At six in the morning I poured the last of the kerosene into the heater and set it afire. The shop in the woods was cool and slow to heat, as it always is, and a dark monolith standing in the only clear island amidst a small ocean of sawdust was cold to the touch.
Today, the day the monolith Diorama sets sail to the north. This Sunday today. Up until 15 hours ago we didn’t know if today would happen, whether the delivery was a go or not, what small miracle would need to happen for all of this to fall into place, this cabinet made into something that will touch and affect so many and so much.
Maybe I’m making more of it than is really necessary. Then again, maybe not enough. I spoke a few days back about things taking on a life of their own out in this shop and boy, has it ever happened this time.
A few practical matters first.
I commented to JK on the phone last night “My God, I’m six feet tall and I can’t see over top of the darn thing.” Shown here without the front door, which is ten feet away in the prone position getting a stain bath.
It is, by all standards, a monolith. Dark indeed. Remember the sidewalls of this shop are 12 feet tall, so it may not look as imposing as it would in your living room (not that you’d want it there). I’ve got it sitting on some of those sliding coasters that have been hanging around the shop on a dusty shelf since Pterodactyls flew and might just send them along with the unit. Either because I don’t want them or they might just be needed to keep it from depressing somebody else’s concrete floor (I kid, it’s impressively heavy but not that much.)
The aforementioned door, just stained. Hoping that this stain will blend with everything else. Wood being weird and especially since it’s oak, the stain tends to do weird tricks in the light, different shades appear then change as you walk around it.
Like here. In bright light it looks like almost a natural finish, but it ain’t, not by a long shot. I nicknamed this hinge “Old Stiffy” since it came from the maker without the natural floppy action of its mates. Happens to work quite well with the door that will go on it, so all the better. The door needs to drop open and remain somewhat stationary.
All the mundane details. The screws I found to fit these hinges, for example. Only available in stainless steel. Chrome stainless, to be exact. Not exactly a match for bronzed metal. But a shot of black enamel paint and they blend in pretty well.
Or the turntable, which I dare not photograph less the natural order of the universe be disturbed. 26” in diameter, it sits atop a spinner mechanism that is 12” round. It’s heavy since it’s all hardwood, glued up from 3” strips. And since it’s hardwood it has a mind of its own and wants to warp and move and the whole apparatus has to be balanced and screwed and shimmed and bolted so that it spins (through two narrow as hell slots!) naturally, and smoothly. Delicate is not the word. Exasperating might be.
But spin it does, and slowly, as it should be for a display unit. Can’t really make it spin fast and you wouldn’t want to, since the pictures that will set upon it should be viewed slowly I should think. Deliberately. With critical eye. The point of this whole cabinet is to display the Diorama and make the unit fade into the background. I had to keep that in mind the whole time and it wasn’t easy.
The bottom drawer again.
JK asked about the costs involved in this thing, and I have a rough idea.The hardwood and plywood and stain and all the little stuff is probably in the range of $700 American. That’s materials. Easy.
The labor? Good lord. Look, I know how much my labor is worth (some of my colleagues would say “not a speckled damn”) and about how many hours are in this thing. It’s part and parcel of what I do, or should know how to do.
Usually pricing labor for a customer is a matter of figuring how many hours and hoping you’re correct about the time involved, multiplying by an ever variable labor rate per hour, gasping at the total and then wondering just how much this poor soul can afford to pay. That’s the way I do it, anyway. A better business practice would be to get the labor and be hard hearted no matter how much it is, probably throw a fat markup and profit factor on it as well. Such a practice on 60 hours of labor would put this thing at well over $5,000.00 for the total. Possibly more than that.
It’s a prototype, as JK keeps reminding me. It’s also a necessary part of her Masters Thesis.
I‘m not charging for labor. Have no desire to, because it’s my way of helping this project along. I haven’t the funds to contribute to her project in any other way. You charge meagerly for prototypes in this business in any case, and hope for repeats on final design (and I can assure you, there needs to be many design improvements from my plain offerings on this one).
And practical things again, it still needs to ship north. All the way to New York City, where it will be shipped again and reside in a museum. Can you imagine? Still haven’t wrapped my mind around that concept.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The shipping. There’s no way to make a long story any shorter than to speak of something so ordinary as shipping a cabinet from the Carolina woods to the bright lights of NYC, and all the whys and all the soul that will go with it. Out of mind. Out of heart.
We will speak of this later today.
. . . what to say.
A tragedy came to our door today, in the midst of progress on the Diorama. Seems that tragedy stalks this family with a relentless and determined pace.
In the mechanics of such things that were pre-ordained to happen, I submit some pictures of the past 48 hours of work. The unit is stained and ready for clear finish, which is normally very fast.
The turntable finally spins.
Right side.
