Back in early April, Pam and I were on a road trip and stopped—as we often do—in Roanoke, Virginia. It’s a beautiful little city in the Blue Ridge Mountains, best known as the site of the Roanoke Colony, a failed English settlement that mysteriously vanished in 1590, earning it the name, “The Lost Colony.” There’s a historic hotel, a few nifty museums and a great breakfast place that serves fabulous biscuits (you don’t want to know it, folks, but they’re made with lard).
On the way to breakfast that morning we drove by Black Dog Salvage. We love architectural salvage yards, and we’d seen this treasure trove the last time we were in town, but it was closed. While we sipped our coffee at the Scratch Biscuit Company and waited for those forbidden delights, we went online and found that Black Dog would be open by the time we had our last bite.
We browsed the place inside and out and had a couple smaller things in mind. But I decided to take one more pass around the outside where the bigger outdoor pieces were displayed, and that’s when I saw the bell.
It was rusting iron, very much in the wood-stone-metal theme of Copper House, and it had a Japanese air about it. And it was funky: the bell is carved out of an old oxygen cylinder. It was a little more than we figured on spending, but we got a discount. Then we pulled off the great feat of getting that iron tower—more than seven feet tall—into our car. But we got it home, and we love it. We think you will too.
I took that picture as soon as we got it in place. And that image from early April forms a kind of time-lapse with this picture from a few days ago when everything was leafing out and the redbuds were painting the breeze.
It’s got a glorious, sonorous tone, that oxygen tank of a bell. When I ring it, I think I’m in a Japanese garden and the waves of peace and serenity gently roll over and through me.
Come, give it a ring on your next visit to Copper House.
