Filed under: Family
When a little man turns one year old, why, let him eat cake.
Ally and I poked on up to Pennsylvania this weekend to watch him do just that. He allowed that we could have a piece. Pretty good cake I’d say.
They got him cleaned up and put him in fresh pajamas, and he wandered over to me with a grin and outstretched arms, just like he always used to do. It took us about 15 minutes to fall asleep together in that big recliner.
That’s why I like my grandson.
Filed under: Uncategorized
In 1979, you could still find gas for under a dollar a gallon. Wasn’t easy, and occasionally when you’d find yourself pumping $20 worth, you’d hand over 20 whole dollars and your hands would shake and it was easy to imagine the world coming to an end.
Then you’d hop into something looking like this, rumbling and growling, feeling a vibration through the three-speed black knobbed gear shift. Shove in a very heavy clutch and let a pair of G60’s chirp just a hair as you glided onto the hardtop.
Mine was black with that same white stripe and a white interior, no hood scoop and wider tires. Bucket seats. A 340 four-barrel that was perfectly matched for the chassis weight. Positively evil looking.
I think everybody ought to have a car like this at least once in their lives. Having one at 19 or 20 years old is perfect. It’s a head turner, the kind of thing that you hear before you see. If you’re smart (and darned lucky), you’ll manage to not get a ticket before the time comes to graduate to a minivan and spend your weekends putting up a trellis in the side yard.
I met Ally when I had that car and she still talks about it.
I once ran my good buddy back to college, from Norfolk to Richmond on a Sunday morning, so that he could take me to a basketball game and be up for classes come Monday. We made it in 70 minutes. It’s a 90 minute trip at best, so I have to believe we hit some sort of time warp there. I’ve made that same run countless times since and still have to wonder. But I can still hear that unrelenting roar from an engine released to do what it does best.
I still get a grin these days, when some kid in a tricked out Honda pulls up alongside my big rig and peals out in a 4 cylinder, glas-packed frenzy. “Oh my young punkster, if only I had the Dodge back for an hour. One hour.”
Then I mash the gas, and try to coax the truck up to sixty in less than a minute, and try not to think about the $3 a gallon burning through a stifled but heavy duty engine in front of me.
Sucks to be old, sometimes.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
In due course of time, the house that Ally and I had envisioned arose from the clay of the backwater. The masons were summoned, and the electricians and plumbers. As my personal contribution I rejected the deck builder and chose to put my own in, a grand and luminous affair involving the erection of the finest material and the dogged pursuit of finishing before the next phase was to start.
And personally recording every brick and stick was my own personal site historian, Walter.
For someone who loathed a cell phone in every way, Walter was an absolute beast for the making of long term calls, often in the middle of a work day, detailing the nuances of laying buried cable from pole to house, and the depth of the cable, and the color shirt the man digging the trench happened to have on that day. He did this simply because he felt led to visit the property every day, a round trip of 90 minutes, because it was his mission. Interested in the process, you see.
I was swimming in minutiae for a time there. As opposed to now, when I’m absolutely drowning . . . . but wait. Am I getting ahead of myself?
By the time Ally and I moved in last November, Walter had made his deposit and his house was underway. A flurry of work took him out of town on week long trucking runs and the number of phone calls dropped considerably, although it was not unusual for him to need detailed progress reports at 8 pm on a Sunday night.
“Hey chief, I’m sitting at a truck stop in Kansas City. Did the gas man get by with the gas tank yet?” I’d stumble out to the back porch and peer through the gloom to Walter’s backyard. “Doesn’t look like it, Walt.”“Huh. Wonder what’s taking them so long?”“Well, that’s . . .”
“EH?”
I’d long since learned that to talk to Walter, on the phone or otherwise, was an exercise in patience that would tax the very life out of you. And believe it or not, it wasn’t a hearing problem, he could hear a pin drop. He simply had an inability to listen unless he was ready to, and would turn your conversation on and off in any way he could until that particular recording head in his brain swung into place and was pressed to the ‘on’ position.
So unless I was in a hurry, I got used to pausing after every phrase and waiting for the engagement of the Walter Recording Studio.
“Walt, that’s the way things work down here. A little slower.”
“Oh. That’s what I thought too.” Which was another favorite trick. He’d ask a question, get an answer and make out as if he knew the answer all along. Cute, the first few times. After the forty-’leventh?
