It's a Wrap!



Levi and Mary tape up a box as I retrieve another bowl, still hot from the kiln.


Monday and Tuesday whirled by as Mary, Levi and I worked nonstop on getting the last foot-soaking bowls wrapped in bubble wrap and plastic, and finding two Seagrove potters willing to fire two loads of the bowls so that we could get Levi on the road Tuesday and he could get to Brewster New York to deliver the last pots by 3 p.m. today.

Georgia and Byron Knight of Blue Moon Gallery and Sherry Caldwell-Hohl and Bill Hohl (pronounced Hall) of Caldwell-Hohl Pottery fired the last six bowls for me, as I had a kiln firing as well. But Bill and Sherry's kiln apparently had a thermocouple fail and the firing took 20 hours instead of 15, so we had to crash cool the kiln to get the pots out Tuesday. It wasn't through firing until 8 a.m. Tuesday.

I think it was around 6 p.m. when we opened up the L&L electric kiln at Caldwell-Hohl's. Temperature 420 degrees F.

"I'm going over to Blue Moon to get the other bowls," I said to Bill as the heat billowed into our faces from the opened kiln. "I can't be here when they crack."

When I returned to Caldwell-Hohl's, I boxed up the bowl on the top shelf and removed the shelves to reveal the bowl underneath.

"Let's wait a little while," Bill said. "Come in and have a beer."

Bill and Sherry have a lovely log home, and as I sat down at their bar, quenching my thirst with a Corona poured into a frosted mug, I noticed a beam of light slicing into the space above a huge ceiling beam.

"I could sit here for hours," I told Bill and Sherry.

"That's what everybody who sits here says," Sherry replied.

I finished my beer and hopped up to go place another hot bowl into a cardboard box, hoping it wouldn't burn a hole through the box.

Levi managed to get on the road at 7:50 p.m. Loaded with all of the last 83 foot-soaking bowls, he drove to Virginia and stayed at a hotel, and hopefully will reach the warehouse of Collins Brothers Moving Company before they close at 4 p.m. today.

When I get that phone call from him, telling me he succeeded, and if Bill and Sherry will have me, perhaps I'll go sit at their bar with another cold one - for hours this time.


Popular Posts