May 2008

Words from the past

     I have actually had people ask me to do a piece on the origins of words. (Okay, so only one person asked, and he was from Minnesota). Since the language we speak also mirrors the way we think, I think that where a word came from and how it has changed can be important.

     I am going to do some seafaring words, as there is a lot of tradition behind them, but no, I am not going to do that word which the Navy uses for all eight parts of speech.

     First, when we talk about “Naval” terms we are talking about boats out on the ocean; not to be confused with the Navel Academy, where they undertake elaborate studies of belly-button lint to determine its suitability for cross-hairs in gun sights.

     There were no Men’s Rooms aboard the old sailing ships, but they did have two planks with holes cut in them mounted in the bow (that’s the pointy end of the ship) in such a way that the holes extended over the sea. Those who have served in the military will know that they had two boards so that there could be one for the officers, and one for the enlisted men. (The officer’s board was probably fur-lined)

Also near the pointy end of the ship were the masthead, the figurehead, which was usually a carved and stylized female goddess, and a cats-head, which was a short spar crossing the bow used for hanging the anchor when it was not busy anchoring. It was typical in those days for a sailor to say “I’m going up to the heads,” and that’s how rest-rooms became associated with that word.

     When sailing ships were supplied out for a voyage, food items included those things that wouldn’t spoil, such as rum, and those things that the ship’s surgeon thought were good for you, such as fresh limes, to supply vitamin C and thus prevent scurvy. (The issue and enforced consumption of lime juice was what gave British sailors the nickname of Limey) Supplies also included hard-tack (biscuits softened with hockey pucks) dried peas, and the cheapest and greasiest meat the local butcher could supply. When this meat was cooked in a large cauldron, it accumulated an inch of lard (tallow) at its surface. This goo was called slush. Half of this was used to grease the ropes so that they wouldn’t weather in seawater and they would slide through the tackle easily. (Yes, the rope was hemp) The underpaid cook kept half of the goo back, and when next in port, he would sell it to the local candle maker and keep the money as a perk to his job. This little bit of money became known as the cook’s Slush Fund.

     Back on land, in France, it was customary for the peasants to build a late-night fire in the street to keep warm, cook something, pass around some wine, and foment rebellion. I don’t know which king it might have been, but there are 16 Louie’s to choose from. The king decided to put a stop to any talk of rebellion by making them cover their fire at; say, 10:00 PM. Cuevrefeu is the Old French term for covering a fire, or hearth. In America, it became curfew

April 2008

ABANDON ALL HOPE…

     Generally, my idea of “going on a ride” means going to the liquor store for more beer. Even a trip of such noble purpose is difficult, because I do not fit well in the average car. Yes, my waist size is very close to my height, and I get my clothes tailored at Omar the Tent-maker’s.

     Nonetheless, a while back, the in-laws convinced me to go with them to Puddles Of Pleasure, a popular theme park, not far from here. This park is primarily focused on providing near-death experiences for adrenaline junkies. It has no theaters or story-shows to entertain people of a more contemplative nature, such as myself.

     I gave up on one ride altogether when they couldn’t even get my ample self compressed inside the small basket that was to thrill me with the g-force of sub-orbital flight. I don’t remember the name of the thing, but the ride I finally tried was called the Cauldrons of Agony, or something like it.

     All four of us sat in a bowl shaped device with booth seats. The safety bar was lowered and latched across the in-law’s laps with a resounding and reassuring double-click, locking them safely into the seat while providing them with something to hold on to in moments a despair.

     I noticed that the bar across my lap didn’t latch at all. I was about to point out this serious safety concern to the attendant, but his attitude suggested that so much weight could never be thrown from his ride, and that the only place that I might be going was to a Weight Watchers meeting.

     Powered by eleven jet engines, the ride promised thrills at supersonic speeds, and it delivered. The cup in which I trusted my life spun and shook violently, while the whole business turned in a giant orbit. Since we were turning in a circle, centrifugal force came into play. This amazing force presses outward with rotation, and has no regard for the majesty of mass inertia trying to keep me in place. In fact, centrifugal force likes fat, I soon discovered.

