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Nov. 12th, 2006 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusI need to create a tag for dad's cottage logs.
Most of you know that my dad has a little island not much bigger than a parking lot and roughly shaped like a ship with pine trees for masts, that he "and the banks bought" twenty years ago. Every summer he sends his friends "cottage logs," updates and thoughtful observations on life in the north country. This one is from this summer.
The Screens: Summer 06
I may hold some sort of record for putting off a chore.
Annie has been waiting, her temper one degree below the boiling point, for me to do something about the rusty old screens in the cooking porch windows. For twenty years. I’m not proud of this, it’s just that I liked the cottage as it was when we bought it. Yeah, the place needed more windows, and we did that, and it needed a porch on the open side toward the lake and we did that, too. We did a lot of things, but when it came to some of the eccentricities of the place I’ve been reluctant to mess with them. It was painful, for instance, to bury in paint the marks and dates penciled on the wall that chronicled the growth of the children, now grown and gone from here. David, 1953, four feet six inches. Up from last year.
I happen to like old weathered-out painted wood, which is a pretty apt description of the cabin when we got it in 1986. To me those old flakes speak the history of the place. (Ask Annie for her views regarding old flakes.) To me, the faded colours of the cabin are like the precious patina of a rare piece of folk art. I was happy to paint the chaulky white walls the pine tree green we settled on after many meetings -- both of us being art directors, these things can take time. But somehow, the faded blue-green of the trim and the old screens got left off the list that year and so it stayed.
You must also consider the nature of the task. Sentiment aside, those old screens were nasty evil things with filthy little tears and patched holes. Something about them said, “stay away, beware!” There are many such things about an old cottage that are dangerous to meddle with because you never know what you’re getting into. They don’t build cottages the way they used to, and that’s a good thing because if you did you’d probably wind up in court. "Rebel" was built in a time when the roads were bad and materials had to somehow be got across 1/4 mile of lake, and if you ran out of something or you forgot a critical piece of hardware, you improvised.
Evidence of the previous owners improvisational cleverness is everywhere. The west foundation is a glittering wall of old whiskey bottles mortared in between standing timbers. The timbers are rotting away but the whiskey bottle wall is sound. I’m not sure why only the one wall was made that way but I’ll bet there’s a story if anyone is around to tell it. As for the rest of the foundation, they must have forgot to plan that part – perhaps it was the whiskey? He likely had to scurry and scrounge last minute the old timbers and boxes full of rocks that supplement the few brick and mortar columns that hold the cottage up. Maybe he just ran out of bricks. I’ll say this for inventiveness, the floating foundation has held firm for nearly seventy years.
And the winter storm covers he made from the old printing plates were nice and lightweight, easy to work with. They didn’t fit very well, but they fit close enough.
But not close enough for Annie. After twenty years of sweeping out the debris that blew in through the cracks she’d had enough, and it was made very clear that the old screens would be replaced this year and the folksy old paint, and the clever little wooden brackets for the storm covers would all make way for modernity.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that it takes four thousand, nine hundred and forty-four upholstery tacks to nail down one hundred three running feet of screen edge. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, and it must have taken all summer to do it. Those old screens were fastened to the frames with a fine tight embroidery of upholstery tacks around the entire perimeters of six 48” x 30” windows, and one ten foot x 30”. Check my math if you like.
These rows of tacks, their heads so tiny it would take four of them to cover your little fingernail had been painted over several times with thick layers of glossy outdoor paint. They weren’t nailed to the wood, they were embedded. You can see why I’d put off such a chore for twenty years. But my time had run out.
The day was windy and wonderfully hot. The screens snapped in the breeze. They always made this popping sound when the wind was up, a small metallic ping.
Getting down to business, I gripped a bight of screen with the red-handled channel locks and pulled hard. A rusty cloud billowed and flecks of screen tore away like old canvas, but the tacks stayed tight. I tried again and as I watched a red fog blow through the cabin I knew I had a problem. I would have to remove each tack by prying at it with a small, flathead screw driver, raising one edge just enough so I could grip it with the channel locks and pluck each one from the frame. This would take time.
The best way to do this kind of work is to pretend you’re being paid by the hour. Remain entirely in the moment and allow no thought of progress or lack of it to enter your head. Do not count the tacks as they come out, and rejoice when you can occasionally rip several at once, even though they may fly far across the deck and you will have to find them right away or soft bare feet will find them later. It’s also a good idea to wear gloves. I have the nickel-sized scar on my palm where the blister has healed to prove it.
An old cottage is a lesson in patience and humility. The worst of chores are eventually completed and the moment comes when you can step back and admire the finished result, or not, as was the case of my first ever stretching of the screen.