Spinning another arc for a surprise feature, more structural than decorative.
Assembled.
The upper unit, dry fit for hardware. Immediately disassembled for finishing.
Face door dropped. The arc, to support the upper sides and create a stereographic effect is revealed.
First stained item, the bottom drawer. I looped one of the picture frames around the drawer front for color comparison, it’s pretty close. Once dry, I’ll check and see if it needs more toning,
The top lid masked with tape and ready for finish. Flat black inside, stain outside.
Sorry for the brevity. It was a very productive session.
Because it all has to start somewhere. And isn’t that a lovely little fire coming from the kerosene heater on a chilly March day.
For a few frantic posts, I’m going to relate in semi-live time the goings on at the little shop in the Backwater. The one behind the house. The one elected to produce a special piece of furniture for someone special indeed, the sister of Ally, who will use this as part and parcel of her Masters Thesis. I don’t know quite how many posts will occur as part of this (not that, you know, a lot of them occur at any rate) but this is an easy way to put pictures and history together for the building of this thing.
Plus I got the shop all cleaned up and wanted to show off, if you want to know the truth. Lookee. 12 foot side walls. A concrete floor laid and smoothed by one of the finest finishers I’ve ever worked with. A modest handful of small machines and a boatload of hand tools, most of which aren’t shown here. But will be, soon.
I’ve worked in better and worse. Hell I work in the most advanced place in this part of the country every day with millions of dollars in equipment and edifice. But better is not always the best when it comes to the stuff you do on your own. You’re wanting the quiet and stern emptiness of the discipline on your own, without several dozen opinions standing nearby. It’s more peaceable, sure, you can slurp a beverage and curse freely if need be. You often do a little of both. I’ve done so for nearly 35 years now and like the selfishness of spending the time away from all others in pursuit of . . . whatever emerges, I guess. There’s a plan to this of course. I know what to build. But sometimes it takes on a life of its own, somewhere amidst the sawdust and the screaming machines.
Here’s a chunk of scrap wood. I ought to burn it in the fireplace or the oyster pit, I really should. But I look at it and it has a beauty in that end grain, and I’m old in the way of looking at things like this.
It ought to say something about how I roll that a planer and a propane grill occupy bench space all at once.
This weekend, the madness begins. Short timeline, much to do.
And in the truest sense of feast or famine, a nice lady has requested an island cabinet for her kitchen. Same time frame.
Let the madness begin.
Filed under: Family
This is an old post from the old site, and one I’ve wanted to reclaim here for quite some time. Mostly because it involves the birth of my first (and thus far, my only) grandchild. My second born daughter, known as Maggie the Middlest on the old blog was teh Momma.
I would reckon that I’ve delayed the republication for this long because:
A) It involves mass re-editing of a terribly non-editable source, it was in two parts over two days, and . . .
B) I would have to re-post a buncha pictures, which the old blog didn’t show any more, but which I had, so I had to remember the order thereto, and . . . good christly . . .
But mostly because it made me tear up when I read it again, and I ain’t the type to tear up about much of anything at all. With the possible exception of grandsons, and Middlest Daughters, and life played out on a sea of dreamy hopscotch. So . . . back to July of ’06 we go . . .
It’s curious the ways these things seem to play out. You tend to daydream about dramatic settings, cool entries into birthing suites with a daughter in the middle of a screeching labor, a reflective pause and then, voila! Child, and all that is part and parcel.
But shucks folks, this is the Backwater. We don’t do daytime soaps. Maggie was ensconced in a birthing suite, that much is true. It so happens that I helped build this particular hospital back in the day. And, as I immodestly related to everyone within poking distance, “Damn, those cabinets I designed for this joint are still holding up! Look at how well that reception desk blends with the décor, right?”
Never, never take a builder to one of his past jobsites when the business at hand involves childbirth, or salvation, or any of the other mortal woes. I’m just saying.
Maggie had charged me with a “Hotlist”, a scribbled version of her close friends w/ cell numbers and I was to call them the very second I knew anything. Give them the lowdown, the room number and the proceeding range of uterine dilation for all I know. Having a list of cell numbers for a half dozen of the hottest chicks within cell range is a creepy sort of responsibility. I could have sold it for a fair amount of change to a number of local studly’s, I suppose. But predictably, the hot chicks turned the tables.
It was Lara, possibly the hottest of them all who called, well past the work day, while Ally and I trolled for time in a burger place. “Where are you guys? Maggie’s in labor here, she really is!”
I was munching a burger and probably sounded a little passive. “Uh. So how many centimeters is she? Five? Gimme a call when she hits 9. Wait a second, how come you’re at the hospital? Aren’t I suppose to be the one calling you?”
