A Curious Transaction

A couple of months ago, we saw a man sitting out in a field on a stump surrounded by a number of these creatures made from found wood sticks. I was surprised to find this one in a yard in our neighborhood. While taking its picture a voice sounded from behind me (caught in the act...) . "He's rather nice, isn't he?" "I like him", I responded, lamely.

She told me, rather matter of factly, as if things like this happened every day, that she had gotten him in exchange for an accordion. (Now there's an image...) Apparently things like this DO happen every day to her, because it developed that she is an accordion teacher who, more or less by necessity, had learned how to repair accordions. (Who takes accordion lessons these days?) One day a man came to her ("I think he's a homeless man", she said, for she too had seen him around with his menagerie) with an accordion needing repair. "It wasn't worth much", she said. (I might echo that sentiment about ANY accordion...) "but I was able to get it working" so she took the horse in exchange for the repair.

We had a somewhat wide ranging (and one sided) conversation about her garden, her late husband and all the stonework he did in the garden, before I took my leave. But not without some wonderfully fanciful images in my head of the widowed accordion teacher and the homeless man who makes horses out of sticks....