Filed under: Family
The stars are aligned. The schedules tweaked. The daughter and grandson are coming home for a few days. A precious few hours.
There’s a catch to it, of course. Children are an endless string of catches, and knots, and fuzzy shredded ends of string. Even adult children. Who have borne children of their own into your midst.
The catch is I have to go fetch her. From PA, no less. Which is a fairish sort of drive when you’re living in the backwater. Load ‘em up and drive back south. And when the visit is over, Ally gets to reverse the procedure (because I am fair about sharing the load, don’t you see) and drop them off.
This will be the second time this has been done. Last time I drove the return leg. At night. Very late at night, in fact. There was a blur of interstate 95 at 3 am with no coffee that just about did me in, because I am not so muchly a night-owl and treasure things like a large bed, particularly at 3 am.
But it shall be done. I’ll roll up 95 through DC and that other burg to the east (Pam and Batt! 695 and 795 at midnight, send up a flare!), then on up some pike to the little town on the PA border where pretzels are made.
For them.
He will be bigger and she wiser. There will be a grandma at the end of a 12 hour driving day with a house so clean, and a tree stuffed with belated Christmas things.
There will be pictures. New Years pictures for a new year with a little old man and the momma who loves him. There is a rightness about such things.
Adirondack love seat. Plain sawn white oak 7/8″ thick, assembled with coated screws which were countersunk and plugged. Wood finished with Flood CWF Clear exterior (U/V inhibitor) which is a translucent oil base finish. Seat slats are 1/2″ x 2″ Corian Bone White, secured to legs with stainless steel screws in countersunk holes. Labor time 10 hours, a lot of which involved the undulating back issue.
It’s heavy. This ain’t your Home Despot pine special. And we brought it into the house so the slow drying finish would speed up just a bit.
The Corian was left over from an install – window sills. I guarantee you if I hadn’t packratted the scraps this unit would have had white oak seat slats. I’m not going out and buying a sheet of Corian just ’cause, you know?
Next up: 2 bar stools made the same way, or pretty close. It’s tough to get the legs to work on a bar stool when you’re using an Adirondack design. Arms and backs and legs make the thing what it is, and I don’t want to lose the arms and back look. And I’ve still got some Corian left over.
This is suppose to be an outside unit, and I’m sure it will be eventually. But Ally swung it around in front of the fireplace and it shows no sign of going anywhere.
Matter of fact, I don’t think she wants it to. Must be a Christmas thing.
She sat across the dining room table and tried to get me to focus. Which, after another 9 hours of work and 135 miles of driving to get there, was a hard ol’ thing for me.
“Listen. I don’t want a lot this Christmas, see? No clothes, nothing that needs a trip to the store afterwards to get it running, no jewelry. I really would like one thing, just the one.”
“No jewelry? You don’t want gold or bracelets or . . .”
“What I’d really like for you to do is to make me something.”
“. . . a nice pendant or a ring or . . .”
“And I know you can make it, you’ve done it often enough.”
“. . . maybe some earrings. You like earrings, right?”
She paused, small smile and brown eyes dancing with some sort of long ago learned patience with children and a husband prone to ramble on. It is the patience of the mother and wife and it takes years of tending, my friends.
“Nope. No jewelry. I’d really love to have something to sit on, for out on the back deck. For nights when we light a fire in the little fire pit and sit out there and watch the moon. Something big enough for the both of us.” She leaned forward for emphasis. “An Adirondack love seat. That’s what I want.”
It was the end of the work day but the mind is not easily shut off. I calculate wood and wood products all day long. The cutlist for such a chair ran through my mind, sorted itself into board feet and waste factors and ‘What I didn’t have on hand in the shop Already’ lists in nanoseconds. It’s what I do, and I’ve had entirely too much practice at doing it. Even after a long work day and a tiresome drive. Not to mention three Shiner Bocks and their longneck goodness.
Adirondack love seat. For watching the moon.
I shifted. I coughed. “No jewelry? ‘Cause really, I don’t mind going by that nice jewelry store with the cute chicas in there workin’ on commission, on Christmas Eve, honest I don’t. They’re always so glad to see me, too.” Ally gazed at me, chin in hand, impassively waiting out the end of the oft-told tale. “Remember the year I went in there on Christmas Eve and told the nice lady just to out-do what she did last year and I’d be back in an hour to pick it up? Remember? And she did it too, by golly.”