Lara sighed. “Who’s going to wait on a phone call from you? The baby would be up for a sixth birthday for crying out loud. Besides, Beth’s here already and . . .”
“Beth? As in Beth the Eldest? She’s there too?”
“Oh yeah, been here for hours. So, you coming or not?”
I got a glance from Ally, listening intently to all this. We’d agreed that there shouldn’t be much of an intrusion factor from nosy grandparents-to-be in the birthing room. Agreed that the Mom and Dad should have their own space. Agreed that we were going to be the mature, solidly respectful people that young folks want to look up to.
“We’re on our way. Dust off the hats and hooters, honey.”
So we roared gracefully slid out of there, stopped at a store and bought a nice bamboo shoot plant and a blank card which I made into a very heartfelt one, with a little poem that somehow sprung right out of God’s book of verse and into my fingers (and no, I won’t republish it here, it was a gem if I do say so, but it was something just for the Mom and Dad). I write better after a burger and a longneck.
Maggie was somewhere around 6 centimeters when we strolled into the room, which looked more like a frat house on Saturday morning than a place to pop out babies. Fast food bags and flip flops were peeking from every corner, Boyfriend Bob was attempting a nap on the fold out, and barefoot Beth was checking out the ballgame on ESPN. But Lara was game.
“Pops! Hey Daddy!” she exclaimed with a jack-in-box hug for me and one for Ally too. Calls me Pops, she does. A lot of Maggie’s friends do.
My Middlest Daughter was reclined, a weary smile on her face, and seemed to be getting on rather well with the drip from an epidural. Which made my fears of a lotta pain from such a large tummy (pressing down on such a tiny lass as she) sit just a bit better. She looked at me, and she and I talk all the time without words, but the “Hi Daddy,” never sounded quite so relieved as in that barely a minute look.
“Well for goodness sakes, how much longer are you gonna hold on to this child?” I asked. “You’ve been here all day! Time to get crackin’, girl!” and my wife groaned and Lara giggled as I assumed the catchers position and pounded an imaginary glove. This was a room familiar to me. You don’t have 3 kids without getting a little familiar with the scenario. I peered at the monitor with a professional flair, fingered the contraction rate paper tape as it slowly streamed out and tapped the heart meter to check on its functionality. Pronounced it all good, I did.
“Wait ‘til you see the doctor, Pops” from Lara. And her timing couldn’t have been better, because a song could be heard out in the hall, and a brown woman with laughing eyes breezed in, a stethoscope dangling, a two-step shuffle in blue booties. “Ah, mon. I see the Grandparents have landed, eh?” And Ally and I both smiled, because we have seen Jamaica mon, and we found it good. This doctor was so Jamaica it would not have greatly surprised me if she had Marley on her Ipod and a fattie tucked behind one ear. We were in good hands.
Doc Marley checked the instrumentation and excitedly sang another half verse of Calypso. “Oooh, you’re up to 9 centimeters darlin’, that were fast, no? Just since Mamma and Daddy came?”
I grinned. “The witch doctor has come, honey. I don’t be holdin’ wit’ no long labor around here. We gonna be rumblin’ any time now.” And Marley Doc gave me a smiling appraisal, figuring me as a kindred soul I‘m sure, or possibly some old coot off the street, but in any event she was pleased with the progress. “Thas right darlin’, you be ready to beep me when you need to,” and she smoothed Maggie’s pillow and chucked her lightly under the chin. “You listen to the witch doctor, now.”
. . . And you just know there’s gonna be a part two, don’t you mon?
. . . continued from the last one . . .
I’m a relatively modest man. Which is not to say a man of modest means, but boy howdy, kids these days. They’ll do anything for a hoot.
When Doc Marley would come in to the birthing room last night to check on Maggie, I’d flee. Self-righteously, self-consciously. Flee. I wanted no part of Maggie flashing a hoo-haw or anything else my way, and feel pretty secure in saying that Maggie wouldn’t want that either. Just ain’t the way things are done. At least not in this world.
Way back when (look, I’m gonna pontificate for a while before I get to the pictures, they’re loading slowly down below anyway so take a breath and just let me ramble, okay?) I learned about wimmen, and I learned from someone who had no business knowing anything about women because he had this phobia about S-E-X, using it as a three letter toss with vowel word in a Scrabble game which might get you booted from the house, but Dad had his ways. Dad knew a thing or two about women.
I was across the street from the ancient Outfoxed (ed.: this, the name of the old blog) ancestral house, might have been 9 years old at the time and the neighborhood was hell fulla kids. Post war production values and all that, there were tons of kids at the time. There might have been a dozen or so at any given time of day. And somehow or another, the neighborhood drama queen and I were in a bit of a scuffle. She might have been all of 6, but she had the heart and soul of a 39 year old gold digger. Honest. Somehow I have a hazy memory of an argument over a spectacularly muddy football (as in, “No it ain’t yours, it’s mine! Mine, I tell ye!”) and there was a tussle back and forth, and me being appx. 5 inches taller and 25 pounds heavier, I bested the little blonde haired rat for possession, and was running for the goal posts to perform the earliest recorded rendition of an end zone dance when I heard the summons.