No one teaches you how to do these things, you figure them out for yourself. And if your wife begins to offer advice, your manly vanity leaps to defend your right to screw it up all by yourself. You find yourself saying things like, “…look, you can do this or I can do it…” and, “If you want to take over, be my guest…” in a stern voice. She will then go read or something and leave you to your vestigial screen stretching skills. But beware, when that moment of stepping back in admiration arrives, she will show no mercy. She will notice all the little things you feel inclined to overlook, trifles that they be. Those dents and dimples in the fresh new screening. The small wrinkles and gathers at the corner. Yes, it looks so much better than the old screen, and the three days labour has certainly been worthwhile. But she once saw an episode of “This Old House” where Norm used this little trick…which she proceeds to describe in lascivious detail. And I was obliged to try.
In the end we stretched screens together using Norm’s trick and we now have lovely flat, perfect screens. It seems that screens and fabric have a lot in common, and she’s the one who knows how to sew. It didn’t take long to redo the first two that I’d done on my own. It took a whole lot longer to finish the rest of the job, however, because in cottage country we have an irregular event called a power outage.
In a power outage a huge, violent storm blows trees all over the wires strung through the forests and everything in cottage country goes silent. It used to stay wonderfully silent, but we now have emergency power generators. That is, we don’t, but just about everyone else around us does. We never thought of a power outage as an emergency, we saw it as blessed silence. With the background hum of transformers and appliances gone, we could experience the true sound of the north. Breezes, birds, little splashes in the night. Candles and oil lamps were all the civilization we needed. We could cook on the barbeque, we could bathe in the lake, and we didn’t miss the radio.
Those temporary joys are gone forever now, drowned out by the rattling drone of gasoline-powered auxiliary generators. Try to imagine if everyone in your neighbourhood mowed their lawns with gasoline mowers, all at once, all day and all night. That’s now the sound of the beautiful North Country when the power goes off. And I understand that some people have freezers full of expensive food they need to protect, but somehow I think most of it’s about keeping the satellite dish, the Play-Station, and the microwave powered. Besides, making noise seems to be the major purpose of most cottagers these days and they don’t appear to object to an unceasing roar. I think it makes them feel more at home. In the end it drove us home.
Guess we’re just getting old.
Most of you know that my dad has a little island not much bigger than a parking lot and roughly shaped like a ship with pine trees for masts, that he "and the banks bought" twenty years ago. Every summer he sends his friends "cottage logs," updates and thoughtful observations on life in the north country. This one is from this summer.
The Screens: Summer 06
I may hold some sort of record for putting off a chore.
Annie has been waiting, her temper one degree below the boiling point, for me to do something about the rusty old screens in the cooking porch windows. For twenty years. I’m not proud of this, it’s just that I liked the cottage as it was when we bought it. Yeah, the place needed more windows, and we did that, and it needed a porch on the open side toward the lake and we did that, too. We did a lot of things, but when it came to some of the eccentricities of the place I’ve been reluctant to mess with them. It was painful, for instance, to bury in paint the marks and dates penciled on the wall that chronicled the growth of the children, now grown and gone from here. David, 1953, four feet six inches. Up from last year.
I happen to like old weathered-out painted wood, which is a pretty apt description of the cabin when we got it in 1986. To me those old flakes speak the history of the place. (Ask Annie for her views regarding old flakes.) To me, the faded colours of the cabin are like the precious patina of a rare piece of folk art. I was happy to paint the chaulky white walls the pine tree green we settled on after many meetings -- both of us being art directors, these things can take time. But somehow, the faded blue-green of the trim and the old screens got left off the list that year and so it stayed.
You must also consider the nature of the task. Sentiment aside, those old screens were nasty evil things with filthy little tears and patched holes. Something about them said, “stay away, beware!” There are many such things about an old cottage that are dangerous to meddle with because you never know what you’re getting into. They don’t build cottages the way they used to, and that’s a good thing because if you did you’d probably wind up in court. "Rebel" was built in a time when the roads were bad and materials had to somehow be got across 1/4 mile of lake, and if you ran out of something or you forgot a critical piece of hardware, you improvised.
Evidence of the previous owners improvisational cleverness is everywhere. The west foundation is a glittering wall of old whiskey bottles mortared in between standing timbers. The timbers are rotting away but the whiskey bottle wall is sound. I’m not sure why only the one wall was made that way but I’ll bet there’s a story if anyone is around to tell it. As for the rest of the foundation, they must have forgot to plan that part – perhaps it was the whiskey? He likely had to scurry and scrounge last minute the old timbers and boxes full of rocks that supplement the few brick and mortar columns that hold the cottage up. Maybe he just ran out of bricks. I’ll say this for inventiveness, the floating foundation has held firm for nearly seventy years.
