BackwaterBlog

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.