“OUTFOXED! GEDDOVER HERE RIGHT NOW!”
And yes it was Dad, curiously ensconced in the front yard and performing yard maintenance which was absolutely not his forte, as the dramatic handing off of said duties some years later to a young progeny would make clear, but by God he was shredding some foliage that day.
It’s funny, somehow I knew that a wrong had been done, the tone of Dad’s voice made that abundantly clear. The why, on the other hand, was a matter best left to his interpretation, since I wasn’t getting a word in edgewise in any event.
“WHADDYA DOING TEARIN’ THAT BALL AWAY FROM THAT LITTLE GIRL?”
“Well gee, it’s my ball and . . .”
“I DON”T CARE IF IT’S YOURS. WHADDYA DOIN HITTIN’ A GIRL ANYWAYS?” WHADDYA SOME KINDA BUM OR SOMETHIN‘?”
“Well no Dad, it’s just that she . . . And I didn‘t hit . . .”
“AH, I DON’WANNA HEAR NO MORE. GET INSIDE AND TELL IT TO YOUR MOTHER. GIRL HITTER. NEVER SEEN ANYTHING TO BEAT IT . . .”
And that was the way of the wimmens, in mid-60’s America. You didn’t hit, you didn’t think about it in any way, you propped a pedestal and slid it under the woman and, for the love of all that is holy, those were the way things were done. I’m not to say that it’s a wrong thing either. Modern girls might argue, but they’ll never see an ill-tempered hand from this quarter. Or even a mildly flavored word. Dad would probably come down from heaven and kick my sorry ass.
I didn’t forget that afternoon with the football. Likely never will.
That’s not to say I don’t have fun with the wimmens in my life. I do. Young bartenders, secretaries enslaved in a construction office, kith and kin and friends of the daughters, I would likely staunch a hail of gunfire for any of them. Because they matter. They matter because . . .
They can do something mysterious and grand.
It isn’t a sexist thing that they do, although you’d be hard pressed to argue with a fellow crony on any given Friday night, when the PMS has driven him from the house and he’s wailing about horrible words at your elbow, the threat of street living fresh in his ear, a sweating longneck on hand.
So when Doc Marley bent me the look and advised “You best be chillin’ in the hall for a bit, mon” I knew exactly what to do. I’d best go out to the hall. And save my Middlest One a moment of grace, a measure of good strong pushing for the moments to come. Let the Grandma and the sister and the bestest friend hang, and give a nod to the Dad-to-be. They could stay.
I wasn’t going to be struggling with no footballs over here, across the street.
And eventually, the rest of the crew got the boot and they all had to come out and mingle in the hall with me, anyway.
God, what women can do. It touches me, just about now.
There was a moment just after Maggie delivered, and Lara and Beth were doing their best impression of Shemp and Curly on the public side of a delivery room door, Ally and I clinging in the midst, and I thought “Jesus, the things we do. What we go through in life, to make the best of all of this, and put to rights the septic tanks and the balky copier and the just damn sheer madness of your ordinary day, this is why we do it.” And I could hear Doc Marley doing the countdown from the other side of the door, “C’mon Hon, I’ll give ye a countdown to push from ten! TEN, NINE . . .”Oh sweet mercy. To hear the sound of life for the first time.
In the days when I’m no longer missed, I’d like to have this remembered. This right here, and the things made right, and all the days that can be brighter still.
I’d like to have a video of something I’ll never have, because we weren’t all that organized to begin with, but to see Lara and Beth dancing up and down and holding hands and just being women, who knew and could maybe understand what was going on just feet from them . . . without ever having birthed a child between them. And to look at the woman I call my own, and why she cried in my arms later on that night, and why 3 children later she still makes me sing of an evening.
Well now, then.
I have, and will again while I have the chance, slap palms with a doctor from the islands, and prod her about singing in the halls and why Doc Marley is the single coolest acronym I’ve ever come across. Because she is, you know, the coolest mentor to the finest of wimmens . . .
And you got that right, mon. Ya, you right. Me and my wifey, we thanks you. You did us good, and you be among the good peoples of the earth. I’ll hear your screech about how cute my Grandson is to the end of my days. Bless your good heart, darlin’.
We called everyone. It was 11 pm and well past the bedtime of adults grown close to their routine, If you had a phone and we had your number we called you, and it is the destiny of Grandparents to call, and photograph and generally make a nuisance of themselves in the name of love. Or generational history. Or maybe just the ecstasy of enduring, and making lives longer.