And the winter storm covers he made from the old printing plates were nice and lightweight, easy to work with. They didn’t fit very well, but they fit close enough.
But not close enough for Annie. After twenty years of sweeping out the debris that blew in through the cracks she’d had enough, and it was made very clear that the old screens would be replaced this year and the folksy old paint, and the clever little wooden brackets for the storm covers would all make way for modernity.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that it takes four thousand, nine hundred and forty-four upholstery tacks to nail down one hundred three running feet of screen edge. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, and it must have taken all summer to do it. Those old screens were fastened to the frames with a fine tight embroidery of upholstery tacks around the entire perimeters of six 48” x 30” windows, and one ten foot x 30”. Check my math if you like.
These rows of tacks, their heads so tiny it would take four of them to cover your little fingernail had been painted over several times with thick layers of glossy outdoor paint. They weren’t nailed to the wood, they were embedded. You can see why I’d put off such a chore for twenty years. But my time had run out.
The day was windy and wonderfully hot. The screens snapped in the breeze. They always made this popping sound when the wind was up, a small metallic ping.
Getting down to business, I gripped a bight of screen with the red-handled channel locks and pulled hard. A rusty cloud billowed and flecks of screen tore away like old canvas, but the tacks stayed tight. I tried again and as I watched a red fog blow through the cabin I knew I had a problem. I would have to remove each tack by prying at it with a small, flathead screw driver, raising one edge just enough so I could grip it with the channel locks and pluck each one from the frame. This would take time.
The best way to do this kind of work is to pretend you’re being paid by the hour. Remain entirely in the moment and allow no thought of progress or lack of it to enter your head. Do not count the tacks as they come out, and rejoice when you can occasionally rip several at once, even though they may fly far across the deck and you will have to find them right away or soft bare feet will find them later. It’s also a good idea to wear gloves. I have the nickel-sized scar on my palm where the blister has healed to prove it.
An old cottage is a lesson in patience and humility. The worst of chores are eventually completed and the moment comes when you can step back and admire the finished result, or not, as was the case of my first ever stretching of the screen.
No one teaches you how to do these things, you figure them out for yourself. And if your wife begins to offer advice, your manly vanity leaps to defend your right to screw it up all by yourself. You find yourself saying things like, “…look, you can do this or I can do it…” and, “If you want to take over, be my guest…” in a stern voice. She will then go read or something and leave you to your vestigial screen stretching skills. But beware, when that moment of stepping back in admiration arrives, she will show no mercy. She will notice all the little things you feel inclined to overlook, trifles that they be. Those dents and dimples in the fresh new screening. The small wrinkles and gathers at the corner. Yes, it looks so much better than the old screen, and the three days labour has certainly been worthwhile. But she once saw an episode of “This Old House” where Norm used this little trick…which she proceeds to describe in lascivious detail. And I was obliged to try.
In the end we stretched screens together using Norm’s trick and we now have lovely flat, perfect screens. It seems that screens and fabric have a lot in common, and she’s the one who knows how to sew. It didn’t take long to redo the first two that I’d done on my own. It took a whole lot longer to finish the rest of the job, however, because in cottage country we have an irregular event called a power outage.
In a power outage a huge, violent storm blows trees all over the wires strung through the forests and everything in cottage country goes silent. It used to stay wonderfully silent, but we now have emergency power generators. That is, we don’t, but just about everyone else around us does. We never thought of a power outage as an emergency, we saw it as blessed silence. With the background hum of transformers and appliances gone, we could experience the true sound of the north. Breezes, birds, little splashes in the night. Candles and oil lamps were all the civilization we needed. We could cook on the barbeque, we could bathe in the lake, and we didn’t miss the radio.
Those temporary joys are gone forever now, drowned out by the rattling drone of gasoline-powered auxiliary generators. Try to imagine if everyone in your neighbourhood mowed their lawns with gasoline mowers, all at once, all day and all night. That’s now the sound of the beautiful North Country when the power goes off. And I understand that some people have freezers full of expensive food they need to protect, but somehow I think most of it’s about keeping the satellite dish, the Play-Station, and the microwave powered. Besides, making noise seems to be the major purpose of most cottagers these days and they don’t appear to object to an unceasing roar. I think it makes them feel more at home. In the end it drove us home.
Guess we’re just getting old.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 07:37 am (UTC)Icarus
no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 07:35 am (UTC)Icarus
no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-13 07:34 am (UTC)One time he gave me directions to the lake that encircles his cabin. He described it like a painting, so vividly that even when he got a street-name wrong I recognized the street as if I'd been there before. Now all you need is his wry baritone, and the story told at the pace of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. Because he does tell his stories slowly, as if each page were unfolding before our eyes.
Icarus