There is imprinted in my DNA a basic instruction. It says: Never throw away something you might be able to use later.
I am trying to rewrite that instruction, which I have followed all too well, or at least to redefine it. I am locked in a mental battle that parallels disputes over interpreting our constitution: strict construction or loose construction.
I have been a strict constructionist of my genetic instructions. If there is any conceivable possibility that I might be able to use something later, I've kept it. (And it has occasionally paid off: just the other day I used a piece of metal tubing left over from a boat shade, a bail from a five-gallon bucket and a hose clamp to repair a colorful little wind-driven whirlygig down by the patio.)
I am trying to accept the notion that I should keep only those things that there is a reasonably good chance that I will need. I'm not sure the bail from the bucket or the piece from the boat would qualify.
I have been given some impetus in my quest because we are thinking about downsizing our home.
I have already tackled my library and my closet, though much remains to be done in those departments.
But those have been minor forays compared to the task now at hand. Confronting stuff in general.
So, there I stood in the middle of a storage building, confronted with the reality of my resolution.
Various tools from past projects: a tile cutter and a grout float I bought when I remodeled the kitchen of an old house we owned in Montgomery.
A pipe flaring tool.
A gear puller.
I couldn't recall why I had acquired some of those items.
But realistically, would I ever use them again?
And the smaller things: screws and nails and bolts, all of differing sizes. Would I ever have or take the time to sort them out. An electric motor from a food processor, hinges from a glass door, things that I couldn't identify but which I obviously thought I might use for something.
Cans of paint that, even if it isn't a lump inside the can, probably wouldn't cover anything I started painting and which probably could not be matched.
I divided the stuff into two piles -- keep and discard.
Some of the stuff migrated from one pile to another more than once. After disposing of what I could bear to, I took the rest home and put it in the cave, the name we give to a part of the crawl space. There's standing headroom and lights, but now it is dense with the stuff from the storage building, and I still have a lot of decisions to make. If do sell the house soon, I either will speed up the decision process or carry a bunch of stuff on one more trip.
Sorting through the accumulation, I think of my grandmother. She saved everything: the string that closed a 25-pound bag of flour, the empty 10-pound sugar sack, the gallon syrup jug.
The difference is, she knew the end use of the stuff she was saving. I have yet to get there.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Spring Has Made Me Manic
Spring has made me manic.
Spring always makes us a little bit manic, but this year my case is extreme. Ordinarily an early riser, I find myself awaking even earlier and waiting impatiently for the sun to rise so I can be out and doing. (It is before sunup now or I probably would be doing instead of writing.)
I think there are a couple of reasons for my mania. The winter of 2010-11 seemed to have more consecutive days of unrelieved dreariness than most.There were not as may of those brief breaks when it was really pleasant to throw the kayak in the water and paddle or to take a long walk without bundling up as if for an expedition.
It wasn't just the past (I hope it has passed) winter that has fueled the mania. Medical adventures in the past couple of years, the heart thing and the cancer thing and then the unfortunate incident with the table saw left me more absorbed with self than with nature.
Helping with the restoration of the Smith Mountain Fire Tower and carving out hiking trails on the mountain have absorbed a good deal of outdoor time, but that's a whole other column. Around home, I managed to replace the decrepit steps leading from our dock down to the lake bed before the water got too high. I've raked dead leaves that have accumulated way too long and picked up fallen limbs; I finally got the shredder-mulcher running, so a lot of those will be reduced in size and returned to the earth. I got the lights on the patio working again and replaced the screen wire on the door to the porch. I wonder how long it will be before another child pokes his hand through the screen. Based on past experience, it will be before the summer is out.
I have been making some terraces with stones gathered from my neighbors country land = he says rocks are his principle crop = and planning more elaborate schemes to keep the dirt from washing down our half hill and into the lake.
Even as I work away, my project list grows longer. Dirty work clothes are a perplexity for my wife.She insists on washing them; I try to hold onto them for another day = or two.
"They're filthy," she says.
"I just put them on (meaning two or three days ago)," I insist.
She wins.
