for.
So if ever there was a "double the pleasure, double the fun" day, this past Tuesday was it.
I’m still gobsmacked. How often do you go to the end of your driveway to admire a drainage reno and meet, out of the blue, a person you don’t know, who not only is a close relative, but can also tie your whole family history together?
As an added bonus, I have a reason to look forward to winter for the first time ever! Fabulous!
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