El Museo Aleman (the German Museum) in Frutillar inspired all kinds of sense
memories for both Richard and me, including some from past lifetimes, I think.
What a fine way to lay out a display! The millhouse with its waterwheel sits well above the entrance gardens, yet far below the family farmhouse at the top of the hill. A spring house up there, outside the family home, where Mama kept her butter and her cottage cheese for cooling, marks the place where the water starts, in a stream that falls downhill thru green channels and rocky patches till it's channeled into a wooden chute to turn the water wheel.
No está functionado ahora. But the various millstones that used to grind the grains lay about. Coarse meal, fine flour ... the miller could do it all.
In the Perkiomen River Valley, where I grew up, at least three mills once worked the waters near my home. Leidy's, Clemmer's, and Pennypacker's water wheels had ceased to function by the 1950's, but their names and their powers continued into modern commerce.
Richard, born with a mechanical turn of mind, to a father who built dams for hydropower in the great Northwest, saw the power of the turning wheel clearly enough to recognize that this contraption was a lathe:
No doubt the lathe was used to turn the banisters for the stairways inside the family home ... and what else, we wonder?
On the way up the trail to the main house, we had a sweet view of the eucalyptus trees on the border of the museum property. These trees always connect us to Richard's Auntie Marian, whose home in Los Gatos, CA was surrounded by them.
The eucalyptus also links us to our first visit to Chile in 2005 when we learned that Isidora Goyenechea de Cousiño introduced the tree to Chile because she'd discovered that its wood was really good for bracing the coal-mining tunnels in Lota. Eucalyptus beams gives off a loud creak when moved or strained ... an appropriate alarm method in Lota's underground mining shafts that go for almost a mile below the ocean floor.
Is that a bread-slicing device on the counter at far right? I like the cast iron waffle iron on the table. We had one of those on our boat, for cooking waffles atop the wood stove.
I love the clean and sunny look of the "bath room" ... . Can't help wondering, now that I think of it: How did they get the used water OUT of those tubs? With bailing buckets? Throw the water out the window?
Each room has special features; each has fine views from the windows. I would love to have stepped into the nursery to have a better look at that castle/doll house!
The view from the porch at the back of the house, face to face with Volcan Osorno across the lake.
Hedged gardens adorn the lower acres, with a blacksmith’s house and a barnful of ancient farm equipment on either side of the winding creek. One more photo: I'm only standing there for scale, so you can appreciate how big that agave plant is.
Our tour thru the German Museum came at the end of our day in Frutillar.
In the shade of a huge tree on the lakeside, we enjoyed a free performance by the youthful orchestra from the town of
And now for the title story: ¡Atropellada!
When we first arrived in Frutillar, by bus from Puerto Montt - about an hour's ride - we walked a long ways around the lake, beyond where the sidewalk ends. Richard wanted to see the marina, where 12 or so boats were moored, including three J-24's, the kind his buddy Carlos likes so well. We had a good time talking about what it might be like to live in this lovely town on the very pretty lake, Llanquihue. What might lake sailing be like?
On the walk back towards the main attractions of Frutillar, we crossed the road at one point because maybe there was a little more of a grassy shoulder on that side. I'm sure I MUST HAVE SEEN that broad, big, dark green road sign up ahead. Maybe my mind registered: big road sign - must be high enough for a normal woman to clear, walking underneath? Or, maybe my mind was too much focused on watching the narrow, uneven ground. Maybe the sun would have been in my eyes if I'd been looking up. Maybe my sunglasses were smeared with sweat that blinded me. Whatever!
I was marching along behind Richard, eyes on the ground, head tilted down, when that road sign, a billBOARD, knocked me down. Crack went my skull against the sharp aluminum edge at the bottom of the sign, and down I went on my butt and left elbow. What a shock! And even more shocking: the hot blood dripping and then flowing down the left side of my face! Richard was very kind. He sloshed water from his private stash, fished in my pack for the packet of kleenex I always carry, and swabbed my head wound - an inch wide gash at center scalp, two inches above my hairline. He had me hold a wad of kleenex on the torn spot, while he dabbed away the blood on my face and hands, and even flooded the bloody spots out of my blouse while I recovered equilibrium. Never a word of ridicule about not watching where I was going. In fact, he tried to take the blame.
All's well. Good to have these humbling incidents now and then, as long as we survive them, right?
May your own focus on where you put your feet never distract you from what might whack your head!
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