     I received an instant manicure at no extra charge as my nails left bright red trails in the imitation metal of the bowl. I was being forced out of the ride under tremendous pressure, and I was so certain that I was achieving launch velocity that I began to picture myself as an extra-large poster on the carnival walls of the ride. I was quite certain that my particular seat in the ride would no longer be serviceable for the next thrill-seeker.

     The ride stopped because my in-laws were laughing so hard that they had to administer oxygen. I got out on short-wobbly legs (they’re short and wobbly anyway) and as I left, I noticed the traditional sign for kids: You must be as tall as the bottom of this sign to go on this ride. I intend to write the owners of the park and suggest that they add two steel poles, embedded in concrete, about fourteen inches apart, with a sign that reads: If you cannot slip between these two poles, you have no business on this ride.

March 2008

A FAMILY OF ONE

     It’s difficult these days to turn on the television and not hear some hankie-wringing drama about some poor soul who is miserable and in need of donations because he or she didn’t receive the love and attention they deserved as a child.

     Mothers are the most loving and understanding creatures on the planet, yet there doesn’t seem to be a kid out there whose mother understood him, and that is supposed to explain why he turned out to be an axe murderer, or worse, a politician.

     Personally, I had that problem solved from the beginning.

     I was an accident, no doubt brought on by too much whiskey and no trace of common sense. As the story was told to me, my daddy was a truck driver, and my mom used to like to ride along on his runs with him. This left no room for a round little kid that required constant feeding. My mom wanted to put me into an orphanage, and my dad thought it would be less cruel to just drown me. Beyond that, the story becomes unclear, except that I wound up in an orphanage, but with a unique ability to swim.

I was not discouraged, and I presented myself with charm and good humor as each set of prospective parents came through the people-pound. I was named Vernon because they thought that it was tacky to give each kid a number. I was adopted by the Enkes, a childless couple who had the immediate good sense to re-name me Philip. They were pleased, and consequently provided me with a very comfortable life.

     Mom and Dad Enke had never suffered from the misconception that a kid has to have a sibling to torment. There was also no problem with having to offset the presence of a boy by bringing a female into the world in order to achieve some kind of Cosmic Balance.

     I was it. When my first birthday party was over, my folks had an entire year to scrimp and save so that they could buy me more expensive gifts for my second birthday. When I was sick, there was no waiting until after big brother’s ball practice before taking me to the best of doctors.

     I never had to bother with sports. I tried playing catch once, but after going through two cases of balls, I realized that the game wasn’t going to go well without a brother there to catch them.

Even though I was a generic rent-a-brat, my parents adored me, and just me, because there wasn’t anyone else. I was the brother my parents always liked more, and I was the center of attention at solemn PTA conferences.

     I had fewer bruises, all the scribbling in the margins of my school books was mine, and when something got broken, I had to blame it on the poor dog.

     Christmas was a special time that I can only describe as being all about Me! Me! Me!

     And there was nothing like the sight of a laden tree on Christmas morning, knowing that every last present under its boughs was Mine! Mine! Mine!

February 2008

IGNORANT BLISS

    Ever wonder where the strange names they give race horses come from? I don’t know either. I’ve always thought that if I owned a race horse, I wouldn’t name it Sunday Butterspoon, or even Secretary. I rather like the name Ignorant Bliss.

     And since I don’t have a race horse, Ignorant Bliss doesn’t happen to make a bad philosophy, either.

One cannot think of ignorance as being bliss without conjuring up companion clichés such as what you don’t know won’t hurt you, or it’s counter part: Better safe than sorry.  I will leave those alone.

I have generally found that remaining ignorant is a workable game plan, and you can ask any of my friends and family and I think they will confirm the fact that I’m very good at it. So far, I’ve managed to ignore most of the troublesome things in my life, and only a few of them have come back to bite me in an area that I haven’t seen recently.

     Some things can’t be ignored, my two ex-wives and their attorneys being a noisy and expensive example.

