Letter to the editor

I almost wrote this letter last year, but thought I would be patient. Today is not a patient-type of day, I guess.

Everybody should know that Luther & I have taken care of the Main St. benches for about 10 years now. We have paid for most of the supplies, paint, varathane & wood. The Town of Ekalaka has also donated money if I present them with a bill for supplies. We have provided nearly all of the labor. In 2015, four ladies from Ekalaka came to help me paint them because I could not get to it. At this time of year I am helping with calving, fence repairs & harrowing.

There are about 20 benches that we take care of. I have built all of them. Often the benches need rebuilding, varnishing, priming and painting. We pick them up in the fall and put them out in the spring as soon as possible. Thank you Carter Co Museum for storing them all winter. We used to store them all at the Waterland Ranch.

I have not been able to varnish the cedar benches nor begin priming and painting the white ones. It has not been warm enough for long enough per the label on the can. If I learned one thing from Skeet Hedges, I learned to closely follow the temperature instructions on paint cans!

I don’t recall any thank you’s for the past ten years of volunteering and mostly paying for this project; but alot of complaining when there aren’t benches to sit on if we have ONE NICE DAY!

If there is a different family or club who would like to take on this project for the next ten years, please let me know. Or you could volunteer for calving, fencing & harrowing so I have some time to get benches ready when the weather warms up. Until then, we will have the benches on Main St. as soon as the warm weather allows us to repair, prime, paint (in some cases varnish) and take a few hours to transport them in our horse trailer to Main St. Or I could shave off a day or two if you don’t mind sitting on sticky benches.

Marlene Waterland