Weightlifting for Seniors

While going out to the garage to fetch a Stillson wrench early this spring, I noticed that some sort of varmint had recently chewed a small entry portal at the bottom of the door.

This made me feel somewhat anxious, since I had no way of knowing if I ran the risk of cornering a rabid, toothy rodent as I fumbled through the clutter.

I had been putting off my door replacement project for too long. Since we intend to repurpose the space into a production studio for our fledgling, hand-made paper flower business, it was time I started by reconstructing the shallow step into the space. After observing various masons at work, I felt confident that I had sufficient skills for the rudimentary task.

One Saturday I bought a bag of concrete, no need to say where, along with a very flimsy plastic mixing trough, and set out to work.

First I dug a hole. Then I constructed a plywood form and mixed up the cement.

The 80 lb. bag made enough mix to neatly fill the form. I even tossed in a short length of rebar for reinforcement. Later, I went back and bought a 60. lb bag of mortar mix to set the stones in place. I mixed up the whole bag, carefully set the stones and found myself with 55 lbs of leftover wet cement.

Thinking quickly, I remembered another sink hole/varmint entry on the far side of the garage. I picked up the mixing tub and carried it around the building and the thin, plastic trough began to crack under the weight of the wet cement.

When I was younger I could lift pretty much anything in my path but half way through this journey I suddenly realized I had outlived my ability to carry heavy loads in my arms.

The varmint hole now contains the overflow of my project and the step came out much better than I had predicted, but my back still aches from the effort. My flabby arms and weak back no longer pose a threat to beer kegs, engine blocks or tango partners.

I have three days off next week. If it isn't raining, I intend to make a new door for the garage with a section of sheet metal fashioned into a kickplate to dull the ever-present rodent teeth in their pursuit of the inside of my garage.

If the lumber I need to buy for the project is too heavy, I know now I'll have to make two trips from my truck.

Gym, schmym. ben.guerrero@sbcglobal.net

Wisteria Lame

Early black and white photographs of my childhood home capture the wisteria that grew on a trellis by the arch-topped living room door.

Through years of renovations, the bush bloomed with ferocity every spring – its lavender petals hanging like Japanese lanterns, followed shortly by the fuzz-covered teardrop pods.

Melissa’s childhood home had a wisteria of its own, and as we relocated ourselves to Rust Hinge Road, she grabbed one of its progeny and immediately planted the sapling next to the gate. It took root with ease. By the next year, it had woven itself into the chain link fence.

The wisteria required constant pruning lest it take over our lives. Mornings we would find it reaching toward our cars or eyeing the house walls hungrily. It grew fast. On a warm summer night you could almost hear it growing.

But spring would come and go and it just wouldn't bloom. We googled it and asked professionals and nobody had a definitive answer. "Give it fertilizer." "Starve it." "Drive a nail into its trunk." "It's probably a male so it will never bloom."

Why did the neighbors have such success with their wisterias and we got nothing but harassment from ours?

This question went through are heads along with the endless “clip, clip, clip,” of Melissa’s pruning shears.

So, we have thought long and hard about the wisteria by the gate. We considered digging the plant out and hauling it away, but its network of tendrils, just below the surface, most likely will further propagate successive generations of non-flowering variety. Meanwhile our wisteria lay fallow, quiet and conspiratorial – as if it was up to something.

We once heard that it takes seven years for a wisteria to bloom, which filled us with hope when it had been by the gate for six years. Now at eleven years, something is up.

This morning, as I walked by the gate I noticed something peculiar: the wisteria, covered with flower buds was about to pop. In a day or two we will have something to celebrate. What did we do differently? Was it the mild winter? The other bushes we yanked out? Who knows?

Maybe it can read our minds.

OK, what am I thinking now? ben.guerrero@sbcglobal.net

Have a Seat

Every trip out to Lake Polvo has been a big money eaters. Each time we go out there, we rent a car at the airport which costs more than an airplane ticket. So, last time we were there we bought a used car from our Realtor’s husband. If I told you the maker of the car, you would be extremely impressed, or label me a snob, but no need for that, the car is over twenty years old and has some issues.

For instance: it’s full of sand, there’s no radio, it needs shocks installed, the right, rear window is propped up with a two-by-four, but the biggest issue of all: there’s no front passenger seat.

“You shouldn’t have any trouble getting one,” my Realtor’s husband told me as he folded my check into his wallet.

Once back at Rusty Hinge Road, I quickly located several seats in online junkyards. They were available for almost half what I paid for the whole car.

On EBay, I found one going for cheap and, best of all, it was local!