Still, he was a neighbor-to-be. I kept an eye on his place as it developed. We’d tip a beer at the end of the day, or he’d drive out of his way to check out prices on lawn tractors for me. Little stuff, companionable things. Toward the end of January his place was finished and he moved on in. Why, we even had him over for supper a couple of times.
But there was this constant little hum in my head, coming directly from next door. “You gonna buy that lawn tractor? Grass is gonna be gettin’ pretty high here in a month or so, you know?”
“Yep, that’s a fact Walt.”
“Too much yard to mow with a push mower.”
“You’re right about that, Walt.”
“I got a push mower but it’s too much yard by a half.”
“Same here, Walt.”
“What?”
“I said, I’m not gonna mow my whole yard with . . .”
“HUH?”
Pause. Long extended pause. Pause until you hear an audibe click! from somewhere to the west of Walter’s right ear.
“I’ll be getting a tractor pretty soon, Walter.”
“Oh. You know, I was thinking, we ought to go in for one together. No sense spending all that money for something we both need.”
Uh oh. This was the worst combination of all, Yankee thrift and the need for companionship. And worst of all, it actually made sense. Adjoining yards, one tractor to take care of both, cut the price in half.
I mentioned it to Ally and she was all for it. “Heck yeah, why not? I know you, you want to buy that expensive biggun’ thing and we could really use another couple of chairs in the family room, and . . .”
So there was that. Walter increased his visits to Sears and Home Despot and would return, fanning tractor pamphlets under my nose with a flourish.
“Here, looky here! Sears’ got this one for twelve hunnert, but there’s a floor model with a ding on it so I talked the salesman down another two, and with my Sears card I get 5% off, and . . . “
“Walt . . .”
” . . . there’s a sale going on right now so I bet we can zap him for even more! Whaddya think?” There’s something fascinating about a transplanted Yankee on a bargain hunt, the gleam in the eye, the steam from the nostril.
“Walter, that particular tractor couldn’t do much more than . . .”
“Eh?”
Pause. Click!
“That tractor is only good for cutting grass. It won’t pull a plow, or a cultivator, or a box blade. Remember? We talked about this last week.”
“That’s what I thought too. I told the guy it was too small.”
Sigh. “So why even . . .”
“Told him we (big emphasis on the ‘we’) were in the market for a biggun.”
“I see.”
“No sense foolin’ around with something that won’t get the job done.”
“Right.”
“No sense a’tall.”
It must be understood that as a carpenter, I share tools rarely. I buy them for me, to be used by me, loaned out never. Hell, I’d rather give you a tool of mine rather than lend it to you. A tractor is simply a big expensive tool. See where this is going?
When the spring came and the grass got too high to ignore, I acted. Surgically, and with great vigor. Three days of intensive internet research, a few phone calls, two actual physical tractor visits. It was brief but thorough.
A shining Friday saw me, son Ben and a gleaming black tractor on a sagging pickup truck backing into the yard, ramps were produced and a hulking monster of a tractor rolled to the backwater grass. Complete with back plow and box blade and an aerator. Walter was in my yard before the truck had come to a full stop.
He was grinning, if a bit uncertainly. “Got one, eh? Geez, that’s a beast.”
“It is that, Walt.”
“I just about give up on ye, almost put a deposit on that John Deere over at Lowe’s this morning.”
I mentally rolled my eyes, sure in the knowledge that Walter wouldn’t have put a deposit on a ball point pen without at least twenty cell phone calls. Ben heaved the box with the sleeve hitch out of the truck and it clanked a little.
“Take it easy there, Benster!”, from a concerned Walter. “Don’t need no damaged equipment you know. You got the recept, didn’t you chief? Didja get the extended warranty? How much discount on it?”
Pause. Click!
“Got a couple hundred off retail. No warranty. Cost too much.”
For a minute I thought Walter was approaching apoplexy, the way his eyeballs were a bulgin’. And I busied myself with unwrapping the stuff, trying to time it just right.
I heard the long, deep intake of breath and turned my head just as the first “But . . .” was forming.
“And the whole deal was only thirty two hunnert, Walt.”
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOF!
“Walt, you okay? I said the whole deal was only . . .”
“Eh? HUH? AH!”
“Thirty two hunnert. Why, they just about gave it to me, cut another 50 off since me and Ben picked it up.” I toed the big back tractor tire. “Good size rig, ought to pull that box blade just fine”, I murmured. “Don’t you think so, Walt?”
