Filed under: Backwater Livin'
If I were to leave my house and drive north for exactly 5 miles I’d be sitting in the parking lot at the mall.
Not an ordinary mall, it is.
It’s a bit downsized, as malls go. In fact, you’d be wise to mind your feet going up the steps, since Alice put the cat food dish out just a minute ago and it’s right full. If there’s more than one customer in there you’re gonna be waiting a while.
You can buy bread, but not butter. Beer, but not wine. You can get a homemade BBQ sammich if you’re in the mood (and I often am, because they’re huge and Carolina hoggish good) or a ham biscuit for breakfast (ditto). Motor oil? Got it. And a gas pump out front.
Want to slide your boat into the water? You can do that here, and take a slow ride under the bridge because it’s no wake to the headwater, here. Be on the Intercoastal in ten minutes, yes you can. Or you can sit on a rough pier and wet a line, and watch everybody else slide boats into the water. Run out of bait? Well shucks, walk inside and get some more. Shiners, worms. No crickets though.
The floor is plywood and it’s buckled a little, here and there. Fred put down some of that good red enamel paint years ago but it’s mostly scuffed off now. Doesn’t look like there’s any hurry to do it over again, either.
When I was hunting these woods it used to be a ritual to meet up here afterwards, get a coffee and one of those glove sized pastries in a cellophane bag. I could do that now, in the same way, sitting on the tailgate of an old pickup and hashing over nothing with Brad and his dog. And there would be nobody patrolling the parking lot and suggesting that we move on, to stop taking up spaces in the lot because there are no spaces. No lines and no curbs.
If you run out of eggs and it’s 6 in the morning, you come here. You could drive another mile and get them fresh from the farmers wife down the road, but probably not at 6. Might be rude to be knocking on their door at that hour, even though they’d be up and about.
Otherwise you drive another 15 miles.
That’s right, it’s another 15 miles to anything. Any place selling eggs, or gas, or a breakfast biscuit. Not to mention shiners and worms.
People coming down from the big city reach this place and believe they’re at the end of the world, and I guess I can’t blame them. It is a pretty fair drive, especially when you’re used to gas stations on every corner and a McDonalds every mile.
But really, it isn’t the end of anything. You can keep going, as I do everyday, down long roads with corn on both sides until you take that sharp left, and the shadows of trees begin and the swamp creeps close to the road.
That’s when you’re getting close to my place.
Might want to watch your speed. I haven’t seen any police down here yet, but those ditches will swallow you whole.
And pick me up a couple of those sammiches at the store would you? I mean, if you’re on your way, and all.
Filed under: Biography
Maybe it’s a good time to do up a biography, and do it in my usual slap-dash fashion, so that anyone wandering by can take a five second look and go “Holy geez. Glad I ain’t got that kinda trouble” or a five minute take and say “Hmmmm.” Most of what I do on here is probably like that in any case.
I’ve been writing online since August of 2001. Periodically I put up one from the old site. There are those who hung out there who hang here. I salute their intestinal fortitude if nothing else.
I don’t sit in proximity to a computer after 6 am or before 6 pm, most days. If you get something from this site it will be when I’m not out slinging cabinets or making a mess out of a pile of lumber. Posting once a day is an achievement and twice a day is rare. Weekends are just exactly that, the end of a work week.
I’m a semi-grumpy man, old by some standards. 48 years old, white male with a mortgage. My wife of 27 years is Ally and we have had 3 children, one grandson. The children will be talked about often, the grandson – probably too often.
Finish carpenter. That’s what I do. Been involved in commercial millwork (think of cabinets and wood, in all forms) forever. I’ve sold it, managed it, built it, installed it. Had my own company for 10 years, lost that 2 years ago, would like to do it again. Most folks in my industry and the complimentary construction community wonder (aloud) why the hell I haven’t started up again already. Right now I work for someone, it’s a wage thing. Although I tend to treat it as though I was an independent subcontractor. Must really drive the boss crazy, but when things need doin’, they get done. He makes a great deal of money off me.
Ally is a bookkeeper. She is underpaid. Her employers are quite insane.