     Another thing that is difficult to ignore is bad weather. For one thing, weather has a nasty habit of being so very there each time you step outside. For another, everyone talks about little else. Let your neighbors and co-workers learn that you have a 50 mile commute through sleet and ice and freezing fog and blowing snow, and they will drive 100 miles through the same inclement weather to bring you the news of how terrible it is. There have been days when I’ve successfully ignored the doomsayers and I’ve stepped outside to a sunny and warm afternoon with only the sound of melting snow to suggest that it had ever been anything but a spring day.

     A friend I work with has given up reading the crime reports and obituaries so that he can scan the weather channel during his every waking moment and rush to tell me of every crossed snowflake or the slightest whiff of errant cloud.

     Life has a way of getting even, however. In this guy’s urgent need to find woeful news, he inspected a bit of peeling paint by his own window sill and found that the aged wood beneath might be suffering from “dry-rot.” I will withhold any opinion on dry rot until I have at least seen an example of wet-rot.

My friend is totally incapable of going out for beer and a pizza and ignoring a window sill that had been around longer than he has. He begins to poke and prod at it until he has opened a hole around the window and discovers that he has termites. I won’t terrorize you with the woes and expense of a new wall, a beautiful hardwood floor, and of course, a new carpet so that you can’t see the beautiful new hardwood floor.

     What happened to the beer and the pizza, and maybe hoping that the termites couldn’t eat your whole house in the time you had left on this planet anyway?

Note: For those who think it cruel to exterminate termites, tiny termite-sized handcuffs can be purchased in bulk. Be aware that it will take three pairs of handcuffs for each insect.

January 2008

RESOLUTIONS

     I’m sitting here eating vanilla ice cream topped with maple syrup and dark rum, thinking that this is the time of year when people make resolutions. These are, for the most part, insincere promises to begin a clean slate by pledging to do the right thing, instead of all the things that are in are basic nature to do.

So here goes: Resolution Number One I’m going to leave blank right away, because that is the same one that millions of Americans are going to swear to, and the world will be lucky of four individuals keep their promises. That would be the one about losing weight.

     Right. There’s an expensive way and a cheap way to lose weight, depending on whether you want to pay for a gym. The place might have the Answers to the Universe painted on the walls, but you wouldn’t know, because you’re never going inside. I’ll stick with the cheap way and move on to number two:

That would be the resolution about not drinking (or drinking less, etc.). I think if you’re not going to give up eating, then you shouldn’t give up drinking either. Fat people are supposed to be jolly. Rum keeps them that way.

     Now I’ve given up smoking for about 17 years, but I might resolve to take it up again so that I can pollute the last restaurant full of intolerant sissies before they ban tobacco altogether, and we have to start buying our product from the Mafia.

     For Number Five, I’m going to vote. Nothing funny about that.

     For Number Six, I resolve not to sit around in my underwear, belching and drinking beer when company comes over. (This should be an easy one, because we don’t get much company—mostly because I sit around in my underwear belching and drinking beer).

     With regard to Resolution Number Seven, I have a sad history of showing up late almost every day for work. I hereby resolve to make up for arriving late, by leaving work early each day.

     For Resolution Number Eight and Number Nine, I promise to improve my exercise program in two directions: For one, I’m going to take up roller skating, and for the other, I’m going to walk my St. Bernard on a regular basis. (I see no reason why 8 and 9 cannot be performed simultaneously).

My last resolution is to find that 120 lb. accountant who drives that 4X4 pickup with the two-story tires and the 11 gigawatt high beams who follows me to work every morning. I want to thank him. It sure beats scraping the ice off my back window.

December 2007

Ho Ho Hippie!

I never set out to look like Santa Claus. For many years, I suppose I looked more like an aging hippie with my dark beard and my guitar. I started to put on a little more weight, and I might have gone through a stage where I looked a little like Burl Ives.

Then my beard turned white. I was working for the phone company at the time, and was up on a roof in my red coat pulling wires across from the pole one December when the homeowner, desperate to find a unique Christmas decoration, simply took my ladder away and wouldn’t give it back until January.