It was an effort. He was breathing heavily, passing a furtive hand over his back pocket where his wallet was stowed, a furrowed brow crunching numbers frantically. But at length, he spoke. “Just . . . just let me know what my share . . .”
“Oh I ain’t worried about all that just now. I’m sure we can work something out.”
“But . . .”
“I know it’s probably a little more than you were expecting.”
“It’s . . .”
“Sure is a big tractor though, isn’t it? Ought to make this place look pretty good after I get the grass in shape. Make things easier, for sure.”
“Thirty two . . .”
“Yep, helluva deal.”
It was a helluva deal. Why, I’d have cheerfully paid retail just for the chance to see that cloud of smoke coming from ol’ Walt’s wallet and wafting over the yard.
Cheerfully, I say.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
Just about a year ago, as Ally and I contemplated a move across the state line and were in fact making moves to do so, I wandered into the Watering Hole on an ordinary Thursday afternoon.
“Hey big guy!”, came the greet from the little man at the bar, and it was Walter. Balding and wizened and dentured Walter. And if you can picture the very embodiedment of lechary, skeevishness and corner-of-bar ownership with a Coors Lite hood ornament and a Yankee turn of phrase? That’d be the lad. He happened to be by himself that day which was not unusual. Walter worked well with a crowd but it was seldom the case that you’d seek out his company on an ordinary Thursday, bar or otherwise.
But the bar was desolate, and he was in the mood.
“Just got back from a run to Ohio . . . Kathy get this man a beer wouldja hon’? So what’s been going on there, chief?”
“Just about the same old . . .”
“Oh, I tell you what, I had one helluva time going through West Virginia this trip. Truck got halfway up one mountain up there in, where the hell was it?” (A five second pause that felt like five minutes) “Aww, doesn’t matter, anyway the brake pressure started going on me and this idiot tried to cut me off and . . . wait! Bald Mountain, yeah, that was it. Anyway, I cut gears down to nothing and . . .”
I took a long pull at the longneck. This could take some time.
Walter had a habit of telling tales in a conversational way that precluded any conversation. You basically waited until he ran out of steam before trying to inject any word of your own, and then it was like lighting a fuse. And the dialouge was circular, because it always came back to a starting point.
“So what’s been going on?” Again, after big trucks has been run up and down a mountain for the better part of an entire beer.
“Well, Ally and I just made a deposit on some property. Getting ready to move out of the rental house and . . .”
“What?” He leaned closer.
“I said Ally and I are buying a place out in the country . . .”
“HUH?”
I took a deep breath. “I said, Ally and me are GETTING A NEW HOUSE OUT IN THE COUNTRY IN A COUPLE OF . . .”
“Oh. That a fact?” He calmly sipped at his beer. “Where abouts? Cost you much? How big?”
“It’s just across the state line, Walt. Save us a bundle on taxes.”
He got that look on his face, a look I know all too well from dealing with native born Yankees before. Save money, it’s a hot button. Thrift, and rock wall fences and not getting a new snow shovel because Great Grandpa’s still had plenty of life it it, and all that.
He leaned in again and got positively conspiritorial with me. “You know, I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing myself. Got this big house up here in town, too many people around for me. Traffic’s a pain in the ass, too. Need to get out away from all that while I can, before I retire in a few years.”
I nodded, it was a common theme with those I had talked with about moving south. Get away from all this congestion, country life. Funny thing, a couple had even made the drive down to the backwater for a look-see but came back wanting to talk about anything else. It isn’t for everybody. It’s a longish drive, it’s in the middle of nowhere. Wives in particular had a problem with lack of stores and that comfortable suburban buzz.
So I shrugged and said, “Well look, there’s a lot next to the one I’m getting and the same guy has it up for sale, house and lot deal. I can give you the address if you . . .”
“Yeah, yeah!”
“. . . want to go take a look.”
“What?”
“I said I’ll write down the address and the realtors name if . . .”
“HUH?”
“Here, I’ll draw A MAP TO THE PLACE SO YOU CAN FIND IT!“
“Oh. Okay, that’s just what I was thinking.”
He watched intently as I sketched a map on a handy bar napkin and fished a realtors business card from the wallet. I tossed in one of my own cards so that he’d have a number to call if he got lost.
“Just give me a call if you want, Walter.”