My Middlest lay in the bed just minutes after the delivery of her very first child, and the little boy was just out of reach in a haste of post delivery clean up, away from his Mama, and I saw.
I don’t know what I saw because I can’t reproduce it, but the look she cast to that little one. God.
It was the yearning.
I’ve never seen that look of a woman, I was always on the wrong side when my wife gave birth and never noticed it, but I’m sure she had the same stare, the longing and the release of a girl who just bore down and did the hardest thing she will ever do, and the loss of something, and the gain of something so much richer.
I think I know why women will go to the knife for their children, because I saw it in Maggie last night. There was pure desire for her soul, her flesh, and a light came from her and it was clean, it was naked and it bore tears.
I might never see that again, but it makes sense to me now.
In the days when I’m no longer missed, I’ll see this. And wonder and be glad.
Because life, and the lingering want of it, makes this the sort of thing to be glad about. There is, in all of my days, a certain fine satisfaction to enjoying life.
I’m enjoying the hell out of it right now.
~And there’s a reason for my bringing back this old saw, this old post. Lack of pictures and all. Can you guess why?
They’re back. Back ’round, that is.
It is a source of joy in a year that had no end of sorrow, as will be revealed shortly.
Filed under: Family
I’d like to take this opportunity to say (I mean, other than the fact that yes, we do still liveth) Happy Birthday to the Eldest Daughter.
Lo, some 24 years have passed since you elected to pop out and take a peek at life. It was a very different life we led back then, and . . . so help me, Mom was younger than you are today, laying in that hospital bed as she was.
Some six or seven years ago, on one of those 4 am mornings I wrote this:
I dreamed last night of family and woke to find them all in beds, in their own worlds. Their own separate and striving minds clicking off the days, their heads on pillows of unknown futures.
I think of them, sitting here with these white keys. Think of them in slumber and unconcious nothing, off and away they are to places I’ll never go. They are girls, they are boys, they are part of me and I of them. I was there at the birth, when tangled flesh came forth and tiny eyes full of light looked up at me in solemn trust. They knew nothing then, and knew all. I made them, I unmake them. I hold them close and let them go.
Where shining things go they follow. Limbs long and tresses of hair they trundle off each day where I’ll never go, never see. They leave me, I leave them. The most good and perfect workmanship I’ll ever do, they go from me. And watching them move about, laugh around, float above, it makes me shiver to see what can be done with creation. They are of this earth, and they are not.
My little ones grown large, you keep me fearful of things dark coming to you. Sweetness of days is always our aim, my children. I loomed big over you once upon a time, and once upon a time days, I wish for you. I shield you, I shield you not.
I would stop clocks to keep you. I would put up stronger walls to guard you.
I will let you run where wolves and shepherds are.
So it is. Seems like yesterday, yes it does.
~I’d say that I really hate hotels, but we checked out of the one we were staying in and managed to leave the power cord for the laptop in the room. So I’ll be saying nice things about them until I get it back. Karma and all that, you know.
~We’re lodged in a rental house that was last massaged by a carpenters hands sometime before the boys landed in Normandy. And it’s urban. Middle of the city. There’s creaks and knocks and the neighborhood isn’t very secure. As in – the Ruger strays not so far from my hand – secure. On the plus side, Ally can walk across the street to go to work. and the dogs have a veritable football field to romp in, just out the back door.
~No email at the moment. Changing addresses for an existing account does that, I guess. Hint to my kids – leave comments here or call, okay?
~The lads working in the shop for my employer, the ones who produce the goodies that I spend my day installing, took up a collection for us. $67, and most of it in one dollar bills. I have to say, that one moved me closer to tears than anything. Most of these guys are minimum wage and struggling. Working in a sweatbox for 10 hours a day in June heat. Just . . . damn.
~I took a detour on my way to the jobsite yesterday so I could see a bit of countryside. It wasn’t the backwater by any means, more of a gentrified slice of brick homes set out in a nice way and nestled back among manicured pines and “rustic” barns. But it was something, a little something. A little piece of the woods.
~They’ll be pulling up to the husk of my (real) house with a D-8 shortly, and put big ruts in the lawn while the diesel engine powers a large blade through my living room. I might go down and watch the show but I don’t think Ally wants any part of that.
~Today we go sign some papers which will set in motion the building of a new house. There was a moment when we viewed the model house, something about the large bathtub, and Ally broke and there were tears. I guess I saw it too, giving the grandson a bath so many nights, and the giggles and the splashing, the shimmying of a small boy set in water. And later, wrapped in a towel and warm. The contentment of such things, my word . . . and what my good wife sees in a bathroom, in a model house.
