Asa Knight Country store, Olive Oil deliveries and good cider!

I woke up Sunday morning and before I knew it I was in my trousers and vest butchering my attempt to make a square knot on my cravat. This was a day of many firsts for me, including making a delivery in full Old Sturbridge Village costume to Ann Futterknecht, one of my Olive Oil customers. This could become a new standard in the Olive Oil industry.

Driving in full costume was also a first for me, I began wondering if I got pulled over, would a police officer let me go with a warning after realizing that I haven't had a ticket since 1838?

Walking in with my storekeeper's attire gave me a different kind of connection to the village. The sheep were running towards the corral, the chickens were enjoying the warm morning air and everyone was getting ready for the day. So I'm enjoying my surrounding as an new interpreter and a woman comes towards me and asked me my first question as a volunteer, are people actually buried there or are they just headstones? I looked at her with a smile and said, this is a representation of what a village would have looked like during this period in time, so no! On the other hand, maybe someone was buried there before the village. She laughed and headed to the Freeman Farm.

It was time to begin my day at the Asa Knight store, so I went in and wandered around absorbing everything inside from the looking glass to the ivory teeth-brush and from the chewing tobacco laced with molasses to the congestion remedy of chocolate and cayenne pepper. My first visitor at the store was a sweet woman named Virginia for Massachusetts. I got to talk to her about how this was a country store and not a general store. The label of General store came later when specialty stores started coming around. Mr. Blood (Will) was there to help me through my first question. Uff, not so bad!

So on my first day, not only do I get to talk to visitors live, I also get to talk to a couple in Spanish about the store. I'm now an official bilingual interpreter at OSV. It was a really hot day, around 90 degrees, but surprisingly the store was pretty cool. We had great conversations, one gentleman ask about hard cider. Mr. Blood explained that what hard cider means to us today is different then what hard cider was to them in the 1830's. Today hard cider is related to alcoholic cider, to them all cider was alcoholic and hard cider was distilled, distilled being over 90% proof. Mr. Blood also mentioned that a good cider in those days was a mixture of apples and pears, I can tell he had a fondness for cider.

One thing is for sure, there is lots to learn at the Asa Knight Country Store. So, I'm heading home now still hoping to get pulled over by a cop on full costume! That would make a great blog. It might happen, stay tuned!