Filed under: Shop
Periodically, you’ll see an update on a series of posts about an ongoing project out here in the woods. It’s probably not terribly important to anyone but me (and possibly a handful of mad googlers) but it’s one of the reasons we moved here. One of the things most dear to my heart, wanted one since I was a kid, etc.
It is, of course, that last bastion of male sanctuary – The Shop.
No, not a garage. Not a storage shed. Not, heaven forbid, a gardening nook. I’m talking about a big ol’ honking slab o’ concrete with walls and a roof. An over-sized roll-up door. Banks of fluorescent lights and scads of power outlets. Racks of tools, big dangerous machines, a dog sleeping in the doorway.
I can say with a straight face that I need this, that this is important to my career. And that refrigerator over in the corner? Strictly for keeping perishable building materials cool. Yep.
In the way that things happen down here, it’s been a long time comin’. But we’re about to go into high gear. Got the foundation in the ground and approved yesterday (why it has to be approved, and how, is enough of a subject for the next one in this series).
I’m ready. The shop is about to get vertical. Hang on kids, the old guy is building a dream.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
When I step out onto the front porch and take a sharp left-face that’s what I see. If, that is, it happens to be a half hour after sunrise, and I happen to be out on the porch with a camera, and none of the neighbors are around to wonder about “that new fella”.
You can see a strand of telephone, power and cable wires in the expanded picture. Your normal delivery package to the neighbors house down the road. This shouldn’t be remarkable to anyone. Unless of course you used to live in the big city. They like to bury ‘em up there, to improve the view and keep innocent city folk from having any idea that such things exist, I suppose.
I don’t mind a little wire. In fact, when they hooked up the cable to the side of this place the girl from the cable company called the next day, all a-quiver and said “Oh my, the crew wasn’t set up to bury your cable line, we’ll be out tomorrow!”. I told her they’d do no such thing, that I liked my wire and was quite happy to see it out there. Where I could fix it. Prone to hurricanes down here, we are.
I’ve known a fair number of old-timers grumble about such things, backyard treatise which generally start out with “When I was a boy . . .” and end with ” . . . nobody needed sech things and we all got ‘long jest ducky”.
Well I beg to differ. Not because I have anything against old-timers. Not a few of my acquantences would poke a thumb my way and mutter about “That old fart”, believe you me.
No, I don’t have any romanticized notion about cable. I’d lay odds that if you dropped in on this little neighborhood back around 1930 and offered a color TV and the cable to steer it by, you’d have no lack of takers. Let alone Internet. We’re not living in SoHo, down here. Ain’t like you can wander around the block and plunk down at some little cafe for an expresso. We tend to take our entertainment seriously. And if that means putting up with a little wire strung along the road . . . why, we’ll just have to suffer.
I wouldn’t have thought about any of this of course, if I hadn’t rolled out of bed this morning and the modem lights were flickering and the TV was kinda fuzzy.
Tends to make a new fella nervous, is all I’m saying. But they got that all cleared up now. Lots quicker than if they’d had to fool around with buried cable, I’ll betcha.
Filed under: Uncategorized
There’s a fair amount of things upside down in America.
A bunch of ugliness, wrong and upsetting things.
We live in a country that may never be the same as it used to be. There are certainly no shortages of pundits who would tell us so.
But.
Those who carried the rifle, drove the tank, flew the bird of prey and manned the warship? Did so to make us greater than a squabbling tribe of not-so-precocious children.
Today, and every day, we do bless their sacrifice. And look to that grim moment when their life made living in this country the privilege it always has been, and always will be.
Filed under: Family
This is a little old man who lives with me.
He leaves little paw prints on the front storm door and I don’t care so awful much. He sees a passing dog and hollers “Da!”, an invitation to bathe in the big tub might get you a “Ba!”. A full blown romp through the house with shrieks and laughter and adults excited will always get you a wide grinning “Ga!”.
He is warm and wiggly and when plucked from the floor he tends to wrap arms around you and sigh as if there is no other place on earth he’d rather be right then.
At 3 am, when the monsters come and the dreams turn stormy and there is real terror in being alone and small he cries, and I come because at 3 am I’m likely to be awake. Likely to go to him because this is a child who rarely cries. There may be nothing more human, more being than holding a small one in the middle of the night and listening to the breathing, the sounds. Feeling like there may be no other two souls awake in the whole world right then, just then.
And I don’t mind that.
I only have this one grandchild. When I walk into the house his mama is likely to point and exclaim “There’s Gwampy!”, and the little man will squeal and come a-pedaling on all fours, trying to laugh and “Ga!” and point all at the same time. There is no composure, here. There is a reach for pant legs and a standing upon two small feet and an arm thrust into the air with the sureness that being airborne and tucked in Gwampys shoulder will not ever change, it will always be the best of things, the very best of things.