Still wearing the old red jacket through another winter, I thought it was a good day to make a batch of chili, so I went looking for a suitable pot in which to simmer such a dripping delicacy. I had found a black cast iron pot at a garage sale and was standing on the corner in the snow, waiting for a bus, when passersby began to put money in the pot and wish me a Merry Christmas. It turned out to be a very merry holiday, as at some point I stopped challenging the whims of Fortune and made my way to the liquor store.

On another wintry day a homeowner carefully positioned me on his front lawn near a stack of brightly-wrapped cardboard boxes, and went looking for a long extension cord.  At that point, I only knew what the guy was going to do with one end of that electrical cord when he found it, and I made good my escape before I could learn more.

            I bought a pair of shiny black boots from the widow of a lion tamer one winter, but I only got those to keep my feet warm. The black belt was to hold my trousers up. Children were following me through town, and it was becoming an embarrassment. I finally had to quit wearing red altogether.

            Traditionally, Santa’s garb was not red, anyway. It was sometimes white, but often an icy blue, consistent with winter. The idea for the red Santa suit can be attributed to some clever advertising person at the Coca-Cola Company, who depicted Santa having a refreshing Coke rather than a glass of milk with his cookies. The shade of red was, and remains, the same color as Coca-Cola packaging to this day.

            Actually, it is a very special thrill to see a toddler, riding backwards in a shopping cart while his mother buys presents for people she doesn’t like very much, start pulling on her sleeve and pointing, his eyes like saucers and  his mouth open.

            It almost always embarrasses Mom.

            Happy Holidays from the Jolly Old Fat Man.

November 2007

Tailgating

   During my adventures on the West Coast, I had a few interactions with traffic officers. I was actually ran out of the City of Beverly Hills because my car was too ugly. On another occasion they suggested that I take up shooting rather than driving because while I was in no danger of hitting anything with a gun, I seldom missed anything with a car.

   When it came to the point where I was to face charges of vehicular malfeasance or I had to attend traffic school, I chose the latter. Instead of taking the class provided by the State of California, I paid extra for a private school, in hopes that by incurring the extra expense they might serve cocktails.

There were some classroom hours of lessons and facts, and there were the gory films of freshly-mutilated traffic victims which weren’t as scary as what we see on television. Then they brought in a real live traffic cop to talk to us.

   The officer talked about traffic safety and fielded some questions. A few refugees from the Third Grade gave solid consideration to their questions, but were no match for the man in uniform.

“Don’t you guys have a quota of tickets you have to write every day?”

No, they let us write as many as we want to.

“You guys always single me out for a ticket because I drive a bright red car.”

No we don’t. We do notice you more, however. Wasn’t that why you painted your car red?

   I saw right away that silence would be a virtue in this instance.

The officer continued his lecture, and like any teacher that I’ve had, he had his own pet subject that he wove through every topic. This cop’s pet peeve was tailgating. Following too closely is the correct term in California. The man pointed out such things as the risks involved, and he mentioned that the police knew that even though a tailgater might not be speeding, he was looking for a chance to pass so that he could go really fast. By the time the class was finished, I was convinced that if I didn’t tailgate, I would never get a ticket. I was filled with a new resolve that I would never follow closely, and that if six car-lengths were recommended at highway speeds, I would allow twenty-four.

   So I began my hour-long journey to work leaving football-field distances ahead of me.

Some fool passes, slips in and fills the gap. I do what I was told in class. I drop back and let him in. I put a safe distance in front of me. Someone comes up an on-ramp without a clear idea that if he is going to be joining cars going 60 that he might try for speeds approaching 35.

   I’m the good driver now. I let him in too. I also let the ice cream truck, the long-haul trucker, a guy towing a boat the size of the Queen Mary, three buses full of Boy Scouts going to a jamboree, and I’m not sure if there wasn’t a camel in there somewhere.

I graciously drop back for each one.

I look out my window.

Home again.

October 2007

Another Stupidest thing ever said

September 2007

Hello Dolly!

    Someone once claimed that moving with modern rental equipment was supposed to be an adventure. I suppose they must have been referring to the operation of the appliance dolly.

Dolly.

It is a lovely name for a contraption designed to frighten amateur movers.