The nice lady truly was nice, and she apparently had tipped off her employees, because I embrace the idea of walking into a store once a year with large amounts of cash or a bloated credit card and having my way with them. “Look for the carpenter looking fellow who wants to be outta here in less than five minutes. He drops two grand and wants to be smiled at a lot. Been coming in here for years, every Christmas Eve like clockwork. Wife and two daughters. All you gotta do is pick out three things they don’t already have. Sure makes my weekly quota, I can tell you that. Maybe my monthly quota!”
I look upon it as a holiday tradition, and care not the commerce behind it all. Some things are best tagged with a spirit of doing the same thing you always have, that always works, that makes the girls smile and swoon just a bit, come Christmas morning.
Adirondack love seat. For watching the moon. And tending the fire pit.
“That’s all you want, an old chair? No jewelry?”
“No jewelry, love. You can make a chair, right?”
Of course. She knew that. I’d run off batches of chairs over the years. Kept some, gave away more. Cypress and cedar and redwood and pine. I once made 50 in one run for a commercial marina and got sick of the sight of them. I can make a chair.
“That’s what you want?”
“Honest, it is.” And here she leaned forward and gave me the look. It’s a dreamy sort of look that invariably slithers down the back of my eyes until it snatches deliciously at my very soul, tugging and caressing.
“Can you make it for me?” And a smile. “I’ll make you fried chicken tonight, too.”
Well, then. Nothing more to consider, right?
Because my wife is Southern born and bred. And there is no such thing as anything better than her fried chicken. Of all the absolutes in life, this is the one unshakable truth. It is a pure and blissful thing, is Ally’s chicken.
~~~~~
We were sitting in the big rig work truck, Tommy and I, awaiting the delivery of something to install. It was a rushed something, it happens every year about this time. A rush to finish construction jobs by the end of the year means everyone and everything gets rushed right along with it.
“So that’s what she wants for her Christmas present, a chair? You’re kiddin’ me, right?”
“Not just a chair, a love seat. Like two chairs. That’s twice the work, in a way. Plus, I’m thinkin’ of making it out of white oak. Go the whole nine yards so to speak.”
Tommy was incredulous. “Man, you’re one lucky bastard. You got a big shop and all those tools and all that skill and your wife wants you to just make her a chair. For Christmas. How do I sign up for that gig? You got off so cheap, ‘bro.”
“Wait a second. I gotta buy the lumber, which isn’t cheap by any means. Haul it all the way to the backwater and set up all the stuff and by the way, I need more kerosene to heat the damn shop. Here it is Friday, the Friday before Christmas. I got lots to do, and it surely ain’t gonna be cheap.”
“How long you known about this, Jim?”
I puffed, and grinned. “Couple weeks, I reckon.”
Tommy hooted. “Man you’re one procrastinatin’ dude, aren’t you? But you’re still lucky. My girlfriend, all she wants is jewelry and clothes. Gonna cost me a fortune, she is.”
I looked at him a tad mournfully. “Jewelry, huh?”
“Yep. And trust me, she knows the good stuff, too. Got an eye for that sort of thing. You wouldn’t believe it, I have to go to an honest-to-God jewelry store every year.”
“Oh I would, Tommy. I really, sho’-nuff would.”
He was silent for a while, pondering the grey day with no delivery truck in sight, a big man with a contented life much like my own. The hurry of the season didn’t seem to touch my good helper very much. Of course, as helpers go, he’s a long ways towards being a journeyman carpenter in his own right.
“So when you gonna get the white oak, anyway?”
Good thought. Especially since it was Friday morning, and the lumber yard would be closed for the weekend and the holiday beyond.
“Right now. Watch this, miracle of technology and all that.” I produced a cell phone and dialed a number from memory that I hadn’t dialed in two years. To talk to a man I hadn’t seen in an equal amount of time. But for things like this, there are traditions, and ways. Not unlike the Nice Jewelry Store Lady ways. And in a community of those who work with wood, there aren’t many who’ve been doing so for thirty years or more.
“That you, Chris? Jim here. ‘Bout the same, hoss. Listen. 4/4 white oak, straight lined and skip planed, about a hundred board feet. Random lengths, shorts are okay. Mmm-hmm. Right. Okay, my brother. See you.” And I hung up the phone.
