Time certainly seems to be both passing incredibly fast and inching along at a snail’s pace. It was only a short time ago that my brother Ralph and I hadn’t yet agreed on stories for this year’s labels and wines (I have to admit that I have a couple of things that I kept ‘on the back burner’ but I wasn’t able to convince Ralph to go with any of them. That’s okay; they can sit and stew a bit longer.).
First of all I wanted to express my love and appreciation to Ralph for taking on his shoulders the task of actually making the wines themselves. I was only involved in the final production stage. He did all the rest. Thanks Ralph. And although we did sample the end product (quality control right?) we didn’t go overboard there either which, according to the stories that we make up, is very un-Campbell like behavior. But the wine got made, the makings got bottled, the bottles got corked, and labels were attached. Now the pictures and stories have to be put on the website.
The stories themselves, as I said, are fairly recent imaginings. One of them was the result of a day I spent over my brother’s place. We went for a hike on an old railway line that had been made into a trail. On the drive back we had to do a grocery stop in the town of Lindsay, Ontario and then head back to Ralph’s place. On the outskirts of the town are two trains parked in a, well, park. We stopped and took some pictures. The older train became the model and the inspiration for one of the Campbell Brothers’ adventures.
The second story I’m not even sure who came up with the idea in the first place. It was likely Ralph. It seemed straightforward enough at the time.
A couple of weeks later Ralph came to my place in Scarberia for a visit. We did the photography of ourselves for both the labels either in my basement apartment (which is a trick in itself) or on the back deck (you wouldn’t realize just how many of the labels have had photography done on that deck). We also threw a few ideas together for stories.
Over the next little while I put together some variations for the labels and had Ralph okay them, got them into production, and then went ahead and started working on the stories themselves. This also meant sending drafts of the stories to Ralph by email for his input and any changes he thought we should make. The train story, although still long, I managed to fit on a single sheet of paper in brochure format. The other story, sheesh, just kept growing and growing. To be honest I haven’t even finished it yet, so we had to come up with another plan for something to hand out with the wine.
We decided to do another brochure, but not print out the whole second story. As I said the story had gotten just too long by this time. We thought it would be fun to make a brochure that advertised the story and have it then point in the direction of the web site. If people were interested in reading the whole thing then they could go online, if not, the brochure itself would serve. One thing I’d like to say, when I looked at the stock template that we were going to use it immediately reminded me of a certain coffee chain that will not remain nameless. We had some fun throwing stuff on the brochure and then printed it out.
By doing the advertising handout I created another problem for myself because bottles of wine and accompanying brochures are already being, have been, given out, and with the blog address printed on them. There should be something online when and if they come looking, don’t you think? I told this to Ralph and then added that I thought I should put an ‘under construction’ sign on the site (as a placeholder really) until I got the story finished.
So that’s where we are now.
I’d like to thank the people who have gone along with this running Campbell gag (do you realize that we’ve been doing this for over 15 years now) and hope everyone who either pilots their way here or stumbles across this site enjoy the stories.
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