I have learned that I enjoy physical labor far more than I did when I was younger. The rhythm of labor frees the mind to wander all over the universe. The other day I found myself thinking of A.E. Housman's poem about the beauty of cherry blossoms, especially the line, "now of my threescore years and ten, twenty will not come again. And take from seventy years a score, it only leaves me fifty more. and since to look at things in bloom, fifty springs are little room, about the woodland I will go to see the cherry hung with snow."
Callow youth. I have reached my threescore and ten, and I expect to welcome a good many more springs.
There's one last reason for this spring mania: Before we know it, it will be so hot that the outdoors is most comfortably enjoyed by looking at it through a double-glazed window from an air conditioned room.
Meanwhile, the sun is about to come up; time for another cup of coffee and then out the door.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Spring always makes us a little bit manic, but this year my case is extreme. Ordinarily an early riser, I find myself awaking even earlier and waiting impatiently for the sun to rise so I can be out and doing. (It is before sunup now or I probably would be doing instead of writing.)
I think there are a couple of reasons for my mania. The winter of 2010-11 seemed to have more consecutive days of unrelieved dreariness than most.There were not as may of those brief breaks when it was really pleasant to throw the kayak in the water and paddle or to take a long walk without bundling up as if for an expedition.
It wasn't just the past (I hope it has passed) winter that has fueled the mania. Medical adventures in the past couple of years, the heart thing and the cancer thing and then the unfortunate incident with the table saw left me more absorbed with self than with nature.
Helping with the restoration of the Smith Mountain Fire Tower and carving out hiking trails on the mountain have absorbed a good deal of outdoor time, but that's a whole other column. Around home, I managed to replace the decrepit steps leading from our dock down to the lake bed before the water got too high. I've raked dead leaves that have accumulated way too long and picked up fallen limbs; I finally got the shredder-mulcher running, so a lot of those will be reduced in size and returned to the earth. I got the lights on the patio working again and replaced the screen wire on the door to the porch. I wonder how long it will be before another child pokes his hand through the screen. Based on past experience, it will be before the summer is out.
I have been making some terraces with stones gathered from my neighbors country land = he says rocks are his principle crop = and planning more elaborate schemes to keep the dirt from washing down our half hill and into the lake.
Even as I work away, my project list grows longer. Dirty work clothes are a perplexity for my wife.She insists on washing them; I try to hold onto them for another day = or two.
"They're filthy," she says.
"I just put them on (meaning two or three days ago)," I insist.
She wins.
I have learned that I enjoy physical labor far more than I did when I was younger. The rhythm of labor frees the mind to wander all over the universe. The other day I found myself thinking of A.E. Housman's poem about the beauty of cherry blossoms, especially the line, "now of my threescore years and ten, twenty will not come again. And take from seventy years a score, it only leaves me fifty more. and since to look at things in bloom, fifty springs are little room, about the woodland I will go to see the cherry hung with snow."
Callow youth. I have reached my threescore and ten, and I expect to welcome a good many more springs.
There's one last reason for this spring mania: Before we know it, it will be so hot that the outdoors is most comfortably enjoyed by looking at it through a double-glazed window from an air conditioned room.
Meanwhile, the sun is about to come up; time for another cup of coffee and then out the door.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Just Call Me ... Bob?
My parents saddled me with the given name of William, which naturally evolved into Bill. I was named after my father, whose named was David Herbert, but who for some reason had acquired the nickname Bill.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong the name Bill. It's just that the name Bill Brown is so common that even the smallest burg has two or three. And not all of them are people whom you wish to be confused with. Every time we've ever purchased a house, I have had to sign affidavits that I am not the Blll Brown who has had a mortgage foreclosed, filed bankruptcy, or has some other blot on his record.
When your last name is Brown, you definitely need a given name – or nickname – that has more than one syllable.
From childhood to high school graduation, people called me Billy; some people in my hometown still call me Billy. But when I got to college, every automatically called me Bill – it sounded more grownup, I think – and it has been Bill ever since.
Except that it hasn't been, and I can't exactly blame my parents, though I think have a first and last name start with the same letter is at least a contributing factor.
It didn't begin until after I graduated from college, but since then, an amazing number of people get fixed into their minds that my name is Bob.