I met the seller, a charming, ponytailed Englishman in a waxed cotton jacket, at a storage facility a few exits down the turnpike. He knew a lot about my car, and as we loaded the seat into my truck, he told me a million problems inherent to my year, make and model, stating if “thus and such” was wrong then the car was ready for “the dustbin.”

For the moment, that was the least of my worries.

I had to find an affordable way to get a 70-pound car seat out to Lake Polvo. My new “mate” told me the best and cheapest way was to ship it via a large and well-known bus company, named after a popular racing dog.

I contacted the bus line and after fighting through undulating piles of debris in our garage, I wrestled it into a $15 box I bought at a large and well-know truck rental service, then drove it a few exits up the turnpike and bought my seat a seat.

My gardener is prepared to retrieve the unwieldy box at a Chevron Station 45-miles away from downtown Lake Polvo, when and if it arrives.

Tune in next month for more.

Now available in 400 words!

Vintage Dust

Our house on Rusty Hinge Road is nothing if not reliable for its creaky floors and arctic drafts, typical to a house of its vintage and locale. And we have spent years attending to the various weatherizing needs our New England environment requires.

So, adjusting to our new life in the Arizona desert has been full of surprises for Melissa and me. The first time we strolled down Pyrite Street in our new hometown of Lake Polvo and peered through the wavy, antique glass windows of the adobe house we would shortly afterward, unexpectedly own, I remember chuckling haughtily at the hardwood floors. Termites, a phenomenon with which I was only vaguely acquainted from my Realtor days had gnawed great random paths in the floor.

That was the last time we considered not buying the property, knowing the potential damage that can be wrought by the little buggers. But we were in love, and love is blind so after being assured by a local, well-recommended exterminator named Berle, that he would remedy the situation, we bought the joint.

There are three wooden buildings and a historic adobe house on our Lake Polvo property so Berle had his hands (and it, appears his lungs) full solving our termite problem.

We have started an art gallery in the adobe and our first show opened on Thanksgiving weekend. Since we aren't there full time, we have to plan everything from a distance and slap it all together when we arrive.

We arrived a week early to get ready. The first order of business was to clean things up. Our adobe was built with a flat roof in the 1870s. It was constructed of layers of saguaro cactus spines, laid over wooden rafters and planks finished up with a layer of dirt.

Around the turn of the last century, when commercially milled lumber became available, a peaked roof with cedar shingles was installed, leaving the flat roof intact. Over the years, the dirt and debris from the old , flat roof has sifted through the ceiling and dust has accumulated behind everywhere below. In order to rid the premises of said dust, shop vacs were wielded and the whole place was cleared of possibly a century of cobwebs and filth. The windows required gallons of Windex and elbow grease to free them of wind-blown crust.

But the floors, mostly intact, needed my special remediation. The sections that had proved so delectable to the termites had to be ripped out and replaced with unchewed planks that were carefully removed from another house on the property that was even more devastated by the little cellulose lovers.

This, like so many projects upon which I had previously embarked, proved to be far more time consuming than I had expected, and took me most of the first three days to accomplish my goal. I had to rip up the chewed planks and carefully replacing them with intact boards. I am not getting any younger and this sort of labor, repeatedly squatting and standing, not to mention wielding a hammer around the clock, left me stiff and sore and barely able to walk upright. My obsession with the project prevailed, however, and when I was done, we got out the Murphy's oil soap and mopped the whole expanse several times until the floors revealed a respectable luster and warmth.

The place shined. It had a whole new feeling. When we had finished, we recalled our first encounter, we found ourselves staring through the spotless pane of glass on a freshly re-hung door across the vast expanse of pristine oak; what a difference a little cleaning made. The Southwest sun reunited with the surfaces, now freed from the obscuring grimy glass, bathed the shining floors anew with light, as the air circulated through the open doors and windows. Our basking moment was brief for we had a show to mount.

This opening show would consist of an exhibition of mobiles, made from rusted metal by my 94 year old father Pedro, whose home and studio was two blocks away. The delicate quality of the artwork required us to hand carry each piece across the town's Main Street, one by one.

The show was a success insofar as it set the tone for future shows. Townspeople, friends and relatives came together for crackers and wine and freshly mopped floors lit by candlelight, as my father, set up on the long front porch, assembled a mobile for the amusement of curious patrons.

When it was over, we put everything back where it belonged to await our next visit. Carefully, using a burning hank of sage, we smote any evil spirits that we may have roused, drank in the beauty of our labors and headed back home.

