Why so ordinary?

So, what, you ask, is all this “ordinary” business?  Well, if you open your Oxford English dictionary and go deep into the entry for the word “ordinary”, you’ll find the following “archaic British” definition of the word: “a meal provided at a fixed time and price at an inn, an inn providing this”.

The road-weary eighteenth-century colonist didn’t have the option of checking into the nearest Hilton Garden Inn with his Delta Skymiles.  Instead, he stayed in an ordinary, where he could park his horses, get a hot meal and a tall glass of grog and a room for the night.  William Reed’s (our) ordinary  was perfectly situated to welcome out-of-town travelers, located a stone’s throw from the courthouse.  It’s at the intersection of several important roads from that era: King Street, the Great Halifax Road and the Old Indian Trading Path.  It’s where the action was, and continues to be.

It doesn’t take much to imagine our basement, as it looks now:

as an ordinary, how it might have looked then:

I suppose I’ll have to start scouring Ebay for scabbards and muskets to hang over the mantel because it’s clear to me that this room must be restored to its “ordinary” state (yes, I’m going to continue to work this pun for all it’s worth).  I’m fairly certain that this project is low on the list of priorities, though some have suggested moving it straight to the top, assuring myself of a nice place to drink and sob when the inevitable sorrows of a lifelong renovation project take hold.

Nothing but ordinary

Things that crazy people do:

1) Befriend inanimate objects.

2) Speak in tongues.

3) Buy houses built in the 1700s with no central air and move into them in triple-digit summer heat.

While I am fond of my cordless drill and have been known to utter words of encouragement as it powers through thick boards, most of my best friends are, in fact, living creatures.  And although my wife, Weezie, and I give our dogs strange nicknames (Boober McPhee, Little Miss Cannellini Beans and Stinky Pete, among others), that’s about as close as I come to speaking in tongues.  So, the best evidence yet that I’m crazy came on June 28th when we closed on William Reed’s Ordinary, a 1754 colonial house in Hillsborough, NC.

Never mind that we own two other houses and that it doesn’t have air conditioning and not one of the seven fireplaces is functional.  The house is utterly beguiling, and we fell so hard for its spell that we’ve signed away a good chunk of our life’s earnings for the privilege of living there.

Here she is in ’55:

Over the next three years decades or so, I’ll spend many most of my spare moments giving this crazy old place the love it deserves.  Stay tuned…