Tommy was staring. “Did you just call who I think you just called? The old place downtown by the tracks?”
“That’s the one. Probably the only one in town with white oak, lad.”
“And when can you get it?”
“Couple hours, he says.”
Tommy was bug-eyed by now, and shaking his head. “Last time I called them they wouldn’t even talk to me. Had to go in there with a fistful of cash and he about ran me outta there!”
“Yeh. They’ve been known to do that. Cantankerous bunch, for sure.”
“Holy smokes and they’re gonna mill this out for you to boot?”
“Rough mill, yes. I get to do the fine stuff myself.”
Tommy was still shaking his head in wonder. “Man, you are one lucky . . .”
I grinned the grin of the smug, the ancient, the Grinchy and wise. But he was right. I am one lucky bastard, somedays. Particularly with three and a half shopping days to go.
~~~~~
And with no further preamble, I find myself this morning at a stage of sorts. A stage where there is mess in the Shop, tools laid out as if for surgery, and a matter of hours to go.
There is a seat yet to be made, to go with the rest of it. And a finish, a protector from the rain of the backwater. Some sanding to do. Some tweaking and a great deal of standing alone in a Shop alongside the house, musing about a woman who can be made to smile on Christmas morning with little more than the twirling of my two hands upon a pile of oak.
There is no jewelry for Ally this year.
But I am rich with fable and sawdust, and the brown eyes that look at me that way. And a moon to watch, and a fire to tend.
It is more than enough.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
There’s something very earthy and permanent about sitting down to a dinner of regional foods. Stuff that generations have worked on, tinkered with. The art of pork barbecue is strong here. Metal siding on a roadside diner with neon pigs dancing a hoedown atop the roof are plentiful. Ally and I sat in just such a place, content, and two chunks of cornbread to starboard.
“Want a shot of this mild sauce on your ‘que, darlin’?”, I asked with a grin.
My wife is a temperate sort. Her idea of a spicy dinner might involve a couple dashes of salt. She observes my experiments with food with a detached air. A kind of ”Thanks no, but you go ahead and ruin that pig any old way you please” and a stare. Haughty wench. I upended the big-boy sauce over my plate with a flourish.
One thing about pork barbeque with a proper sauce – there should be an afterburn. You don’t really get it until the third forkful or so, but then this taste starts to hit the back of your teeth and it’s like trying to scratch an itch using only your right earlobe as a poker.
“Oh Man!”, I breathed. Or tried to, as the fumes steamed up from my plate. “The sauce! It’s just about as close to old Jed’s stuff as anything I’ve ever had!” I shoveled in another bite and blissfully closed my eyes, savoring the cayenne, the vinegar and that elusive something . . .
“Uh oh.” My wife was staring at me.
“What?”
She delicately nipped a toothsome morsel from her fork and looked at me oddly. “It must be good. You’re already sweating like a hog.”
It was true. The good stuff makes me break out in a fine sheen of perspiration, the sort of sweat that an air conditioned diner has no chance of helping. Just to make sure, I squirted some more sauce over the heap of french fries to my right, much to Ally’s distress. Hell she doesn’t even do ketchup on hers, can you imagine?
At any rate, the game was on. I tore through that platter with the joy of the zealot coming home, the elusive condiment at hand, the roar of battle in my ears. The sweet young waitress thang wandered by (a little cautiously, I thought) and I nodded (or grunted, mayhap) at the empty longneck and Ally smiled yes for more sweet tea.
It was over eventually. I had slicked my platter, some of Ally’s as well, and sat pondering the bottle of sauce, resisting the urge to stuff it in Ally’s purse just out of good manners.
“All done here folks?”, from the waitress thang. “How’d you like the barbecue sauce sir?”
“I want it,” from me, which got the expected giggle.
“Look at him, “said my wife. “He’s still sweating. He’ll be raving about this stuff for weeks.”
“Why sir, (except she said “suh” which is what people do around heah) you do know that we sell this here sauce right up at the counter don’t you?”
She was tipped well. Let’s put it that way. She won’t soon forget me. And I went to fetch my prize from the lady at the counter.