“Oh yeah. Don’t worry. I never bother much with those cell phones. Hate the things, really. Wouldn’t even have one if my dispatcher didn’t need to get hold of me. Look here, this is my phone.” He proceeded to pull forth a rather expensive looking unit. “Service nationwide!”, he exclaimed. “Got it a couple years ago from, uh wait now . . . (A five second pause that felt like five minutes, and I was getting ready to start screaming “Verizon? Cingular? WHAT?”) . . . Aww it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, can’t stand the thing. People buggin’ me all the time with it.”
I had to agree with him there, and told him as much.
Walter finished his beer and slowly slid off the stool. “Well, guess I’ll be seeing you. Got to get home and rest up, big trip in a couple of days. See you kids later. Bye Kathy!”, and he gave the bartender a particularly lecherous leer. “Don’t forget now!”
He shuffled through the big pine door somewhat painfully, favoring one leg, and was down the sidewalk and gone.
Kathy and I were old pals, and I imitated the cocked eyebrow and Snidely Whiplash look. ”Don’t forget, Kathy!, heheh.”
She rolled her eyes. “Good Lord, he’s been in here a good two hours. I heard that truck story every time somebody else came in for a beer.” She ran a rag over the spot occupied by Walters beer and snatched up a soggy bill. “Gee, left me a whole dollar this time.”
I snickered. “Guess that’s what he meant when he said don’t forget.”
“What?”
“I said, I guess that’s what he wanted you to remember him by.”
“HUH?”
Deep breath. “He said DON’T FORGET KATHY, AND LEFT YOU . . .“
She couldn’t hold it any longer and burst into a braying laughter, clutching the dollar bill in one hand and holding onto the bar rail with the other. I saw the light and heehawed right along with her. Kathy staggered to the till and dropped the dollar into the plastic tip mug, shoulders twitching madly. “Ohmigod that was priceless. Poor Walter!”
“Poor Walter, whattabout poor me? I’m the one hollering at him!”
She giggled, but spoke seriously. “I worry about him, you know? Living all by himself, driving that big truck for days at a time. It’s like he’s starved for companionship.”
“And conversational skills,” I added, downing the last of the longneck..
“That was nice of you to tell him about that lot next to yours,” and she expertly wrung the cap from a fresh one and tossed it over her shoulder to the trash. Her signature move. “What are you gonna do if he decides to take you up on it?”
“Who, Walter? Not a chance. He likes his routine too much. I don’t think living out in the swamp would ring his bell at all.”
She smiled coyly. “I dunno, maybe you’ll get a new neighbor. I imagine you’d be a blast to have next door, you and Ally.”
I grimaced. “Hell now you’re just fishin’ for a tip, Kath.”
“Bet you’re right on that, sport.” And she snapped the bar rag at me and we smiled and talked of cheap tippers and why they should be drug off and shot.
Come the very next day, as I slogged through the mornings run of making cabinets stick to their designated wall, my cell phone rang. It wasn’t Ally’s number on the screen, nor any of the kids or the erstwhile boss-of-mine. In most cases I’ll just let those calls go to voice mail but there was this nagging thought – Gee, might be Walter, lost in the wilderness – so I picked up.
“Hey, that you Chief?”
“Yeah Walter, it’s me.”
“Well, what’re you doing?”
“I’m working, Walt.”
“Oh yeah, doing what?”
Now, as I said, I’m not much for cell phones, or any other kind of phone for that matter. You’re calling me, spill your guts and let me get back to the work day you already know I have in front of me. I make this pretty clear to folks. Just as Walter had intimated to me.
“Just working, Walt. What’s up?”
“You at that school job or what?”
In my best what’s this got to do with anything? voice I said, “Nope. On the Navy base.”
“Well what’re you doin’ up there?”
I fidgeted. “Walt, are you lost or something?”
“What?”
“I said are you lost, did you find that lot from the map I gave . . .”
“EH?“
I drew a lungful. “I said, ARE YOU OUT ON THE ROAD AND CAN’T FIND THE LOT OR THE ROAD OR THE . . .“
“Oh. No, matter of fact I’m standing here with the realtor right now, taking a look at the place.” I got an instant mental picture of my realtor, a reserved country man who was as soft spoken as could be, standing next to the Cranky Yankee and answering a machine gun barrage of “HUHS?” and was instantly flooded with guilt. This was all my doing.
I sighed. “So what you think of the place, Walt?”
“Oh we’re just talking about it right now, Ron and I.” Ron being the realtor, and I wasn’t quite sure about the way Walter said ‘Ron’, as if they were life-long buddies. “This might have possibilities, chief.”
