A tale of three guys
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OK, so I’m sitting on the back porch after dinner last night. The birds are singing like mad, the sun is filtered by the vines over top of the deck and the air has the soft lilting fragrance of freshly mown hay. I have a beer in my hand, my feet are bare and I’m wearing one of my favorite t-shirts and oldest (hence most comfortable and disreputable) jeans. I didn’t shave this morning and I’m in guy-heaven.
Nole came over today and went to work laying in the foundation for the new garage with his backhoe, It was a pleasure to watch a man work with a tool that he knows how to handle; there’s artistry in those hands as he works his fingers deftly across the controls and handles that big shovel in the smallest and most graceful ballet of digging I’ve ever seen. The stumps came out. The hole was dug, the gravel laid and with any luck the forms and cement will be in by early next week. Then the builder can strut his stuff. But it bears repeating that working a backhoe is as much a wonderful thing as writing a garden article or taking a picture or just about anything else you can think of short of saving somebody’s else’ life. I admire folks with outstanding skill at what they do and Nole’s one of them.
The project is a 3-car garage with two bays for cars and one for my boat shop and somewhere close to garage heaven with a full 12×24 for the boat shop. I think I can fit the tools in there but it will be close. It will be the first real home they’ve had since half of them left the farm and the other half left my dad’s shop. I’m actually looking forward to unpacking the darn plastic tote bins and seeing just what tools I do own. I packed up dad’s shop (it took 2 weeks) and I never did see all the tools that went into those bins.
My dad was a mechanic by trade and in later life started teaching auto-shop and woodworking in high school. His tools aren’t fancy but they are good ones and I do believe I have enough tools there to both tear down and rebuild a car and construct a fully finished boat from the rough lumber. In his later years, he collected tools just for the activity of going out. His heart wouldn’t let him use them much so he’d just buy them. I think all the family guys now have at least one router (I think I still have three or four) and I’m not at all sure how many cordless drills I own but there’s a ton of chargers in one box I opened last week. One of my most prized possessions is a lawyer 4-part cabinet my dad made me out of oak. It’s a fine piece of furniture and sits, full of old books, in my office.
That’s my tale of three guys today - my dad, now passed away who believed if you were going to do something you just did it right - Nole who obviously knows how to do it right and me - who can appreciate both of them.
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Over the years I have had 2 swimming pools dug by the same back-hoe operator and I asked him on 1 occasion how come some of those machines seem to clatter and bang and rattle when they’re working and some don’t. He started to laugh and pointed out that it wasn’t the machine, but the operator. The man had fingers like tree trunks but he was an artiste with that machine.
My Dad also pointed out many times as I was growing up that any job worth doing was worth doing right. A sentiment that I too have passed on many times as my own kids grew up. Hopefully they will continue the tradition!
Ron - yeah, you try to pass the important “stuff” along for sure.
[...] here’s the original area with Nole and his backhoe excavating for the garage area - he’s on bedrock with the excavation at that depth. garden [...]