Theory is a Myopic Cousin of Wise Experience
Sunday, August 13Ð
If a man must check his watch with a full cup of coffee in hand, he will soon have a wet shoe.
I was stooped along the lip of the cabin roof doing preliminaries in preparation of replacing it, when a van swooped into the drive, rolling over, then flipping our plastic garbage can lid into its wheel well and scuffing it along the ground. Chuck's brother Jim emerged from his workshop on wheels with basset hound "Percolator."
I'd called Mom on Thursday and mentioned that a trip to The Woods to replace the cabin roof was on my agenda. She reported that Chuck was in the middle of raising and leveling the lake cabin--engaging hydraulics and large levers, and surely wasn't of a mind to drop everything to make a 200 mile trip across Minnesota and engage in another heavy project. So I put the idea away.
Prepared for a solo job I departed for Minnesota, unsure if I'd see him or not. I've never put down a rolled roof before. I've seen how not to do it and was given lots of advice from co-workers. And, I understand the theory (lay water repellent substances to prevent the roof from leaking) and have planned it out in my head. But theory is a myopic cousin of wise experience.
"Hi Jim."
"I just talked to Chuck. He's somewhere south of Moose Lake."
Yeah! I was going to have help.
I'd borrowed or bought all necessary materials: eight rolls of roofing, nails, lap cement, roof tar, hammer, chalk line, drip edging, hook blades, aluminum extension ladder. It was all unloaded and ready for use. Saturday night I'd removed a rolled roofing overhang lip from the front face of the cabin; tin drip edge would seal better. I continued painting the raw face plate; within fifteen minutes we heard a motor and Chuck curved into the clearing.
We went topside to survey what needed doing and discuss details, like how much each seam should overlap (9 inches), how much cement (width of the brush), etc.
Then launched at it. Chuck brushed on the lap cement. Jim and I rolled and nailed. The roof was in complete shade and pleasant, though the temperature was scheduled to reach the high eighties.
Jim's cell phone chirped, he gave directions, hung up, and said brother David and wife Katherine expected to arrive within an hour. Project continued, patches of tar appeared out of place, tracked by footsteps. No matter how careful we were (we weren't) sticky blackness traveled from brush to clothing to hands to ladder to tools, then back again.
Now, the cabin roof is constructed with 2x4 rafters and 3/4 inch pine boards. It adequately withstands northern Minnesota snowloads, with the aid of a vertical support in the center of the living area. The front edge is an unsupported four-foot overhang. From above, the roof is uniform and gives no indication where the wall studs stop and empty air begins. A person alone up there can not sense the sag effect as he walks about. Short of leaping into the air and landing in a stomp, nothing trembles alarmingly. An acorn bouncing off the roof would impact as much as a man skipping across it. But, stand motionless as a man lumbers past carrying a ninety-pound roll of roofing and the physics of construction and wood's weight bearing ability, evoke news stories of collapsed catwalks with hundreds injured. Although we don't have multiple floors to free-fall, it would be an annoyance to break the cabin. David, who is still a big man despite losing ninety pounds, wants to see what we're doing. Ladder dips, he climbs, lurches, then stands. Men congregate to talk and consider. The earth hesitates. Dad never imagined--nor designed the cabin to uphold--four husky men overrunning his roof when he built it forty years ago.
The cabin didn't collapse. David went below and helped prepare lunch: wieners and brats and beans over the campfire.
An old birch tree, which sprouted a few sickly leaves earlier in the summer, is now fully dead and leans over the cabin. A felling job for more than one person. I've fretted about it for months, whether to let it rot from above and shed itself in sections onto the cabin roof, or engage somebody like Herb with a four-wheel drive truck and a hundred-foot chain to pull it away from the cabin while I cut with the chainsaw. I had my answer. Four people to pull a rope and one to saw. Jim climbed to the end of the fourteen foot ladder and reached up another six feet to tie a stout nylon rope around the trunk. Chuck sawed. Four of us gathered forty-feet down-line, rope in hands. Chuck sawed a notch into the trunk first, then started the final cut. We strained tug-o-war, the tree swayed--"don't rock it!"