I’d like to remember:
The first time, and all the times since that I bounced him on a knee and did the Stooges “wub wub!”sound. A pretty passable Curley, if I do say so. “Hey Gwampy, do the wub wub!” they’d cry, and the boy and I would gallop and bounce, he with a hugeish smile and me “Wub wub wub wub!” like a cackling fool.
Every time his mama or gramma would give him a bath and have him from the tub, wrapped in a towel and dribbling, and sneaked his head stealthily around a corner to spy on me here in this chair, and I’d hoot at him. “Whoop?! There he is!”, and listen to the little laugh as they did it again. And again.
The confusion in his eyes the first time I said “No! Don’t do that, you’ll get hurt!” or “Gimmee that, don’t bite the laptop cord fer Godssakes!”
Getting his rump airborne and watching the gears turn as he learned to crawl, then wondering what in the world I was so excited about when he zoomed out of sight and reach. And the chasing after, the ceaseless chasing.
Every minute of every day for the 10 months he’s been alive, and the 8 he’s lived here. There are not enough pictures and not enough words.
Couple of weeks from now I’ll stand in the driveway and watch him leave. Two states away he will be and his heart will beat just the same, his hair standing up in back just as always, his silent open mouthed grin just as wide and endearing forever.
I cannot bear to lose this time, this small part of time in my life. He means the world, he and his mama. The very world. Hard old thing it is to let loose those you hold dear.
I love you Gavin. Gwampy loves you muchly. Bringing joy into life sits well with you.
Filed under: Family
(Here is a story I wrote 4 years back, with my eldest daughter still in high school. I think it remains one of my favorites.)
I suppose it was his doing, in a way. I was churning along in fine form yesterday afternoon when I heard the generator shut down and the supply of portable power to my workstation some 40 feet in the air was abruptly halted. And I leaned over the manlift and with a sweetly rendered “ ‘the hell?”, I inquired as to just why this had occurred.
He was calm. “Because it’s time for the game,” he said.
Stu occasionally accompanies me to see the Eldest play the fastpitch high school softball thing. He dotes on Beth just as a Dutch uncle should, making her laugh with his teasing and buying her flowers at odd times. Or rescuing her from the clutches of her father with a more lighthearted approach than your author might take. It’s a natural role for him to take (and he does it with all my kids) and she reciprocates the affection and reflects the limelight that he casts her in so well.
‘The Game’ in question here was a playoff game. Do or die. Winner will advance. Loser shall not.
When you’re a senior in high school, loser-shall-not means putting a period at the end of the sentence and closing the book of dreams. Beth is seeing the end of things, that certain startling time when the certainty of high school passing by sets in, that feeling of melancholy when you progress from February’s wailing of “Will graduation ever get here?” to late May’s somber “oh God, I’ll never see or touch or feel this again. Not ever.”
The Game was a chance, in a way. A chance that all players of games take when the end of the season is near. To advance and prolong, to keep things alive, to keep doing what is loved and sweated over. To not have an ending.
I’ve been watching her all season, this senior of mine. With that look, the awful one that adults acquire after having gone through the pain of things over the years. I watch her jog to the outfield (“ . . .and doesn’t she just glide, that effortless smoothness of limbs trained for moving without ever appearing to touch the ground . . .”) and shag the warm-up balls and the thought just keeps running through my head “It’s closing in on her. Last game’s coming. Her last game’s coming and there’s nothing on earth that can stop it.”
I suppose I was ruminating about it, far too much, even for a doddering old-timer. I didn’t let on in her presence because, after all, what good would it do her? It’s been a helluva ride for her, all the way back to 7th grade when she started this school team thing, and long before that in the little girl leagues.
So I was in a predisposed funk all the way from the jobsite to the ball field. And it didn’t help matter much that they were playing the awesome team. The team that should, without much difficulty, be state champions this year. This in a state which breeds many awesome teams.
Stu and I set up shop along the right field line, which happens to be where Beth plays. Right field in other baseball-type games is usually reserved for the weaker players, the ones you pray don’t get their hands on the ball lest a merry-go-round of scoring commences. But in the fastpitch world, a strong armed gun from right field can catch a runner at first for an out. And Beth has just such a gun.
In the fastpitch world, scoring even one run can be enough to win a game, and the awesome team did just that right from jump. It’s a habit they have, getting an early run and letting their pitcher do the rest, slowly forcing the other team into a mental submission as the innings go by.