“Well good, glad to hear it. Listen I got to get back to it here, let me know if you have any questions . . .”
So whatcha doin’ later anyway, goin’ up to the joint?”
“I don’t know Walter, that’s along way out of my way today, and . . .”
“‘Cause I was thinkin’ about running up there, myself.”
“Right.”
“Seeing Kathy for a bit.”
“Yep.”
(insert five second pause, running to months, then years)
“Hello, Walt?”
“What?”
“Can you find your way back to town, or was there something else, or . . .”
“WHA?“
I mentally flicked a .308 round into a very long battle rifle, snicked the bolt closed and took very careful aim, perched atop a custom laminate countertop on a Navy base job far, far away.
“Watler,” I said very slowly, and with great firmness, ”I need to get back to work this very instant and . . .”
“Look, ol’ Ron and me got to discuss this thing a little more so I got to let you go. Maybe I’ll see you later, then.”
“Erk . . . “
“Alright! Bye!” Click
There’s times I wished my parents hadn’t raised me right, you know?
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
Folks usually talk about August as the Dog Days. A big gush of hot, moist air rolls over their particular cul-de-sac around the middle of August and the lemonade and lawn sprinklers are fetched and the hew and cry is generally “Good Lord! The Dog Days are here!”
Just a hunch, but those people must live in Northwest Pennsylvania.
Around these parts, the Dog Days might start in early May. I can assure you, they’re in full swing right now. It’s a seething, scratchy sort of heat which is accompanied by full blown humidity. Padde through the air humidity. Where the only thing moving is the horde of blackflies.
I go out the back door on any given morning to walk the geriatric Lab and start that first sweat of the day before I get to the fenceline. By 9 am the treeless jobsite resembles an outpost on Mercury, I’ve consumed at least one Gatorade and am thinking lustful thoughts about the second.
My parents raised me and three siblings in a small town outside of Buffalo. There was no such a thing as air conditioning because . . . well, some of the myths about Buffalo are true. The wintry hype is typically overdone, but the summers are quite pleasant.
So when they semi-retired and moved down here (pronounced heah, locally) in the fall, they marveled. “Isn’t it lovely and warm here in October”, my Mother often enthused. When the same could be said for November, and her first Christmas saw temperatures in the 70’s, I believe she was a bit perplexed. Neither of them wore a coat all winter. Of course, these were former farm children who barely reached for a sweater unless it dipped below 40. “Sure don’t miss those upstate winter storms, you betcha” was a frequent observation.
Then they hit July, and I never saw two people unravel so quickly.
“You’re going to get a heat stroke out there” my Mother would moan as I dashed out for tennis or the beach. “Yeah, better listen to your Mother, this sort of heat isn’t anything to fool with”, from Dad. Understand that the temperature was in the mid-80’s at the time, and it was early in the day. By suppertime, the thermometer had flirted with and passed 95, the heat made your ears drone much like the sound of the cicadias at night. Inevitably I’d come back inside just in time for the ritualistic chanting from my parents about ” . . . and the humidity!”, as they discussed the impending doom of summer for perhaps the fifteenth time that day.
Mom was a very well read person, and I think she used up every available word in describing Southern summers. “Unbearable” was common, for sure, and “inhuman”. But “sticky” seemed to be her personal favorite.
“It’s so sticky outside”, she’d say, plucking a blouse from moist skin. “How can you stand it out there? You’ll roast! So sticky . . .” and I was young, and prone to try to prove her wrong as I shot hoops or worked construction and tanned.
They purchased an air conditioner and went into hibernation until late September. Every summer. For five years this went on. In 1980, I married Ally and moved out of their house and into an apartment.
Now Mom would dispute me on this, and Dad has since passed on to a place where summers are not a great concern, but it took them approximately 30 days to pack their gear and hightail it back to Buffalo after Ally and I got hitched, and I know why.
“Can’t take another summer down here, eh?” I teased, as Mom threw dishes in a box. “Just gonna abandon your last child down here to the heat, are ye?”
“Don’t be silly,” she replied. “The weather’s got nothing to do with it. Nothing whatever. Your grandpa passed away and we need to go back up there and tend to his affairs and . . .”
“Mmmm-hmm.”
“. . . there’s that cute little house Dad and I looked at with a shop for him and a garden for me . . .”
“Of course.”
