Windows 2.0

My window sill maybe 1980. The Spring Street studio, my second in Chester. At the corner of Spring and Main. Not much more than 800 square feet with some storage in a loft around the east side of the building. I spent a decade in this space. It was kinda’ cool. Spring was a bit elevated as it poured into Main so my perch looking down on the village offered a lovely vista. I was directly across from Robbie’s Store, an original old fashioned candy store that sadly was sold off to a string of occupants, all of whom ran a food shop or café of some sort. It’s been The River Tavern for a while. They don’t offer egg creams, and the kids don’t congregate at the fountain after school or during the summer months. But they do serve a date pudding that takes forever to make, so you have to know you want it after your meal, and order it before the menus arrive. Or maybe you order it the month before. I forget. Well it used to be like that when we lived around the corner on North Main.

The sill – remember the sill – always had a quirky mix of tools, braze-ons, and figurines. Even though I didn’t have a walk-in trade, I wanted the space to look interesting and even inviting from the outside. The right mix of tchotchkes is all it takes to turn a pedestrian’s head or to make a car pause while the driver strains to make out what it is he’s looking at.