Beth and her mates got into that submission. Approach the plate, swing mightily at the high speed pitches and whiff, or hit weakly back to an infielder. The lights came on and the sky darkened and the game was settling into that brisk pace of three up – three down that fastpitch often does when good teams play their 7 innings of defense.
It was in the 6th inning when the awesome team sent their powerhouse to the plate and she promptly cracked a clean hit toward Beth. It was long and deep, off to Beth’s right side and she was like wind on an off-shore breeze, a blur of motion, catching the ball on one hop and loading the gun at a dead run. “Get her Beth!” I screamed in unison with the crowd and the scorching throw was on target from my little one.
In a game where inches and fractions of seconds count and umpires are good at what they do, it wasn’t enough.
Two batters later, another run scored for the awesome team. With a 2-0 lead, they looked to be as untouchable as the press had claimed all season long. With Beth’s team having no luck at the plate, and down to their last at-bat’s, there was a palpable sense of yearning coming from the fans on our side of the field, even as there was rejoicing and smiles on the other.
It’s only on these green fields, and there are many green fields just like this one, where the feeling of finality near the end of games comes washing over and makes the sadness or joy real, when the lump in your throat for the end of things won’t go away, and the passing of one day or one sort of life for another is a finality not easily faced. In the way that sports gives you a set time frame and a laundry list of things to do in order to succeed, the end is never anything but the end.
But it was the top of the 7th, and Beth was due up.
She had already struck out and popped up, a season of hard hitting eluding her in this duel with the awesome team and their ace pitcher. I was too far away to see her expression but I couldn’t miss the deep breath, the wriggle of shoulders as she dug in for the last time. One last time. The pitcher was a smirker, a girl certain of herself, and was three outs away from glory. They had barely touched her for anything all game long.
On the third pitch, Beth shattered that.
It was a hit that had clean air and sudden screams driving it and it rocketed past the left fielder on a bounce that tore grass from earth. Beth was on full motor around first and pulled up at second with a double that suddenly, and electrically, had 200 people on their feet. I slumped against the chain-link as Stu pounded my shoulder and yelled unintelligible things and it was, as they say, a ball game yet again.
Gina came up next and the pitcher was smirking no more. Because Gina was feared, and she was grim. An all-state senior, and Beth’s particular buddy in the halls of the high school they claimed as their own.
Gina took two pitches, and they were wild ones, as the awesome team began to feel the mental stress they had avoided all game. She fouled one back, for emphasis. On the fourth, she blasted a shot to center field and Beth was off to third where her coach windmilled his arms and sent her on the way.
To home. To a 2-1 score. There would be no shut-out here, on this cool spring evening, and the two seniors had become the warriors of this particular match.
It would be the better ending to write that Beth paved the way to a shocker, to an upset of the team thought unbeatable. Things that end, and end well, sometimes need that happiness to put right the long days of effort, the battered leather softball glove, the streaks of dirt on spotless white jerseys.
But the next three batters went down, and there were three outs, and things just ended in an aching and quiet fashion. Stu muttered to himself, something about how wrong it seemed, how the gladness was made hollow.
Beth and her team were in the dugout a long time, unseen by their fans, and they began trickling out in a sporadic and teary eyed way to the hugs of a Mom here, a Dad there.
She was the last one out, my team captain, my small one grown tall. She walked with a slow shuffle and a downcast face, accepted a hug here and there as she made her way over to me, the bag of bats heavy on her shoulder for the last time.
And she looked at me, and I swear she was blank, it was that look of knowing something beyond herself, that spring would not mean the same for her again. That there would be good and bad days forever but not one like this.
I pulled her close to me and whispered to her. Only for her, so that only she would hear. “I love. Watching you play. I love that.” And I kissed her cheek and the tear came, and it matched the ferocity of her hug and the sob that was quiet in her voice. “You’re the best, Beth. The best.”
And that was all. It was the end, and the end is what will be the Beth that makes me proud on another day.
On grass fields, on carpets of things lush and dreamfilled.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
Gee, my big debut. It’s like a dream come true.
I dunno. After 6 years of writing online this is the melancholy of things, a whole lot of blather has gone before this, as no doubt will be seen. Come over from the other site? Welcome.
I live in a little out of the way place. A lot of what you’ll see here represents that place, and what it means to me. And my wife of long and precious years.
It’s a backwater, yes indeedy it is. A gone away and a hidey hole. I can drive or walk not so very far and see the bullrushes and the frogs. They are soothing and green. Unless it’s 3 am and the middle of a frog jowlin’ contest.
Pull up a chair, and we’ll talk some tales.