“. . . and it doesn’t mean we can’t take the summers down here at all.”
I strolled to the open back door and Dad was doing inventory on garden rakes and wiping his brow. “Getting up into the 80’s today I see,” he said.
Mom put a bit more speed into the dish packing. “Yep, gonna get sticky.”
Curiously, they were never seen in the South again any later than April. Or before October.
And they left that air conditioner hanging right in the window. Dad bought a snowblower, Mom got her heavy coats out of mothballs.
I walk the dog of a morning, and pull handfuls of sticky from the air and across my shirt, wet already at 5 am. Sticky, indeed.
Filed under: Uncategorized
An old post about life back in my 1960’s. I don’t know if I have an unusually good memory or if, in some fashion, I was writing life stories in my head at age 8, but things resonate sometimes. Like as if you . . . still were there.
~~~~~
I only spent about 10 years in the house I grew up in, hardly a full childhood but the fact that it was from age 5 until around 15 is telling. It’s a place bound and determined to etch out all sort of memory and remembrance.
The backyard wasn’t all that big because there was the whole matter of a shallow creek at the very back of the property, flowing at the bottom of a steep ravine. The ravine itself indicated that at one time this was a lot more than a creek, it was an honest river that carved out a lot of dirt over a lot of years.
But when I got my little hands on it, there was not much more than a pair of steep earthen sides, a foot deep flowing creek bed about 6 feet wide and mature trees sprouting everywhere. It was wilderness at the bottom of that ravine, the houses at the top disappeared and 48″ tall boys could see nothing but stockades full of border scouts and Iroquois with painted faces behind every bush.
And I don’t know who set it up or when, but there was an attraction set up right in my very own forest that drew fellow frontiersmen from blocks around. Someone had shinnied up a tall tree growing right at the edge of the creek and tied off a long rope in the crook of a branch. The loose end of the rope had a fat knot in it, and if you were to grab that knot and clamber up the steep slope of the ravine, right to the very top where it flattened out into a suburban yard, you could sit a bony butt right on the knot and pick your feet up and let gravity take its course.
A perfect flight would send you whooshing down the slope, over the creek some 30 feet below then back to the starting point where small feet would clabber for purchase lest the voyage start all over again with less velocity. The whole trip probably took less than 5 seconds but I’d have kids riding that thing all day. It was flying in the most simple of ways, a gust of wind at your face and the creaking of rope against tree, never really knowing if this might be the one time that the rope parted ways from the branch and send you soaring to the far side of the water and into a rather nasty patch of thorn bushes on the other side.
One daring lad, the lunatic fringe of us all would go at his turn on the rope by kicking off diagonally and flying straight at the rope tree and certain death, but somehow, in the way that only a ten year old can do, would wrap legs around the trunk of that tree just as he hit and dangle up there, nearly upside down and laughing hysterically, hanging there until we all shouted for him to let go and bring the rope back to us, hopefully with his daredevil self still attached.
I tried that once, and only once. Trying to mate, legs akimbo, with an unmoving oak tree at fifty mph and some thirty feet above mother earth taught me a lesson. I still wince when I watch some poor gymnast on TV who makes the ultimate error on the balance beam, and they’ve got real doctors on hand for heavens sake.
But I’d give a lot to go back to that rope swing for a day. To be small enough to make the physics of the whole thing work like it did, to see the world from way up there in my open cockpit with nothing to do but hang on to that brown rope and wish for another turn at being immortal. To feel life in a spruce breeze and a froth of dandelion seeds rushing past your shoulder in flight and the soft earth of an old sloping hill to catch you on the way back. Small hands with no fear and lithe legs to make a go of it.
Filed under: Shop
I’ve yet to bust a bottle of champagne (or Coors Lite, for that matter) across her sturdy corner. Haven’t carried my bride across the threshold. Haven’t built so much as a birdhouse in her.
But the possibilities are there.
She’s up.
There’s stuff in there. That’s the tail end of the rig, sitting at the concrete apron, just to give you a sense of scale. She’s big, indeedy.
And I’m painting the floor. What, doesn’t everybody paint their floor?
It’s the Fourth of July, and I’m exercising my independence by painting a floor, in a tall metal building somewhere in the wilds of Carolina.
I imagine Jefferson, Hancock and the boys would be proud. If freedom is important, having the freedom to do mundane things ought to be up there with speech and happiness and all the other rights. Free to do what you want.
Happy 4th, y’all.