It is not just strangers to whom I am introduced as Bill and who two minutes later are calling me Bob. As a young reporter, I covered City Hall in St. Petersburg, Fla. On my news gathering rounds, I stopped in the city manager's office every day. About half of the time the receptionist greeted me as Bob. I would correct her, and I would be Bill for a day or two, but then I would revert to Bob. Her explanation for the name confusion was, "You just look like a Bob."
I suppose Shakespeare (or Juliet) was right, but still I used to bridle at being called Bob. No longer, though. People whom I see regularly, including one whose own nickname is Bill, alternate between calling me Bill and Bob. I just smile and respond to whatever name they call me; I guess if I ever run for office, I will have to put my name on the ballot as Blll Bob Brown.
(My wife, whose given name is Adelaide, has a totally different problem. No one calls her Shirley or Barbara or Sue. But they can't seem to say Adelaide. It comes out Adeline, Adalie, and even Natalie. Like me, she's learned to put up with it.)
Still, I wonder what a Bob looks like.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
There's nothing intrinsically wrong the name Bill. It's just that the name Bill Brown is so common that even the smallest burg has two or three. And not all of them are people whom you wish to be confused with. Every time we've ever purchased a house, I have had to sign affidavits that I am not the Blll Brown who has had a mortgage foreclosed, filed bankruptcy, or has some other blot on his record.
When your last name is Brown, you definitely need a given name – or nickname – that has more than one syllable.
From childhood to high school graduation, people called me Billy; some people in my hometown still call me Billy. But when I got to college, every automatically called me Bill – it sounded more grownup, I think – and it has been Bill ever since.
Except that it hasn't been, and I can't exactly blame my parents, though I think have a first and last name start with the same letter is at least a contributing factor.
It didn't begin until after I graduated from college, but since then, an amazing number of people get fixed into their minds that my name is Bob.
It is not just strangers to whom I am introduced as Bill and who two minutes later are calling me Bob. As a young reporter, I covered City Hall in St. Petersburg, Fla. On my news gathering rounds, I stopped in the city manager's office every day. About half of the time the receptionist greeted me as Bob. I would correct her, and I would be Bill for a day or two, but then I would revert to Bob. Her explanation for the name confusion was, "You just look like a Bob."
I suppose Shakespeare (or Juliet) was right, but still I used to bridle at being called Bob. No longer, though. People whom I see regularly, including one whose own nickname is Bill, alternate between calling me Bill and Bob. I just smile and respond to whatever name they call me; I guess if I ever run for office, I will have to put my name on the ballot as Blll Bob Brown.
(My wife, whose given name is Adelaide, has a totally different problem. No one calls her Shirley or Barbara or Sue. But they can't seem to say Adelaide. It comes out Adeline, Adalie, and even Natalie. Like me, she's learned to put up with it.)
Still, I wonder what a Bob looks like.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Sunday, September 12, 2010
If I wanted a dog, ...
I do not have a dog, nor do I wish to have a dog.
It is not that I don't like dogs. As a youth, I had several dogs; I had cats, too.
Since we have been married, we have had a succession of cats. Both of us worked long, and often odd, hours. A dog would have demanded far more attention than we could give. Cats, on the other hand, regarded us as staff and occasional entertainment, often pretending they hadn't noticed we'd been gone. Their demands for affection, while single-minded (it's impossible to ignore a cat who doesn't wish to be ignored), are brief.
We are retired now, but when the last cat disappeared, we decided that we did not want to have another pet. At least not now. It is nice to simply close the door and leave home without boarding an animal.
As I am writing these words Raka is lying on floor of my study, regarding me with his sad brown eyes. Raka is definitely a dog. And he is living in my house (all of my dogs were outside pets) But he is not my dog. He belongs to our older son and his family.
How he came to be here is one of those long stories that is best told briefly. Our son, an Air Force officer, spent the past two years in South Korea. He moved on to a new assignment in England this summer. The family couldn't take Raka directly from South Korea to England without the dog spending six months in quarantine. If, however, Raka spent six months in the United States, he could go to England without being quarantined. So Raka came to the states to stay with our daughter-in-law's family. When our son's family came to stay at our house en route to England, Raka came with them. Somehow he never got back our daughter-in-law's folks, and when time came for the humans to go to England, Raka stayed here. He will be eligible to go to England sometime this fall, and I suppose whoever goes to visit England first will take him.