When the idea of the dolly was put together, all of those old time Greeks must have had something to do with it. I forget who invented what, but the dolly of today employs the advantages of the wedge, the lever, the fulcrum and the inclined plane. The operation of the typical dolly requires the skills of someone who is both smart enough to do it and stupid enough to try it. I was fairly sure that I fit into one of those categories.

    The first problem with a dolly is that it encourages a man to move something that he ought to leave alone. It also made the refrigerator that much heavier to carry.

It was the wife who suggested that we set everything down on the dolly's wheels and sort of roll things along.

    The trouble there was that when I pushed the refrigerator along that way, I couldn't see where I was going, so I ran into a few things and I guess I pushed the television out the living room window, along with my nephew-in-law who is always on the couch in front of it.

I decided that it was time that I get just a little smarter than the dolly. I pulled it behind, so I could see, then headed for the stairs.

     The dolly and the refrigerator went along easily enough. I took a couple of steps down, then pulled the dolly along and it came down the first step really smooth, picking up a little speed for the second step, which it hardly touched. By the time the dolly got to the third step, I was thinking about those Greeks again, and one of their laws about objects occupying the same place at the same time. I decided that it was time to put on a little speed myself.

     I made it to the sixth floor landing without a problem, and was still in the lead when the dolly, the refrigerator and I turned the bend at the top of the fifth floor stairs. I was getting my second or maybe my third wind at that point, and I was really glad that it was all downhill.

At the turning in the third floor landing, the dolly made a grab for the seat of my pants, but I managed to stay ahead of it. At the second floor, the refrigerator tried to pass, but I was too quick for it. I managed to get through the front doors in time to let the refrigerator roll on to the concrete.

It was a fast trip, and as you might have guessed, we beat my nephew-in-law and the television to the parking lot.

    I had learned my lesson, however, and I was not going to let a dolly sneak up on me like that when we went to put the refrigerator into the new apartment. I learned to push the thing ahead of me, where I could keep an eye on its progress. I look to be at the top of the first floor landing in late May.

August 2007

THE TABLE

Line 1: My wife has always wanted one of those round glass tables.

We've had a fine wooden table in our dining room for years. It once belonged to my mother. It was originally white with flowers. After the table had been around for a hundred years, the white paint

became yellow and developed the fine texture of cracks so sought after by antique enthusiasts. It then appeared to be something more in the Mexican/Rancho/Adobe style During the next fifty years, the finely textured cracks in the table's surface began to widen, and most of the white-yellow-cracked paint began

to slide down the legs of the table like an ill-fitting pair of socks. Using liberal amounts of linseed oil and imported waxes, I enhanced the natural wood finish to a point where it shined. I showed the wife what a nice finish I'd created, and demonstrated that you could slam a frothy mug of cold beer on it without hurting the finish. She wasn't impressed.

Why? See Line 1.

So I see an ad for a round glass table. Smoked glass. Black steel frame. Chairs included. The price was something less than that of a car, which for furniture of any kind these days, is very reasonable. We went  to look at the table, and my wife was saying something about "We'll take it" before

she had come all the way through the door. The seller had a nice apartment on the third floor, and a small daughter that would encourage most parents to build a woodshed. He said he was parting with the table at such a reasonable price because it only rested on the steel frame and he was afraid that his little girl might tip it and hurt herself. We paid the man. The table top got away from me at the top of the second floor, and I won't go into details of what the rolling disk did to the cop car, or how it tore through the fence of the golf course. I will mention that it is extremely difficult to find a smoked glass table top in the dark waters of a water hazard.  You have to pick a spot, dive in, and hope you don’t find it. We finally got the offensive table home and set up in our dining area. The first thing we discover is that dark glass is impossible to keep clean. You even think about using the table for anything, and it gets thought-prints on the polished glass. This means that there has to be a place mat at every location, and in the case of ill-mannered persons such as myself, an additional small mat for each elbow. The next surprise was the  nerve-twisting experience of setting any kind of ceramic bowl on the glass surface. This creates a sound like pterodactyl talons on a blackboard. Consequently, we have to put a pad under anything we place on the glass surface.

We could have put a cloth on the old table.