~I dug Ally’s earrings out of a pile of filthy insulation the other day and remembered. It was the two of us out on the town . . . what, twenty years ago? Kids at the sitters, she and I strolling a waterfront on a brisk fall evening and there was a jewelry store set in there somewhere, and just an impulse. Dropping something north of a paycheck on a simple set of opals, and Ally protesting in that way women have, a smile and a frown all at the same time. But the look boy, the look. The dancing in the eyes, and the crook of a finger, and I was as lost as I was the first time I saw her. Little baubles and large dreams, they are.
~Battery’s getting low. Mustn’t let the precious go completely dead, here. We survive.
~Finding hotels that allow dogs to stay, legally or with that sort of wink and a nod thing, is a task best reserved for treasure hunters. Knobby kneed old timers in bermuda shorts and black socks, waving an instrument over a sandy beach.
~Finding one with internet access beyond that of a tin can and a bit of string? Oh please.
~Owning but two pair of pants and a sack of T-shirts is strangely liberating. ‘Cause they’re new! And new work boots, too!
~My wife, on the other hand, has filled the hotel clothes rack and is searching for more hangers. Those dresser drawers are filling up as well.
~Telling a tale to 3 people at the Watering Hole will result in an entire city dialing your phone. I tell ye, it’s just like the internet.
~My pal Pam at the Sixweasels site (over there, to the lefty side) wrote a thing yesterday and it was . . . darlin’ I have no words. And I’m sorry about your mascara, but the tears lubricated your typing fingers just beautifully.
~The prayers and notes left by good people mean everything to us. Thank you so much.
~Sifting through a burn out house is like playing in a bag of charcoal briquettes.
~Come tomorrow, we’ll get to inventory everything in the house. Ally sez her diamond earrings were on the nightstand, in a glass dish, where they always were. It’s about a foot deep in wet ceiling insulation and drywall right now. Boy, that might take some time.
More to come. Sincere thanks to all of you.
I don’t know where I got it from. Probably a genetic thing, gifted from farming grandfathers who heeded lowing bovines to rise from their slumbers on any given day. But I’ve always been one who spent the best hours of the day before 6. That’s 6 am. As in pre-sunrise, with no demands save for a coffeepot and a sleeping dog stretched at my feet.
Yesterday was a 3 am sort of morning. Stillness in the backwater, a flash of heat lightning from the front window as I sat in reclined surf mode, the laptop carrying me hither and yon as it often does. The stories, the ranting. Checking the local weather radar. “Hmmm. . . big slice of rain blowing in. Need it. Ought to be here any time now.”
And indeed, the lightning turned frequent, and a trickle of rain became a heavy downpour and the light show was spotlighting the front yard beautifully for me, long seconds at a time. “Good rain, be cutting grass this weekend for sure, now.”
There came a pittering sound, a sputtering from somewhere in the kitchen, and the big Laborador shifted with a grunt in his sleep, even as I shifted in my chair and silently blessed my sleeping wife. “Made the coffee last night, just kicked on out there. Nice of her”, because she does not always do this for me.
Dark, and quiet. The glow of a laptop and a single table lamp.
For whatever reason, and I guess I’ll be forever wondering, I happened to look at the cable modem which all of a sudden had gone dark. A bugger it is, to live in storm country where modems go dark and the morning internet is stilled. I heaved up out of the chair and stumbled to the kitchen, the sputtering sound, and flicked the light switch. Nothing. Still had a table lamp on, but no overhead. Huh?
And the laundry room.
Filling with smoke.
There’s minutes that turn your brain to absolute mush. I yanked to back door open to find flames curling up the outside wall of the house and my feet were flying toward the hose – the HOSE! – hanging in blackness at the other end of the house. Drag the hose, hit the nozzle and . . . nothing.
“No pressure . . . Jesus the well pump’s out too!”
There was thumping feet and slick wood deck and a battle cry coming from my very soul out there in the dark, and an eerie glow from the ventilated soffit that finally tripped my carpenter brain – fire in the roof trusses! Move goddam it!
The sputtering sound. Racing into the bedroom where my wife lay dreaming, and the hellish noise of a bass voice gone tenor on me, and a look to the dogs, and Ally coming up flying and grabbing for clothes.
A very long moment with a flashilight that appeared in my hand, and breaking it on the foot of the laptop table as I yanked cords and pushed wife and Lab to the front door, and raced down the driveway to the rig and Ally to her car, and throwing stuff in the rig, and back to the house for, what? What to save, what to gather? Ally blowing her horn and screaming “Get out Jim, get out!”
But for a small dog, almost forgotten, cowering by the coffee table, and unmoving in fear, and me scooping him up and getting out, Jim. Getting the hell out. To move cars to the yard next door. 911ing the hell out of cell phones that were somehow in pockets.
And standing, in rain, to watch the backwater burn.