And in short order, once returned to the shack in the woods I had this:
There are distinct layers to that gallon jug (yes, I bought a gallon. I don’t fool around when on a mission). Progressively darker toward the bottom, and you shake it up to mix it and steal your wife’s best cooking funnel, snatch a nearly empty ketchup bottle from the fridge (along with another longneck) and steam-rinse it, carefully pour off a bottle full and sit back, chuckling evilly as the open jug causes your pores to open yet again.
http://www.scottsbarbecuesauce.com/
Yeah, they have a website. And I do want the T-shirt. They’re only a couple hours ride downstate so a pilgrimage may be in order.
And yet another one of those things to do in life has been accomplished. Build a boat, write a book, find the one true sauce.
Best part of it is? My wife won’t be borrowing any. That gallon ought to last a right good while.
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
A good many years ago I was invited to a fraternity get together.
This wasn’t the sort of thing involving kegs and young men in stovepipe hats, either. None of that college-aged kid stuff. The lads throwing this gig were considered young if their first born was attending college, for heavens sake. I think the eldest member of the group was pushing 90, and he blended in nicely with a crew given to cigars and a vasting sweating array of cheap beer in a cooler full of ice.
(You can read all about the fraternity itself here, http://www.hoo-hoo.org/, if you’ve the time and inclination. Don’t look at the pictures. Don’t look at the pictures regarding the embalming thingy they do every year. I haven’t been to a meeting in far too long but oh . . . the memories.)
Part and parcel of this club was the food and the place. The place was a genuine southern Roadhouse, the sort of thing you see very infrequently now. Not quite a bar, not quite a restuarant. It was actually suppose to be the kitchen for a far flung catering business but there was always beer on hand and a large room with folding tables and hundreds of grainy pictures on the wall. Pictures of men in creased slacks and pork-pie hats guzzling drinks in mason jars, mostly.
But the food.
Oysters, fresh from the river nearby and served any way you could imagine. Virginia ham, thinned sliced, salted and culled from a hog just down the road, Smithfield being but five minutes away. Boiled peanuts, grits and more. None of it had ever seen the inside of a grocery store either. Straight from the field or slaughterhouse and done up right there. An amazing feat, and probably subject to all sorts of fines by the powers-that-be, if they hadn’t been right there alongside you with a mouthfull of fried oysters and a plate loaded with ham.
Then there was the barbeque. A high holy grail of barbeque. Carolina style of course, pulled pork steamed fresh in a vast stainless steel vat and simmered until tender. Fresh, oh how fresh it was. There was always a que formed for the barbeque, a line of grizzled men snaking through the kitchen awaiting their turn, and inevitably the shout would ring out. “The Sauce! Jed forgot to put out the Sauce again!”
White haired and genial Jed. I suspect he did it on purpose, for this was his moment of glory. He would affect a look of surprise, hand to mouth, and scamper to the storeroom with an empty box. Coming back laden down, thrusting a bottle of something high in the air to the roar of a hundred voices. “The Sauce! We must have the Sauce!”, and setting a few dozen bottles of it randomly about.
Now the barbeque itself could stand alone, but with a dash of the sauce? My God.
Vinegar based, to be sure. But there was mystery there. Cayenne, salt, a hint of something . . . no one ever could be sure, and Jed wasn’t telling. “Family recipe,” he’d beam. “Been making it that way for a hundred years.” If pestered (and given $5), he’d even let you take a bottle home. A clear bottle with no labeling whatsoever. I got a bottle more than once, and for weeks thereafter I could be found dosing every last thing on my plate with it. Eggs, beef, broccoli. Mattered not, the Sauce was the thing. A gateway to culinary heaven.
Ally would often look on, alternately amused and horrified as I sat to dinner and contemplated hamburgers or steak or fish with the familiar botte at my elbow. “Getting kind of low on your ambrosia there, aren’t you?”, she would ask. “Be a shame to run out before you tried it on your Frosted Flakes tomorrow morning.”
I’d give her the look, of course. The ‘Don’t bother me now with the future, I’m having an affair with a barbeque Sauce’ look. She tried the stuff once, maybe twice to humor me. On barbeque. Once she drank enough sweet tea she was fine afterwards, too.
Now all of this is the precursor to recent events, which I ought to entitle ‘Whence I rekindle My wasted Youth’ or something. I haven’t been to the Roadhouse in a good while, don’t know if the fraternity is still active in this area. But I still like a good barbecue once in a while, and here in the Backwater there is a relatively good place to go and get you some. Ally and I went late of a Saturday evening, too hot to cook sort of day.