My grandparents, both sets, were Mennonite farmers. I grew up with that culture. Either of my grandfathers could work me under the table if they were alive today, at any age, and it is a sadness that they are not. Either of my grandmothers could out-do in any catagory you can think of, me and my entire family plus my neighbors and any TV cooking personality you care to name and do it all before 9 am. I sometimes shake my head in wonder just how much has been lost with the passing of women like this.
I lost my Dad in 2004. My Mom is in a nursing home. Ally has a father living and a step-mom too. Her mother passed last May. My wife and I wear the cloak of responsibility in a troubled way, I scarcely believe that me being a patriarch is possible but it’s there, everyday.
I have 2 sisters and a brother. We communicate infrequently. I drink beer and have been known to curse like a sailor, they most certainly do not. That’s pretty much the agreement we share.
I’ve lost fortunes and gained them back. I’ve been a good bit more lucky than I deserve to be. Two years ago I sold our family house when the kids began the getting out of the school phase and made a killing in the high real estate market. We were living in a very nice suburban neighborhood at the time. After 18 months renting another suburban house we moved to the backwater, into a place of our own. It was a gamble, it paid off. Like I say. Lucky.
We live about 40 minutes south of where we raised our kids and mowed our lawn. It is entirely different down here, we are across the state line. The old neighborhood was part of the 10th largest urban area in the country. Our neighborhood now? Wouldn’t rate as a bedroom community to Mayberry. I mean we are deep in the woods here. There might be 100 people within 5 square miles of us. That’s probably a lot if you’re in Wyoming, but it’s doggone rural for the east coast.
When I was in high school I used to hunt and fish all over the place, including where I live right now. It hasn’t changed much. I like that.
This isn’t a political blog. You won’t see much of that here. You wouldn’t recognize my political party, because the Bib Overall with Crab Stains party ain’t running a candidate this year. Again.
I would like to see a candidate for President who has actually held a paying job in the real working world. Just once, that would be a novelty for me.
On the other hand, I love and respect this country. It has been good to my family. I can recite whole sections of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. I can also hold forth on the Bible, and know the difference between the two.
I own guns. I own saws and hammers. They are much the same to me.
Except I can’t twirl a gun into a holster. I can do that with a hammer. It’s pretty cool to see. Get yourself a 13 ounce Bluegrass hammer, straight claw and wood handle of course, and practice. For 30 years.
I’ve owned a boat, it was metal. I will build a better one out of wood before I die. Maybe more than one. It will catch a lot of fish. This is a practical thing to do.
I like fires in a firepit behind my house. And Saturday mornings. Breakfast at a small roadhouse with a dozen men who look just fine in flannel and Carhardts. People who know how to sharpen a chainsaw. Writing that draws me in and teaches me things. Sharp knives. Beer placed on ice just because it’s the right thing to do. Grown men who act like they can take a stand beside me in a ruckus. Grown women who love children and don’t have to try really hard to get ready to go out for supper.
I’ve got little use for people interested in how long it takes for me, a carpenter, to satisfy their every whim. Most of the people born after 1960 are like this.
I was born in ‘59, and am therefore exempt.
Lawyers weary me. Politicians are largely lawyers. If handed a shovel, a gallon of water and a folding knife and pointed toward the backwater, I believe that the majority of lawyers and politicians would disintegrate. Shrivel and turn into dust. Just exactly what am I suppose to do with someone like that?
I have two large coolers in the back of my large work truck. One has food and toiletries, the other water. The rest of the truck has tools. And charcoal and a whole host of things normally found in your local sporting goods store. I’m not overly fearful of hurricanes. Or anything else, for that matter. At the same time, I’m not about to point at the sky and holler “Look out!” any time soon.
Every once in a while, I sit out on the back porch that I built and wonder just how much longer God will let me keep doing what I love with those who are so incredibly precious to me, and why.
The tagline on my old site said this. “There’s a certain fine satisfaction to enjoying life. We’ll just keep it between us, for now.”
I don’t know any reason to change that.
Welcome. Enjoy your life. And thanks very much for reading about mine.
Filed under: Family
I guess that I’m officially a grandfather now. There was a slight delay in recognition there, on Friday afternoon. For ten minutes the grandson regarded me gravely, with a questioning look at his mama, a pensive look at me. He wasn’t real sure. I didn’t rush him. Just sat on the kitchen floor and let him take his time.