There’s a slowness about it all. Hearing fire trucks race across roads miles from you, and know that they are lost trying to find this little place, and seeing the roof slowly succomb to flames, and a wife in tears seeing a horror. There’s a slowness to backwater living even as there’s a slowness to its dieing.
I sit here in this little motel room, with the two dogs and Ally, and the smoke is still thick on my clothes from yesterday. Likely ruined, so far as clothes go. But I might wear them today, trudging through the sodden mess that 30 firemen make when going about their business. A business that wafts great sheets of spray on dreams afire, and you see it in their eyes, and they look at you and grip a shoulder for a moment, and you know sorrow.
Yet we live, and haven’t made any promise beyond the next hour or day. The dogs look at me and remember the shouting and feel as if they’ve done something wrong, and I soothe them and say “It’s all fine boys”, and they aren’t convinced.
I tried to tell Ally not to go with me this morning, to meet the insurance man, and sift through that rubble, but she is Ally. She looked at me. The very deep part of her looked at me and murmured, “I’m going.”
And she will. Because it is ever and always her and I.
God willing, it always will be.
On a completely unrelated note, blogging may be light for a while.
That’s a joke son. . .
When we went out a few weeks ago and plucked a gangly dog from a place that rescues dogs as a matter of course, I had no idea.
Really, no idea at all. See, I’ve nearly always been around dogs of the muttly sort. A little bit cross bred. A splash of white on the chest of a large black dog, a slightly pointed snout on what otherwise might be called a Lab. Oh they were all fine in their own way, relatively obedient souls with little in the way of independent thought.
Maggie and her clown Boxer dog, of pure lineage and perfect markings marked an insight into the world of having a thoroughbred around, one with brains and the oft-heard comment that “He’s too smart for his own good”, or something more profane when he thoughtfully chewed slippers after being left in confinement for longer than he liked.
But this dog here. This Laborador called Sam.
I drive the Backwater with a large Lab, front feet planted atop the small cooler to my right and a steady gaze ahead. When the drive turns longish, as it always does, he whirls and stretches long for a nap on the floor, the tunnel between two rows of large tools that run the length of a ten foot long box attached to a very dirty van chassis. I spend hours in the Shop, with the door rolled high and Sam on a long lead patrolling the yard. But always he is near and he steps into the truck and looks to me. “I’m ready, we’re going aren’t we? I’ll work for you, come along with you, but ever and always I want to BE with you, tall man in bib overalls. I want to lay before tall fires on cool evenings and stare with half open eyes at this life, and know that you are in the room without looking. I want the thrill of you letting me off this lead so that I can race across the half-acre and show you that your trust is warranted, that I’ll come back in a trice at a word. To shove a block shaped head under your arm and hold it there to feel the closeness and warmth, and stare. Soaking up every motion of the hands, hearing every inflection of the voice that compels.”
I’ve not been around this level of ability in a dog. The notion that one of his catagory was found wandering in the woods is astonishing. He travels with me, and is let out on leash to parade before people who invariably exclaim, “He’s gorgeous! My god, what a beautiful boy!”, and his master is proud and not a little silly with that pride.
He is an alpha, and is creating his role every day.
Now in the manner that such a life cannot help but be tinkered with, enter my Eldest Daughter, the lover of all-things-dog. She called me the other evening as I drove from city to woods, a hand on the silky black head beside me, his huge feet webbed and steady on the cooler.
“Daddy, promise me you won’t be mad at me . . .”
“Huh? What kind of way is that to start a conversation?”
“Well, cause . . . Mom’s bringing something home with her.”
“My dinner?”
“Uh . . . no.”
“Hmmm. Cash money?”
“No. Promise you won’t be . . .”
“What is it, for heavens sake?”
“Well I was down in Carolina today and there was this dog, see, and . . .” She was suddenly in a rush to explain, and I know this girl grown to be a woman, know her well. And she spun the story and my mind drifted as it always does, for I might live in 2008 but the mind is always and forever drifting to times when she was six, or ten or sixteen, and I feel and smell the day when a little smaller but equally determined Beth was gunning to talk the old man into something, and it makes me smile of a moment. She might live apart now, in a place not too far away, but I still tangle blonde hair in my calloused paw and draw her near and buss her forehead to me, the little lass with a tale to tell.
“. . . and I took the dog up to Mom’s work and she kinda looked at me funny, and . . .”
The tractors, in the field and me flying by with a grinning Lab, eyes dancing at life springing black from soil turned over, soon for the seed, and a cloud of dust in the rearview. The tinkling sound of a collar with tags as a head swivels to follow every movement.
“. . . but I couldn’t just leave him there, right? I mean he was helpless, he was . . .”
