Sunday, April 27, 2014

Chair-fixing, incidentally

It's standard operating procedure for Allen and me* (*correct grammatical usage) to do some farting around (In the words of Kurt Vonnegut) after breakfast on Sunday (which is usually out.)

This morning we meandered across Route 50 to where backroads through the area of St. Margaret's become winding and secretive, opening into surprising little enclaves, or sudden presentations of ill-fitting new tract homes.

Around a bend where hedges and trees obscured visibility, I spied this shingle.
photo credit: Allen Flinchum ; )

"Go back," I said. "Someone there does caning."

Small children are hell on woven chair seats, and I have 2 ladderbacks in the basement which were rendered unusable twice during my small-child years, and remain so. I am sorting, I am choosing. What furniture is useful, and what might I store in the basement in my next, smaller, abode? Not chairs with holes in the sit-zone.

Allen turned the car around and pulled into the drive far enough to snap that shot, at which point we realized that cars were whooshing by behind us at a rate that, combined with the restricted view, made backing up unlikely. So we forwarded.

We forwarded past a house where grinning sculpted gourd-like heads topped fence posts, and shutters were hand painted with stars and vines. There was a 1970 VW Beetle rusting in front of a detached garage/workshop, a wooden rowboat named "Raccoon" up on sawhorses, and a woman looking at us curiously. So we rolled down the window and explained ourselves.

She happily leaned in and started to chat, and we exchanged inquisitiveness and insights about each other (we like to poke around, a VW such as that was my first car, Allen fixes boats. Her father built Raccoon for her when she was five, she will not be able to watch when someone comes for the VW which she has decided to give up, and she does chair seats.)

Chief among attributes which were mutually noted was that Wendy, age 66, and Allen, age 59, both like their projects, and have a goodly number of objects in their lives pertaining thereto.

"I'm trying to get her to move in with me," said Allen, as partial explanation for why he hoped to at least reduce his stockpile, (not mentioning that we plan to circumvent the problem by means of the two contiguous house strategy.)

It was clear that if I would not, then Wendy would. "Oh, you should move in with him," she said, both almost immediately, and as parting words.

And I eventually will in a more thorough way, once some of our housing concerns reach a place of better resolution. I will also bring my ladderbacks to her. Both for repair, and to keep an eye on her.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Sea legs for the brain

I think that one of the ways I skimmed through my childhood without managing to acquire any particularly useful skills, or rack up many meaningful accomplishments, was to tune out lingo which I saw no compelling reason to make sense of. There were, after all, acorns to be run through with toothpicks, and miniature villages to be constructed out of twigs. I could ignore the encyclopedia maps that my brother was painstakingly tracing and invent my own geography. I guess I was sure it was just as good.

Somewhere along the line, probably after childbearing chemically altered my brain toward the more practical, I began to recognize the value of skills, and started to at least try to pay attention. This remains an ongoing process, and I am often filled with regret to be catching up after goofing off.

As such, partnered with a boat-fixer, and spending half my time 30 feet from a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, I'm trying to learn boat stuff. From 11 years old to now, I've paddled many a small paddleable vessel, but I can neither sail nor pilot a larger craft with any authority, and we're working on that.

The funny thing is, I've spent my entire life amongst boaty people and their boats. But it didn't rub off. Because I can be that oblivious.

Typically, Allen and I will be somewhere--anywhere--and someone asks him what he thinks about a 20' Grubbly-Toader semi-trawler with a 2 cylinder Hackenputt, electrolyte-cooled downpiper.

So I listen, trying to look like I'm in on the lingo, and hoping that if you throw enough words at me I will--like a toddler--begin to assemble them in a useful mental grid.

Today's random encounter involved a discussion of the merits of pokewood for decking, fungible bilge wafting, and surgical steel tampers. I noticed a small grayish-green frog clinging to a nearby planter, but still I paid attention, and let the words try to seed my brain, until sprouts of comprehension could grow into a usable mesh.

And then I contributed some useful information about carpenter bees and woodpeckers who peck cedar, when the conversation skewed briefly in that direction.

"What kind of engine is that?" I will say to Allen, pointing out a Pondcrawler 38, jacked up in the boatyard.

"It's weird," he'll say. "Runs on a blend of high-test and Gatorade. They only made them out of clapboard between '74 and '80."

I nod. I've got it. For sure.

Meanwhile, the course I'm taking on piloting, and all the compass headings I'm plotting and nautical miles I'm calculating should at least slap a coat of paint on the framework.