STAYCATION

With a week of vacation time this past summer came a rare opportunity. We always traveled in the past, never missing the chance to go see another place or revisit a favorite area. Along with most of the world that idea had to take a back seat. I hoped to get tested and be able to go inside for part of the time. The health department set up a time for Tuesday which would be at least four days after working and any possible exposure. There was no guarantee when the results would be back so I resolved to work on projects until then and hope they came back sooner than later.

The weekend passed building the gun cabinet one day and painting it and the tool cabinet the next. A funny thing happened when I was involved with these various building projects out in the driveway. The days were long and I would work until sundown or later. I would be so focused on what I was doing that time would seem to stand still. The summer sun would still be high in the sky when I would check the time and it would be around four or five o’clock. There was always several more hours left to start and possibly finish another major job before dark. The odd thing was, I hadn’t experienced anything like that in quite some time. As a kid there were days either working or playing that lasted forever. Time was irrelevant and there were few if any other engagements besides supper to occupy one’s thoughts.

It’s amazing what the lack of stress and worry can do for your perspective. I had a knack for getting into a project or job and focusing so intently to the exclusion of everything else that the world could have ended and I wouldn’t know it until I was done to my satisfaction. For example, as a teenager I had decided to make a knife out of an old file found in the old metal building we called the shop over through the woods from my parents’ house. All I had to work with was an old body grinder, vise and a coffee can full of water. I had learned a little about blade design and geometry from my brother and knew I had to keep the blade cool so as not to ruin the temper. A tedious process of clamping the blade, grinding, unclamping and cooling began early in the morning. Working by a dim light overhead in the back of that dark shop and no concept of time since I had no watch and couldn’t see the sun, a good eighteen hours passed. I think finishing the knife and the urge to pee was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I walked outside into the dark and decided that was enough. Making my way in the dark through the woods I went in the house and found they had saved some supper for me. I asked why they didn’t come get me and Dad said it sounded like I was busy. He gave me a proud grin when I showed him the knife I had produced. It was a piece of crap but I felt like had really accomplished something.

The same feeling came back to me building this stuff in the driveway. It was hot as Hades in the sun standing on black pavement. The sun didn’t seem to move much and time slowed to a crawl. Without the expectation of having to go to work and being totally quarantined before my test meant I had nothing else to do. With my mind totally focused and absolutely nothing to worry about I believe it started out as one of the best vacations ever.

Being the middle of summer I did have to contend with heat in the building. The old Igloo cooler I was using had a hard time keeping up. I traded out jugs of ice from the freezer in the basement on a regular basis. Even with an AC unit in the building the ice didn’t last long. Rather than pay big money for a name brand that may or may not work, I chose the cheapskate make-do method. I had purchased a two inch thick piece of foam insulation board to make a box for the cooler. I had also picked up some liquid nails to glue it together. When insulating the building, I had used insulation board and learned a couple tricks for cutting it. A cheap narrow putty knife with an edge ground on one side along with my straight edge and carpenter’s square allowed me to cut it cleanly. Blade geometry and design on cutting tools is everything. Foam board needs something thin to reduce friction or it just gets stuck and starts tearing out chunks.

Glueing was not going to provide enough strength and support to hold the box together. I had some wire flags for marking stuff on the ground that were repurposed as reinforcement. I cut the wire into 10 inch lengths and bent over the last inch past ninety degrees. Trying to push the wire into the foam was futile due to friction. Heating the tip of the wire with a propane torch allowed it to burn into place like it was butter. Inserting wires along all sides at the joints at different angles gave me the structural support to hold it together. With the cooler inside this box it would keep cold three times as long. Two problems with the system were it’s bulk and the fact that the cooler would sweat inside the box creating some mold issues in the future. In the meantime my food and drink stayed cold.

Our gardens were growing rather well this year since Lydeana was working from home and could walk out to work in them in the evenings on a regular basis while Shayley fixed supper. A lot of stuff needed something to run on for vertical support of some kind. After a pow-wow of sorts we decided bamboo tripods were the way to go. I had some laying dead after cutting it some months before so it wouldn’t want to spontaneously take root and create a rift in our marriage. Ironically, a Japanese-style pull saw was the best tool to cut it to length. The pieces were sorted to match in diameter and node location for lashing together. I found the hard way that you can’t carry an arm load of bamboo poles unless they are already tied together. More than four or five bamboo poles carried loose are like the proverbial greased pig. They are going to get away from you. After some expletives and several trips up the hill, I settled down to lash the tripods together with some Jute twine. Once I got my technique down it only took a little over an hour to make over thirty tripods, enough to take care of everything. We put them in place and I tied long bamboo poles across the tops of rows to help solidify the setup. Tying down the tripods with string and stakes would keep them from toppling in the wind under the weight of the various vines.

I went to get tested at the recreation fields at Floyd on that Tuesday morning. Leaving my quarantine bliss momentarily behind, having to think about the outside world and be reminded of work was the worst part of the week. Working in the operating room around sterile technique makes you highly critical of folks who don’t have that degree of training or exposure. It’s both funny and exasperating watching what people do and don’t do that are ridiculous because they don’t know how to think through the chain of contact. Gathering my wits together after the brain probe, I sped home to get away from it all again.

I had plans to build a rack of sorts in my shed to store some items overhead and off the ground. The boards I used around the base of my tent were oak and would be strong enough for the job. They were widths of six to fourteen inches and I began to cut them into three-inch strips. That poor old skill saw I had got the work out of its life that day. It would be later in the month before I would get around to installing the pieces. Flitz, my fat stray cat must be partially deaf since she would hang around to keep tabs on the strange activities of her favorite food supplier. She has no fear of saws.

Some time spent mowing the yard helped fill the days before my test results came back negative. Thursday afternoon I got the call and I busted into the house to announce the news. The combined look of shock and excitement on Lydeana and Shayley’s faces was precious. Manny hardly knew what to do either. The strangest part was that I found myself wondering how to adjust. I felt out of place like I was invading someone else’s world and home. I eventually found my way to my regular spot on the lazy boy love seat we have and stayed there as much as I could the rest of the week. The projects and work were put on the back burner so as not to waste the chance to be with family.

Two projects popped up anyway. Lydeana hadn’t been anywhere since this whole thing started and needed her hair cut. I’ve always cut Manny’s hair and he was too shaggy for the heat. With a good set of electric shears and wrestling techniques I managed to give Manny a tolerable cut. With a dull pair of scissors, several prayers to God and some well-timed lies to Lydeana, I managed to give her a tolerable cut too. To top it off, I had two piles of hair to spread around the garden to dissuade marauding critters from making off with our crops.

Out of the nine days I had off I was able to get three and a half days and four nights inside. We spent all the time together we could, doing things inside for once. Every once in a while I would catch Shayley jerking her head to look at me in surprise as I entered a room. She wasn’t used to this extra person in the house and we all barely had time to get used to the idea before I had to move back out after going back to work. I hoped and tried to make these days stretch on like those spent working outside. Unfortunately trying makes time go faster. The real kicker was that Manny had assumed my old seat on the lazy boy was his and he resented me displacing him. As Charlie Brown would say, “Man’s best friend! Good grief!”