And Beth was relentless, and I watched miles ticking by as she talked in my ear and Sam panted happy next to me. She allowed that Mom would explain it all to me, and Mom generally does, although it’s not an explanation at all but a curious mix of “Here it all is Honey, and did Beth call you?”, which sort of blends into a “You already know about this of course” and leaves me flummoxed as to what to do with the wimmen in my life. Again.
The alpha, being what he is, probably took it with a lot more aplomb than his master did. It is another role for him.
I have no doubt he will play it well.
But for gosh sakes.
Three weeks ago we had no dog at all!
My wife and I are dog people. In nearly 28 years of wedded bliss (insert cackling laughter) we’ve had a dog for all but the first 2. Newlywed apartments being what they are, we had to settle for a cat during those times.
Picked up a Lab/mix in ‘83 who spent the next eleven years with us and witnessed the birth of our three children.
Picked up another Lab/mix in ‘94. Seems like he was a yearling at the time. This one passed just a few weeks ago, having lived for at least 15 years. That’s old for a Lab.
Along the way there’s been the occasional attempt at having more than one dog, or a guest dog would show up for a spell. Cats would wander in, or a lizard or hamster. When you have children and a home and a wife who can’t say no the menagerie promises to be in a state of flux at odd given moments.
But always, there was the prime dog. Given the not-so-difficult task of anchoring the home and making it his own. Growling at intruders to give me a little warning, a little head start to the Remington. The keeper of the space, a presence for the woman when I’m off down the road on some dusty jobsite for days on end. An entertainer. A lounging sloth in the workshop to serve as a sounding board, a keen observer of kitchen activities.
We keep a dog because it’s the way things are, and have always been.
People in the Backwater understand this. Rare indeed is the house down here without one, or several. They roam at large because fencing is expensive and limiting, and a dog content with his lot won’t go very far anyway.
Ally and I made the trip yesterday to a rescue shelter. It’s a strange way to add to your family, to roll dice and hope for the look, a spark, when seeing all sorts of dogs cramped behind steel and shouldering each other for a look at strangers in khaki and boots, the kennel deafening with the howl and bark of dogs in trouble. A dozen such dogs, sent to the very back edge of a backwater swamp, to a building hard to find and out of the way.
I believe in a lot of the undercurrent things that go on between dogs and the humans who attempt to herd them. Who attempt to know what’s best for them. I looked at one who huddled, shivering in his pen on a hard concrete floor. He was much older, a silvery mix of breeds and obviously new from a home of some kind, a soul accustomed to carpet and regular meals and a soft hand. He had the stare of the defeated, and the thought went through me that no, this one wouldn’t work for what we are. And he turned and slumped to a corner and would look no more. He knew, and I knew. And a hard old thing it is to know.
Just as simple or hard to reject the jumper, the loud one, the downright ugly one. I followed in Ally’s wake and she was being very slow about the whole thing. Would have taken just about all of them I’m sure. But there was one, yes, and he spoke without sound and for a wonder, he was a Lab. He tracked us with his eyes, just a couple of barks, trying to peer around the corner of the pen when we walked away. I saw all this because I was tracking him as well, and his alertness. Like I say, I believe in that sort of stuff. Just like I believe in the spark between man and wife who speak without words, and it was no surprise to me when Ally said, “Can we see that one please, the Lab?”
It was a start, the start of the first day for a dog we’ll call Sam.
There was the skittish nervousness of a juvenile Black Lab, all big feet and muscle and tail going in four directions at once. He was thin, bony even, from some never to be explained wandering before the Shelter got hold of him. Skinny or not, he pulled me to the car like a crazed mule, a rope lead digging into my hands. “Good lord”, I said to Ally. “There’s nothing wrong with his energy!” And he hauled me to the nearest big pine tree and pooped like he’d been holding it for a week.
“Good dog! Good Sam!” He was, well, like someone just released from jail, and I worried about his past, my stinging hands and the cars upholstery.
But he glided into the backseat and calmly sat upright as if he did it every day.
We stopped at the grocery and laid in food. And a proper leash. And a long training lead. And because we are foolish spoilers of grandsons and dogs, a rawhide bone.
Ally was all set to walk him when we got home, and he demonstrated no lack of a sense of equality as he dragged her around the acreage on a jailbreak flight.
But once in the house, he was mannerly and obedient. He watched my wife, he followed her, he wouldn’t let either of us out of sight.
There was an agreement made, and the proper signs were exchanged.
Right now, he sleeps and dreams on the floor alongside the bed of his mistress. There is a look about him, from his eyes, and it isn’t the look of eagles just yet. It’s a look of wanting, of course, always a dog is wanting a touch, a meal. This is a look of wanting to be part of something. He wants to join the club and we’re just as wanting that he do so.
It’s the way things ought to be. Welcome, Sam.