We’re now planning a show in February. I often find myself in bed, unable to sleep as the chores that lie ahead caffeinate my bloodstream. We need electrical work and a shower and hot water and a working stove. The flat roof should be removed and the peaked roof should be replaced. One house has no foundation and another is missing floorboards. When we return we intend to set up camp and sleep our first night in the old adobe with its unknown creaks and vague history stirring in the dark as we try to get cozy with the spiders and the ravenous termites.

And continue to adjust to life in the desert.

Scorpion? Where?

Just Screwing Around

Our house on Rusty Hinge Road is like an unfinished sandwich. Which is to say that the attic and the basement –the metaphorical bread – still await finishing touches, while the middle two floors – the meat – have been redone.

While those last few last projects linger, I often look around and notice other things that have already begun to fall apart in the dozen years since I redid them.

For example: when I built my office, I constructed three drawers to store art supplies. Regular readers will not be shocked to learn that all three drawers now house random flotsam and jetsam.

The top drawer actually holds art supplies but they are the ones I should throw out: dried-out markers and hardened paint tubes. Unfinished, blobby modeling clay amoebas that my children crafted before they developed hand-eye coordination. I have two hot glue guns in there, twice the number I need. There's an old bolo tie with a broken cord that has needed attention since before I was born.

I looked in that drawer today searching for, of all things, art supplies, and as I pulled on the knob, it came off in my hand. This was troublesome because I labor under the delusion that I make sturdy furniture and the knobs shouldn't be coming off in my hand. Adding to the dilemma, I am lazy, and since I practically never go into that drawer, I felt obliged to fix it. That way there would be one less broken thing, right?

So, with knob in hand (I knew if I put it down I'd never find it again or a curious cat would bat it down the stairs and under the sofa) I went about fixing the drawer.

I knew I would need a Phillips-head screw driver, but the last time I saw one was in the console of my truck (there are, mysteriously, two there). Being lazy, I didn't much feel like bending down to put on my shoes, especially with a knob in my hand, so I did what anyone else would do, I looked in the pencil holders on my desk. Aside from pencils and pens, these cans, decorated by my children for Father's Day, have been known to hold the occasional screw driver. I found a chop stick, several hardened paint brushes, a fork with bent tines, a back scratcher, a tire pressure gauge and somewhere around the bottom, a U.S. Postage stamp with a picture of Harry Truman. But no screw drivers of any sort.

Down in the garage, which at the moment is serving as a combination lawn furniture storage facility and feral cat condo, is a shelf where I have, over the years, been stacking screw drivers. I don't remember ever buying one, they seem to replicate like bacteria. Somewhere in the reptilian remnants of my brain stem I have a synapse that derives pleasure from grouping like items with like items. All of these screw drivers are of the "flat head" variety. I can't remember the last time I used one of them to actually drive a screw; I use them mostly to open cans. The flat-head screwdriver is the VHS of screwdrivers. Long since outmoded by Mr. Phillip's ingenuity.

But, being lazy, I didn't put on my shoes and a sweater and walk down stairs, through the house, out the back door and into the garage.

And I had a new problem. In order to reattach the knob, I had to open the drawer. Like the drawer itself, this proved to be a bit sticky. Without a knob, I had to open the second drawer, reach under and wiggle the top drawer open.

Once the drawer was open, I was able to locate the head of the screw that is threaded into the knob and by pushing it through from the back, I was able to tighten the knob in place just enough to keep it there so the whole thing wouldn’t just spun in place.

I remember the first time I saw an electric screwdriver gun. I was a small kid and my father had tightened a handle-less, flat-head screwdriver into the chuck of his old one-speed Black and Decker drill. I don’t recall the purpose of this endeavor, but knowing Dad, it might have been some sort of prank he was pulling on our neighbor, George. I remember thinking at the time that it was a brilliant idea. It wasn't until about twenty years later that I observed some Canadian workmen installing sheetrock on a ceiling with a cordless, electric screwdriver.

They are everywhere today, but I remember the early ones were temperamental, quite expensive, and didn't hold a charge for long.

I bought one shortly after we moved here and it is never far from my side. After a few years, the batteries lost their charge, so I bought new ones on the Google. Mine is blue, and Japanese and with it, I have screwed practically every screw and drilled every hole in this house with it.

Luck would have it that Melissa, tired of seeing it on my dresser, put it on my desk by the pencil holder. I just picked up the old blue electric screwdriver, moved a bunch of stuff out of the drawer, and carefully tightened the knob, where it will stay, with any luck, for as long as it has to, provided I don't go snooping around the drawers more than once every couple of years.

After all, I know what's in there.

Nothing useful.

Don’t get me started on Allen wrenches. ben.guerrero@sbcglobal.net