She ordered first. “The pulled pork plate, please. Fries and slaw on the side. Sweet tea.” A Southern sort of thing, the staple of good eating, and it sounded pretty darn good to me. Make it two, with a longneck if you please.
The waitress brought the drinks and cornbread and a surprise, a basket of plastic sauce bottles (Mild, Hot, Hotter). “Y’all need sauce for your barbecue, ‘course?”, with a look to me. Oh indeedy yes, we need some sauce, and I reached for the premium bottle with a crafty look. “Heh. Bet they wish they could copy out that Hoo sauce that Jed used to make. Why, I’d give my eye teeth if could just get one more . . .”
Ally sighed. “Will this never end? You’ve been on this crusade for the past ten years. Just stop at the Roadhouse one day and see if he’s still in there. Buy a damn case of the stuff if you have to.”
“But he’s all the way up in Virginny, babe. Awful long way to go. Just for some sauce, I mean.”
She snorted. “Yuh. That’s my line, isn’t it? You don’t want to go up there ’cause you know if you did, ya might not ever come back, isn’t that it?”
“Suspect you’re right, darlin’”, and I got a little dreamy eyed. Those boiled peanuts. And an oyster stew. All capped off with a steaming plate of . . .
“Here we go folks!”, and the sweet young thang swished to the table with a pair of heavy platters, an impossible amount of pork and a mountain of fries. “Y’all need anything else now?”
“Elbow room and another longneck, hon”, I said calmly.
To be continued, I swear it.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m in Pittsburgh. It’s Sunday. Me and son Ben are doin’ the NFL football thing today, along with 4 of the more agressive proponents of Steeler Mania you’ve ever perchanched to meet. They are attempting to be kind to me, as I support their opponent in todays contest.
Not to be a crystal ball guru, but I think I can already predict the score.
Beer 240, Me 0.
Hi Pam! Sorry you’re stuck in Bawl’more!
Filed under: Uncategorized
Now, see?
The entire country of France can take off for a vacation. Take off the entire month of August and nobody much gives a hoot.
So I figgered to one-up them and take off August, and a bit of September.
But it’s getting out of hand now, and there is much to tell. My little muse man who lives so far away is tapping and prodding me. It’s impossible to tell if he knows that he stirs the words, pokes the mind of a Grandpa six hours to the south, or why. Ally traveled up there a couple of weeks ago and brought back images and sounds.
There. A little man behind bars.
How he moves me sometimes. To talk and write and think. He does do his best to move me, without knowing the why or how about it. Funny old/new man that he is. It is a sadness mixed with a hope and endless red wagons and runny noses, that.
Filed under: Uncategorized
In the middle of January, when I’m reclining at home with nothing much to do because all regional construction work has gone on hiatus, I’d be well served to remember the August days. I been ‘whee busy, dear friends.
Today is a road day. Haven’t been on a road trip in a while. Back when I had the business a road trip to coastal Carolina was so routine that I had an overnight bag with rotating T-shirts and the Hampton Inn on speed dial. Now, it’s a break in the tedium. Same work, different town.
But I never had a wireless laptop back then. If I had, it’s likely that the hotel clerk would have given me a blank look when I asked about their wireless network. Now I get a dismissive sniff that sez, “Silly old man. Just fire it up. Everybody has a laptop. Think you’re special?”
Remember now, I’m a child when it comes to such things. AM radio I can handle. And in a way, a wireless laptop in a strange hotel room isn’t much more than a small transistor radio with a breakable antenna, to me. You’ve might have to perch the thing near the window for any kind of reception. You might note the AC unit directly below, blowing freezing drafts up your shorts while you tune in various networks (which occasionally bonk on you). You might stuff hotel pillows over the AC and under your arms, being as how it’s 4 in the morning and the tiny pillows are useless for sleeping on, anyway.
I suppose I could go out on the balcony and the signal might improve. Then I could sit in fetid Carolina heat, with a laptop, on a narrow balcony in the dead of night and try my best to come up with a knowing and mature countenance when the hotel clerk happens by.
Eh. The work starts in a couple of hours. There is ice to fetch for the cooler, an overnight bag to pack. Maybe an egg sammich at the Waffle Hut next door. An eight hour session of focused carpenter mayhem. And a four hour drive at the end of it all, on a truckers route up the coast and back to the swamp and the little house and the woman who lives there.
Especially, and particularly, the woman who lives there.
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.