He wobbled over eventually and gave me a hug.
By the time Sunday rolled around the boy was my best pal. Again.
The thought ran through my mind that “Gee, this is what all the other grandfathers must do. Weekend reunions, some shy standoffishness. Slow looping reacquantence.” Then goodbye.
The boy and his Boxer dog ran large in the backwater this weekend. After getting over a bout of his own shyness, the dog raced over the big backyard, dry grass crackling under thudding paws and a long tongue pointing the way. The boy stood with a grin and outstretched arm directing traffic, encouraging. Wanting for all the world to move that fast. To throw saddle to Boxer and spur him on.
The whole crew came over for a Saturday night feed, Beth the Eldest and Ben the son with their special people, Lauren the bestest friend of Maggie. Ben tended a smudge fire for the mosquitos and I did the grille thing. There were horseshoes, and carousing and beer and Dave Matthews as an impossibly blue Carolina sky went down and Orions Belt came up. Saturday passed to Sunday and we were still going at it.
Come Sunday morning I slid eggs and bacon under them as they came to life and randomly took their leave, sated from the arms of Maggie and the little man.
Then I slid him into his carseat, and pressed cheek to his and murmured things that Granpas do, and hugged Maggie hard. She clear eyed and determined, me trying to lose the lump in my throat. Talking awkwardly about weather and speed limits and five hour rides and Boxers in the backseat and love, and saying our byes.
And gone. I went into the house and Ally was there, and the quiet.
How quiet it is here now. Clock ticking quiet.
Like life rushed out of the front storm door and up a winding road.
Filed under: Shop
Remember this?
How much more complete it looks when it becomes this.
This is progress, backwater style. In the sense that it only took 5 weeks to get it this way. My concrete guy (what, you thought I did it myself?) is an artist who works only when God has promised him fair weather.
This weekend, when not letting the grandson chase me hither and yon, I’ll be all about the shovel, and the dirt. Filling in around the edges, you see. Backfilling.
With a little luck we’ll be seeing a structure on top of this next week.
God hasn’t promised. But I’m a hopeless believer in that which may be, and can be. The shrine has reached its own time. And I can’t say I’m not a little excited.
Filed under: Family
Here is the man who would be king.
I’d say more but his emminence is wanting breakfast.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Here’s an old post, some 6 years old now. Reminds me of how little things change at daybreak when you do what the Builders do.
~~~~~
I drive west in the mornings now.
It’s where the jobsite is. Far west of here. And all my compatriots in the construction industry have work in the west also. Yesterday, I was reminded how much building there is going on in our sister city to the west.
An army of trucks, from every conceivable sort of business, begin roaming the road at dawn and stream down the highway, over a bridge, through a tunnel, then down the highway some more. Hundreds, thousands of us. We sit, at 65 miles an hour, sipping coffee. Preparing to make the day and have something permanent to show by the end of it.
I listened to David Bowie on the radio. He made a suggestion. “Let’s Dance.”
under the moonlight, the serious moonlight
We fly west to the techno beat. We race to where the light will come through windows and show unfinished business, the dust of the trades, the piles of materials, the hope of an owner, the dreams of those who designed it. They leave it in our hands. Entrust us with the task of creating art which shelters you, which warms and cools you, places to go where you can cry or dance or make love.
We do this. Hands and tools and minds. We leave joy and grief and family behind and go to the fields where the dirt and the concrete and the steel lay waiting for us.
Let’s dance, indeed.
Filed under: Family
I got a tap on the shoulder from one of the big guys in the blogosphere, that Northwest statesman and swashbuckler http://banedad.blogspot.com/.
Good golly. I have a lot of visitors here, old and new (and I don’t acknowledge them nearly often enough or thank them for their kindness) but celebrity sightings are few. Reading about his life makes me glad that there are at least a few noble warriors left to us.
~~~~~
Big doin’s this weekend. Maggie and the little man are making the five hour run down here and my index finger is already itching for the Kodak shutter. I talked to them on the phone the other day and the conversation went something like this:
“Hi Daddy! Just wanted to touch base about Friday . . .”
“Put Gavin on the phone.”
” . . . cause we’ll be getting in around 9 in the morning and . . .”