He got an ax and pounded it in as a wedge. It fell out. The tree leaned toward us, raising false hope that the assault on our hands was about to end, but one of us had only given a quick hopeful tug. Finally it bent. We stayed at the rope until the tree couldn't fall any other direction, then scattered out of its path. Forearms aching, hands stinging we converged back to the beast, a healthy fourteen inches in diameter, top limbs shattered and splintered into good fire kindling.
A triumph! And more firewood for dark winter nights.
David and Katherine departed. The three of us continued the final two rows of roofing atop a now-sun-drenched roof ... sweat pouring, black goo descending the ladder. Chuck and Jim finished one section of drip edge. I bought beer and ice cold water from the store.
Air conditioning is an insidious evil. We like it, but always must pay for our fun. I walked into the grocery around 1:30, drawn through sliding glass doors into a cool dry sense of well-being and cheerful gladness. I instantly forgot that I was living in artificial grace and picked out wieners and beans, Chex Mix and a milk carton of Whoppers. I picked up a box of groceries for Meg and exited back into the suffocation I had forgotten about, worse than never having felt the nirvana inside. My life had adjusted to humidity. Now the spirit rebelled and hated me for pulling this treachery in the first place.
Over to the hardware store for mouse poison cakes. The kind I bought is for "warfarin tolerant" mice, which is what ours must be. Placed all eight blocks of poison cakes around the cabin in discreet locations: high in the rafters, low under the fridge, in drawers, some even out in plain sight.
4:30 p.m.-
Awaking from a nap, I began hearing aircraft in the west. I've been easily fooled in the past by the sound of high-flying jets sounding exactly like thunder. But this afternoon it became apparent that the sky was growing darker and the rumblings were not jets. Thunder, growing louder and more exciting. I dressed, jumped down from the sleeper and scanned the sky for darkness. Little can be seen from the clearing during summer except filtered gray, or blue on a sunny day (even then only overhead). I packed the cooler and EZ into the truck and headed east toward the county road, looked north, and saw the reason for thunder. Black night had overtaken the horizon and tumult was flexing low in the west. I stopped at the Store for ice. Everybody there knew of this impending doom and warned "might rain." Herb had heard that 60 MPH winds were headed our way. As I got back into the truck Meg ran out with a Styrofoam to-go food pod, handing it through the truck window. A piece of warm peach pie; "thanks" for picking up groceries from town.
5:15-
Head north into violent wind and rivers of rain. Within fifteen minutes the air was considerably drier. (How does it do that? Everything soaked and dripping, rain falling, but the humidity drops.)
EZ and I drove ninety miles over remote minimum maintenance roads in frequent lightning, foliage and branches down, and occasional whole trees shattered across the road. Waves of new fronts moved through. Green air diminished to broken sky, then black as new storms pushed over. This went on for four hours, rain pattering the windshield, at times so hard it was like driving at the bottom of a lake.
Around 9 p.m. and five miles from home another clash began in the west. Lightning constant and sharp, strobing from all sides.
Tuesday--
10:30 a.m.-
The river is high,
pushing itself against the bank in a rush, nearly covering what's left of
the bridge posts. One looks like a submarine periscope pushing a bow-wake
upstream.
2 p.m.-
Had lunch at the
Store. Picked through the customary reading material that accumulates at the
table where Herb usually sits. He is an ardent opponent of gun control and
there are often magazines and flyers and bulk mailings from 2nd amendment
proponents. The literature is routinely shrill, as was a 4-page form-letter
laying at the top of one stack. It argued against gun control, and detailed
grievous consequences through history when guns were confiscated from common
civilians. Soon after gun controls went into affect ethnic groups were rounded
up and exterminated, apparently a result of good citizens not possessing assault
weapons to fend off such acts.
The concluding argument: "The next time somebody tells you they're in favor of gun control, ask them what group they are planning to exterminate."