The family got the dog when they were stationed in Turkey, and they originally named him Raki after the Turkish national drink. No one seemed to be able to pronounce the name properly, so they changed the spelling to Raka.
Raka is a Vizsla, a Hungarian breed which Wikipedia describes as "elite sporting dogs and loyal companions." It goes on to say that "through the centuries the Vizsla has held a unique position for a sporting dog – that of household companion and family dog."
I don't know about the hunting part, but I can attest to Raka's qualities as a household companion. He is very much a people dog, and he likes to be where we are. When I go downstairs to have coffee early every morning, he follows to see whether I am doing anything interesting. When he decides that I'm not he goes back up and curls up in his bed in our bedroom. I go up and down the stairs about a million times a day, and each time Raka follows, although he is somewhat conflicted when one of us is upstairs and the other down. When I -- and he -- make one of my brief trips up and down, he looks at me with some disgust, as if to say, can't you just sit still for a minute?
Like most dogs, Raka likes to sit on the car seat and poke his head into the breeze, reveling in new smells and sights. When I pop out of the car for a minute, he is sitting behind the steering wheel when I come back.
All of this may sound as if I am leaning toward getting a dog.
I am not.
I do not have a dog, nor do I wish to have a dog.
But if I did want a dog, I would want him to be like Raka.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
It is not that I don't like dogs. As a youth, I had several dogs; I had cats, too.
Since we have been married, we have had a succession of cats. Both of us worked long, and often odd, hours. A dog would have demanded far more attention than we could give. Cats, on the other hand, regarded us as staff and occasional entertainment, often pretending they hadn't noticed we'd been gone. Their demands for affection, while single-minded (it's impossible to ignore a cat who doesn't wish to be ignored), are brief.
We are retired now, but when the last cat disappeared, we decided that we did not want to have another pet. At least not now. It is nice to simply close the door and leave home without boarding an animal.
As I am writing these words Raka is lying on floor of my study, regarding me with his sad brown eyes. Raka is definitely a dog. And he is living in my house (all of my dogs were outside pets) But he is not my dog. He belongs to our older son and his family.
How he came to be here is one of those long stories that is best told briefly. Our son, an Air Force officer, spent the past two years in South Korea. He moved on to a new assignment in England this summer. The family couldn't take Raka directly from South Korea to England without the dog spending six months in quarantine. If, however, Raka spent six months in the United States, he could go to England without being quarantined. So Raka came to the states to stay with our daughter-in-law's family. When our son's family came to stay at our house en route to England, Raka came with them. Somehow he never got back our daughter-in-law's folks, and when time came for the humans to go to England, Raka stayed here. He will be eligible to go to England sometime this fall, and I suppose whoever goes to visit England first will take him.
The family got the dog when they were stationed in Turkey, and they originally named him Raki after the Turkish national drink. No one seemed to be able to pronounce the name properly, so they changed the spelling to Raka.
Raka is a Vizsla, a Hungarian breed which Wikipedia describes as "elite sporting dogs and loyal companions." It goes on to say that "through the centuries the Vizsla has held a unique position for a sporting dog – that of household companion and family dog."
I don't know about the hunting part, but I can attest to Raka's qualities as a household companion. He is very much a people dog, and he likes to be where we are. When I go downstairs to have coffee early every morning, he follows to see whether I am doing anything interesting. When he decides that I'm not he goes back up and curls up in his bed in our bedroom. I go up and down the stairs about a million times a day, and each time Raka follows, although he is somewhat conflicted when one of us is upstairs and the other down. When I -- and he -- make one of my brief trips up and down, he looks at me with some disgust, as if to say, can't you just sit still for a minute?
Like most dogs, Raka likes to sit on the car seat and poke his head into the breeze, reveling in new smells and sights. When I pop out of the car for a minute, he is sitting behind the steering wheel when I come back.
All of this may sound as if I am leaning toward getting a dog.
I am not.
I do not have a dog, nor do I wish to have a dog.
But if I did want a dog, I would want him to be like Raka.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
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