“Gavin? Hello?”
“What? Dad? Oh for heavens sake, here . . .”
“Hey buddy! Hey little man!”
“Wheeeheeeheee!”
We talked after a fashion, the grandson and I. A few sound effects, a few secret passwords known only to the two of us, passed along and made forever at 3 am one winters morning. It was a brief conversation but we understood each other well enough, and Maggie took the phone back.
“Heh, Dad you should see him, he’s got the biggest smile . . .”
(Abrupt squalling in the background)
“No Gavin, Mommy needs the phone now. He wants the phone back”, and she giggled. “That’s so cute.”
“Put him back on the phone, Mag.” And the little man got back on the line and the crying stopped as if capped with a cork. More whispers, more secrets.
“Okay honey, let Mommy talk to Grammpy now. Like I was saying Dad, we’ll be getting in Friday morning sometime . . .”
(Squalling in the background, getting louder by the minute)
“Sheesh, he really wants to play with this phone.”
“Nope. He really wants to talk to his Grammpy.”
“No, seriously Dad, he’s forever wanting to play with my phone.”
“Aw, give my ego a break, huh?” The little man was in full battle cry by now. “Maybe you better call me back after he’s asleep tonight, Mag.”
“Okay okay!”, and the line went dead, and an evil smile came to me.
Ally looked up from her knitting (or whatever it was she was doing) and said, “What are you looking so smug about?”
“Me? Oh, just putting the hex on Maggie for the next thirty minutes or so. Me and the grandson, heheheh.”
Ally shook her head and sighed. “That poor kid”, and I’m not sure if she was referring to her daughter or the grandson, but it didn’t matter.
I’ll ask Gavin about it. Sometime this weekend.
This gets complicated. Bear with me. I won’t use the word “digress” once, since it’s far and away the most overused cutesy thing on the blogosphere anyway (“Oh, hee! Sorry, but I digress!” And cue violent retching sounds from the backwater).
Maggie has a dog that lived with us while she was here, a Boxer, who was the living embodiedment of why the Boxers are called the “Clown Dogs!”. They are. Pure clown with black pancake face. I swear this dog could have made any fraternity in any institute of higher learning anywhere. Any dog that will lap up spilt beer, run hither and yon through the house and then hit the brakes, check for an audience and uproariously fart is a fraternity dog. A clown dog.
And Ally his canine grandma did her share to encourage the bum.
Somewhere along the line she acquired a stuffed rabbit, supposedly meant for the grandson. Innocent looking pink stuffed rabbit he was, with a twist. Inside there was some lunatics idea of a thing, a gyroscope ball which, when bounced, would sing a wacky song and cause the rabbit to actually hop. Hop! It was Spike Jones doing a boing! boing! and singing “Here comes Peter Cottentail . . .”, and sort of drifting off in the middle of the song while drunk people played the spoons and I swear Curley and Mo were in the middle of an argument somewhere in there. Sheer madness for 20 seconds and it never failed to get a laugh. Toss the rabbit, sheer bedlam. As soon as it hit the floor the noise and motion started.
Ally brought it home and tossed it for the little man but the Boxer happened to be within reach. I swear, his eyes stuck out of his head as if on stalks and he pounced on the bouncing rabbit (“Hippity hoppity Easter’s on it’s Wayyyyyyyyy!” boing boing!) at warp speed. Little Gavin lost interest pretty quickly but the Boxer was entranced.
At 4 am the next morning the Clown Dog was racing around the dining room table, rabbit betwixt jaws, stopping only to fling his prey aloft and make the bouncing start all over again. It’s shocking how loud Spike Jones can be in a small house in an hour somewhat east of dawn, and the small man awoke (rather suddenly, and loudly, I thought) and so did I, and that was pretty much the end of leaving the Stuffed Rabbit on Crack around the house for a hyperactive Boxer to play with.
But the Boxer was not just a Clown Dog, but a cunning one at that.
We attempted to hide the rabbit. Trying to hide something from this dog, particularly when he desired it above all else, was futile. He whined, he stalked. He bumped legs and imitated the flinging motion used to flip a Rabbit on Crack skyward and make it live! yet again.
Eventually, someone left it out in plain view, and the Boxer ate it.