But then, See Line 1.

July 2007

The Egg

The hard-boiled egg has been around since man (woman) learned to boil water, and there has always been a need for some kind of egg timer.
The first egg timer was the sun. This was during the Jurassic Period when it took a large pot and a long time to boil a brontosaurus egg for potato salad. When the sun went down, it was time to throw some pterodactyl on the barbie.
The egg timer subsequently evolved into the more sophisticated form of the sun dial, and in later centuries, the hour glass.
We had a smaller version of an hour glass once, probably a minute glass, but the wife didn’t find if very effective for timing hard-boiled eggs, because if the little glass didn’t do anything when the Sands of Time ran out, or it didn’t do it loudly enough that she could hear it over the Weekend Wrestling program. We figured that if you had to stand there and watch the egg timer, you might as well watch the eggs.
These days she uses the smoke alarm to time the eggs. It is a simple and consistent method. She drops the eggs in the water, turns the burner up so that the stove looks more like the launch pad for the Orbiter Atlantis. When the smoke alarm goes off, they’re done.
This method has some predictable drawbacks, but it worked well enough for us until the day we started the eggs, and then drove away to do our weekend shopping.
I’m guessing that the smoke alarm probably went off when we were at Hardware City trying to return the oak toilet seat we had just purchased. It had termites.
We didn’t remember that we had eggs cooking while we went to the movies and watched Gone With The Wind, either. I imagine that by this time, the smoke alarm was internally hemorrhaging.
It was later, when we were both enjoying our Swedish Massage, that my wife suddenly screamed “Oh Dear! I left the fire on under the eggs!”
There have been many theories presented regarding the balance of power in American matrimony, but anyone who has been married long enough to know how that balance is truly tipped, will understand why I was the one to show up at the house, panting, naked except for a towel, and dripping jojoba oil.
Fortunately, the evidence was all gone by the time that the fire department got there. The eggs had built up so much internal pressure that they had launched themselves through the kitchen window, taking some Guinness Records for ground speed, some NASA orbital speed records and our Chihuahua with them.
Someone (probably the gas company) had cut the gas off, so the stove was off. The smoke alarm had gotten hotter than two politicians writing checks in a cloak closet, and it had melted and run down the wall. I quickly hung a picture frame around it and told the authorities that it was a Salvadore Dahli painting.

June 2007

Recycle

We were never poor. I enjoyed a childhood of middle-class comfort. My father was an executive for America's major communications utility back when it was referred to as THE phone company. He was paid generously, back when the American greenback was known as THE dollar.

Just by counting back through the years, however, my dad must have been a kid during the Great Depression, and he never quite got over it. Either that or he was an amazing visionary who saw the value of true ecology before the rest of the world knew there was an ozone layer.

Nothing went to waste in our house. The paper grocery bags were used to start the fireplace we used to heat the house, the bottles were taken back for the deposit, and we fed the cans to the goat. As soon as TV dinners were invented, we cut the aluminum trays into strips and tied them to the branches of our fruit trees so that they would flutter in the breeze and keep the birds away.

We raised chickens. We ate both the chickens and the eggs, but Dad did not stop there. He performed a delicate operation on the young male birds that diverted their adolescent energies into solid and edible growth. We were turning out capons (pronounced kay-pawns) the size of small turkeys and there was no experience like waking to a morning Cock-a-doodle-do sung in soprano.

On the occasions when we enjoyed a beef roast, my father rendered our fat trimmings into tallow that he would mix with ashes from the fireplace to make soap. We would enjoy one meal of roast beef, with gravy, so that none of the juices were wasted, then on the second night, he would grind up the remaining scraps of the roast and add homegrown potatoes and onions to make hash. The remaining bone went into a boiling pot of well water (of course) to make a thick broth, which we poured over the dogs’ cheap kibble so that they would eat the stuff. The bleached bone was also given to the dogs, though it must have had all the flavor of a cue ball.

We had sixty citrus trees on our property, which yield 640,829 oranges annually, and you may count them. We never wasted an orange. What we didn't eat was pressed into juice. The seeds were planted, and if you're thinking about the orange peels, hang on. Those were cut into thin strips, then dipped in either corn syrup or melted chocolate to make surprisingly good candy.

