Rural Missouri - May 2013 - (Page 40)

N E I G H B O R S Cabin Fever Love of antiques leads Denine Bremer to the simple life Raised working in a gas station and in her parent’s two restaurants, Denine says she loves to meet new people. “I’ve never met a stranger,” she admits. When she’s not hosting the cabin sales, Denine is scouring the country in a never-ending quest for antiques. Some she sells at the First Monday Trade Days ﬂea market in Canton, Texas. Others go into her booth at Bear Ridge Antiques in Crocker and other antique malls. Denine sells a different type of antique in her booths. Here, she specializes in “industrial,” “shabby-chic” and “vintage” antiques. These pieces might include rusty signs or painted furniture made in the early 20th century. “I sell that because it’s what’s hot,” she says. “I can go to landﬁlls and dig out great stuff that people threw away. And I can sell it. It’s sad, kind of, but by Jim McCarty jmccarty@ruralmissouri.coop S ome people dream. Others turn those dreams into reality. Denine Bremer is one of the latter. For 24 years, she’s been selling antiques while keeping the ones that interest her the most. A few years ago, she spruced up the house where she had lived and put it on the market. Long before it sold, she was making plans for her dream home. “I had already talked to the builders,” she says. “I was going to build whether I sold my house or not.” Many of those who attend Denine’s antique shows at her Dry Creek Cabins near Dixon do not realize that her home is a Above: Several times a year, Denine Bremer opens her Dry Creek Cabins to fellow antique lovers. She modern log cabin. It ﬁts specializes in primitives and uses them to decorate the four log cabins she owns, including the trapper’s perfectly with the other cabin at left and the modern cabin at right that she calls home. Below: Rugged simplicity is the décor log cabins and rustic outinside Denine’s cabins. She loves to decorate almost as much as she loves collecting antiques. buildings on her property. that’s the way it is.” Visitors tour the old trapper’s cabin that was For herself, however, Denine wants much carefully moved from its previous location near older antiques made between 1850 and 1900. Her Hayden and decorated the way a solitary mounfavorites are the “make do’s,” everyday items that tain man might have lived. They walk through were repurposed by the thrifty pioneers instead the two cabins moved from Licking and set up of being discarded. One of her favorites is a grater as a dogtrot, with a spartan bedroom on one side made from a license plate punched full of holes. and a country kitchen on the other. Among Denine’s most treasured pieces is one They just assume the home where she lives is of the ﬁrst she collected. It’s a log pot ﬁtted with just as old. a forged iron handle. After she bought it, she In reality, Denine’s cabin home is a modern learned it began life holding grease to lubricate re-creation that reﬂects her love for primitive wagon axles. She’s also a big fan of primitive antiques. Yes, there is a TV inside, along with mouse traps. wireless Internet, a stove, refrigerator and microHer pioneer mindset spills outside the cabins, wave. But visitors seldom notice these nods to too. On her porches are hollowed-out logs once sils, plates and bowls still get used for meals. modern living. used to preserve meat or to hold grain. There also Her favorite setting surrounds her rustic table Carefully camouﬂaging the few modern touchare stacks of grindstones. and chairs. A small cabinet with many little drawes are countless antiques: wrought-iron candlesThe cabins share a stark beauty Denine admits ers holds ﬁve highly coveted Firken sugar buckets. tands, wooden ware, barrels and faded cabinets, wouldn’t appeal to everyone. The colors are Above them is a shelf packed with wooden bowls. to name just a few. mostly browns and grays, with just an occasional Completing the look is a corner cabinet, its var“I told them I wanted it to look primitive,” nish cracked and peeling. On the Denine says of her unusual home, which was splash of faded blue or red paint. bare plank table is a wooden bowl built from sawed logs by High Country Timber “A lot of people could live like this and a lot couldn’t,” she says of her primitive furnishcarved from a slab of wood. It holds and Stone in Licking. “I just knew in my mind dried gourds. basically how I wanted it. And everything I had ings. “It’s a lifestyle, a simple life I call it. bought, I knew where it was going to go.” Two or three times a year — whenever Everyone says I was born too late.” • Walking through the cozy cabin, she points she has accumulated enough antiques to Dixon Denine will host one of her sales from sell — Denine opens her cabins to anyto treasures she claimed for herself. “That was a 5 to 8 p.m., June 7, and from 9 a.m. to one who wants to come look. meat cooler, and I thought, that is going to go for 5 p.m., June 8. The cabins are located my kitchen sink. This is a dry sink, and that will “I tell them when they get here, make work for the sink in my bathroom.” yourself at home,” says Denine, a member between Vienna and Dixon, just off Highway 28 on Maries County Road 506. of Gascosage Electric Cooperative. “Go through Her tub is a rusty galvanized tin relic that just For more information, call 573-528-4945 or send everything here. We just want everybody to enjoy ﬁts in the tiny bathroom. Meat hooks have new an e-mail to drycreekcabins@gmail.com. it and tell stories of things they know.” life holding coats and towels, while wooden uten- 40 WWW.RURALMISSOURI.COOP http://WWW.RURALMISSOURI.COOP

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Rural Missouri - May 2013

Rural Missouri - May 2013
Table of Contents
Comments
Columns
Chronicle of the corncob pipe
Missouri Snapshots contest
The family that drills together
Out of the Way Eats
Where bluegrass grows
Outdoors
Hearth and Home
Veggies and vision
Vertical gardening
Around Missouri
Marketplace
Neighbors
Just4Kids

Rural Missouri - May 2013