I said that the dog was a clown, but he was (and is) a damned smart clown. He reasoned that there must be some mechanics driving an otherwise normal stuffed rabbit to behave like it did, and he was determined to find out just why. Deep from the bowels of the rabbit emerged an ordinary plastic ball with the gyroscope mechanism within. Suited the Boxer just fine. The ball still made the noise! and that’s all he was truly after in the first place.
True to form he hid the ball and at 4 am the next morning it started up again, now twice as loud after having been de-skinned from its rabbit shell. I tell you, it’s horrific to hear cowbells and a warbling Easter song at that time of day, accompanied by dog claws on vinyl flooring and vast galloping and panting.
Ally took the drool coated ball firmly in hand, put it in a wall cabinet and saved the sanity and sleep time of every adult in the house, and there it remained. For a time.
Now in the last couple of weeks the little man, his mama and the dog he calls his own have left, and taken most of their detrius with them. What little remained was on the order of “Oh lord, did she leave this? Just toss it in the trash with that other stuff honey, would you please?” and I had a bag full of Golden Books with a ripped cover, a spare insert for a diaper bag and so forth.
And one bouncy plastic ball.
“Ally, you really want to toss this out? If the Boxer comes to visit? It’ll be like old times!”
And my wife looked pained and it was the look of coming bolt awake at 4 am, the boing! boing! and the drunken conversation of Mo and Curley plain on her face. “Toss it, right this minute”, she said.
Now, I’m pretty much given to doing what my wife wants. But there is a devil in me, and he sits on my shoulder and giggles at times.
I yanked the ball out of the trash and hid it in the big white truck. With all the tools, the saws. A place where you could hide a hundred such balls and never see them again.
It happens at this particular time, when I’m missing the little man and his momma and even the Clown Dog, that I’m working at the biggest public construction project in the nearby big city. Two schools being built side by side, and they happened to hire those I work for to supply the cabinets. Hundreds of cabinets. I show up daily, hang several dozen cabinets. I have helpers. It is routine and repetitious. Boring even.
There is a general contractor, and a superintendent who I happen to get along with very well. In the manner that I might report to him, but when it comes to cabinets, he defers to me. There’s a heirarchy there, a mutual respect that comes with many years and graying men who know exactly what to do and how to do it and who knows best in each scenario. A good jobsite has several such people, adults in charge. Each with a specialty.
And of course, it has the one person who keeps things from being absolutely blissful. Good and bad jobsites alike have one of these. I believe it’s ordained by the construction gods.
In our case, it’s the city representative.
Charged with overseeing every phase of construction, the city rep is the prickly pear to every working cog on the job. Forget to wear your hard hat for a moment? “Hardhats, get your hardhats on, there . . .” or “Why are you hanging cabinets in this area, when clearly you could be hanging over there?” (a particular thriller for me, and if I’m a bit cranky that day, I’ll allow that maybe since all the cabinets on this job have to be hung eventually, is there really any reason not to hang these? Since I’m already here? Really, is there? Hmmm?).
I suppose yesterday would have been much like any other day but for the fact that I was quietly setting up in one room, and the superintendent and the city rep were having a conversation in the next. And the city rep was waxing eloquent.
” . . . and I’ll tell you something else, that cabinet guy, that old carpenter, he’s a little disruptive, isn’t he? Why, I saw him more than once on Friday with no hardhat and they’re working too fast, they’re making the other trades . . .”
“Hold on a second”, the super interuppted. “Working too fast? Isn’t that the point? That guy’s the baddest finish carpenter in two states, what do you want me to tell ‘im? To slow down? You wanna talk to him, you do it. I ain’t gonna. I got a schedule to go by.”
“Well yeah I know that but . . . “
“And besides which who cares if he takes his hardhat off once in a while? It’s a hundred degrees in here!”
“Now see here . . .”
It’s an old story, a good super with a crew he likes having to defend the ancient art of building stuff to someone in pressed khakis and a lively golf shirt. I felt a little bit like an eavesdropper and tred lightly out of the building. Had to get some more screws from the truck in any event.
And right up until the point that I got the screws out of their case, and saw that fist sized plastic ball right next to them, I just might have avoided going to hell when I die.