Other items that might be considered household waste in today's enlightened culture went to the compost heap. Compost, of course is the civilized way of producing organic fertilizer without having to run perfectly good food through a cow. All of the gooey and aromatic garbage that my father couldn't figure out how to put on the table went onto a two-story compost heap surrounding a large oak tree that was growing so well that it appeared to be smiling.

Lawn clippings and tree trimmings, lizards and rodents, sawdust, and chicken gizzards went into the heap, all to be buried and simmered in the warm attentions of yeast and bacteria until it was reduced to a dark, loamy soil that would make dichondra grow on a dry rock. When the goat died of boredom, we ate chevon (goat meat). We didn't need the barn any more, so my dad burned the wood in the fireplace and used the nails to put iron in the soil for the roses.

The old house isn't on the property any more, but it didn't go to waste, either.

Termites.

May 2007

The Shed

All I did was happen to notice that the wooden handle on our garden shovel was getting a little weathered and cracked. I mentioned that the handle might profit from an ample coating of linseed oil.
“Oh you can’t use linseed oil,” the wife said. She went on to explain that she had been reading the back of a linseed oil can (don’t ask me why) and had learned that this time-honored balm for dry wood actually produces significant amounts of heat as it dries, creating a serious risk of spontaneous combustion. She continued about all the thousands of Lins that would have to give up their little lives for each ounce of linseed oil, but I don’t get involved much in environmental issues.
“I know.” She said after a moment’s contemplation, “why don’t we just get a nice shed for the back yard, then we can put all of our tools in out of the weather, and we won’t have to use any of that nasty linseed oil at all.”
“Great,” I said. “Have someone bring over a shed and set it up right away.” I said this, only vaguely realizing that I would be the one doing the shed fetching and assembly work.
The shed that I purchased seemed to be a nice one, but I became seriously concerned when it came packaged in a box which was not much larger than my wallet. I also noticed that it had the approximate mass of a Black Hole. What we had here was a seriously condensed out-building, and I had a horrible feeling that just adding water wasn’t going to do the trick.
The instructions weighed eleven pounds and had apparently been translated from the language of the manufacturing country by someone who had never been there.
I think that everyone has had some experience at putting together “easy-to-assemble” toys and small furniture items, but when I found myself neck-deep in sheet metal with only Pidgin English instructions to guide me, I was given to deep despair.
ASSEMBLE, PLEASE, RIGHT SHORT-BOLT (a) TO COMPRESSION FASTENER (d) ALONGSIDE METAL SIDE-PLATE (9923) SAME-SAME PRETTY MUCH LONGSIDE DOTTED LINE (z). The instructions read.
After careful translation, I began putting nuts, bolts, and metal plates together, carefully pitching anything that didn’t look like a garden shed over the fence into my neighbor’s yard.
I had severe problems with the roof. Obviously, the person who had raised such pre-meditated mayhem with the instructions had not considered the geometric improbabilities of a rotund person on a six-foot stepladder trying to insert “LONGSCREW (f) INTO OPENING (w)“ some seven feet from the nearest edge of the shed.
Right after I wondered if the same guy who wrote the shed instructions might have assembled my stepladder, I began to consider how the shed might look with a skylight.
In due course I discovered that some of the pieces, which I pitched over the fence, really were important, and I eventually came to the point where my openings (w) no longer lined up with my long screws. I made some minor adjustments using a large hammer and the drill.
The doors to my new shed don’t quite close, and when you do get them closed, they are almost impossible to get open. I have not put any tools in the thing as yet. I sit in my shredded clothes, nursing my bleeding thumbs, and stare at this creation that resembles those little square milk cartons they used to give us in school.
Now you might think that a shed made entirely of metal would be fireproof. I think it will burn quite well when lit with a set of flaming instructions. Especially if I pour enough linseed oil on it.
Phil wrote for the Mojave Desert News in California and also has a novel in the works. If you would like to contact Phil you can reach him at his email address: senke@neb.rr.com