But the devil was calling me, and a Clown Dog as well.
It’s a shame that scheduling of trades in this school doesn’t allow ceiling panels to be put in place until the last thing. Shame. Kinda makes sound travel between classrooms until it’s installed, it does. Dust and dirt can be airbourne and they travel above the walls and settle everywhere. But the sound really travels.
And plastic Clown Dog balls, tossed in a nice underhand arc and whispered over a wall where the chief city representative of millions of dollars worth of elementary schools, and a thoroughly disinterested construction superintendent were arguing?
Shocking loud, I tell ye. Shocking.
Filed under: Family
Ally said. “Thank you for having children with me.”
Then we had our brunch, which Beth the Eldest bought. A killer Denver omlette, me.
I saw a ball game. Bought some hand tools. Cleaned my truck. Rode the tractor around. Had a Shiner Bock or two. Tonight I’ll grille some prime steakage and start a fire in the fire pit. Feed the son who’s coming down from town. Talk to Maggie on the phone.
By God, if that isn’t a Fathers Day we just aren’t on the same planet.
Filed under: Family
I’m a famous watcher of Braveheart, because it feeds something in me and exerts dark things, at times. It was on the tube again tonight and Ally and I sat, once more, to soak in it and ponder. Seeing the green and gray hills.
It is the face so much like that of the daughter who has recently left here, and gone on to the man, and that should be a good thing. But there is a shining there, in that picture, when William Wallace tells her “I love ye, I always have”, and presses the flower into her hand that he’s saved since he was a lad, the one she gave him at the grave of his father.
I’ve never seen that shining of Maggie, and it sticks to me. I watched that glow from Murron and the scene faded, and Ally coughed. I found a lump in my throat and snatched an empty beer from the side table, took it to the kitchen. I moved to the fridge to grab another but found myself with hand to face, and a wetness to the eyes because I heard Maggie from somewhere. And wondered, would she ever have that, really have that and how it should be and it was a just and right thing to have, that shining.
So I stood in the kitchen and talked with the Maggie who wasn’t there and wished for her a future with a wonder, and a fire from deep. Something to light her eyes and sweep ’round a gray hill in a shining, to the end of days.
~~~~~
Since a long while ago I’ve had this . . . what to call. Dream? perhaps, or walking imprint, and it comes to me at times. Since I was very young. And since I’ve grown. Happens with the sort of startled nowness that wakes me in the night, or flashes without any cause in the middle of the day.
I’m staring down the barrel of a long gun, a cheek to the warmth of walnut and a hand light on the cool of steel. There is a gentle slope underneath me, a grassland, and it is a strange thing because there is no cover or concealment. Not a tree, or a hedgerow or wall. It is a foolhardy thing to be aiming a long gun out in the open.
But it’s there, a picture in my mind that comes back again and again. For years it has come to me. The few other such pictures I’ve ever had have already come to pass. The woman, the small place in the woods, they were equally clear. The children, not so much so, but how can you imagine such things, really. Maybe Ally saw them at times, in her own mind.
But the rifle thing. It is a dream of a cold rage, the always with a hint that this is the last day. That the aiming is a righteous one. That an enemy draws nigh, one who will seek out that place and those close.
I get right up to the point of that soft sigh, the proper breath that purges as I draw the trigger back, soft as a flicker. Unseen the target, unknown. The finger, the sensation of the dream, it is so real I feel the micro-striations on the metal edge of the trigger and feel the sweat from my cheek on the wood.
But I never hear the shot.
I’ve awoke in this rage, and I’ve known a different plane, seen different things. I don’t know what it means, or why it has persisited since I was small.
But I watch this Braveheart movie, and there is this sense in there of things close to this. The old warrior, speaking to the red haired son.
“I’ve lived long enough to have lived free. And see you grow to become the man you are. I’m a happy man.” And he drew his last, and just . . . . Died. Lacerated, and made still.
To live to that day, whatever that day and dream might bring, and to say that to my son.
It is the thing beyond the picture that I’m not seeing just yet. That I have lived free, with the woman of a dream, and stopped rage and told daughters and sons that I love them, and are proud of their day.
Without regret. Not ever once.
What madness we live with, some summer days. Murron, and warriors. And daughters in kitchens, far away.
