WHEN I HAD A HAMMER

It was 1990, and Clyde had been gone just a little over three years. When he died I had fallen heir to a huge barn of a house and nearly thirty acres of land plus a nine-year old boy (in 1986) to raise, a daughter who was sometimes at loose ends and two little grandchildren who were in and out of the house. I went around for years making plus/minus lists in my head. Keep the house? What would I do with the horses, the dogs, cats and the family if I abandoned it in favor of a more easily maintained residence? Could I move and leave the graves of Rusty the Irish Setter, a number of cherished cats as well as a pony behind? What about the live Christmas trees I had taken out and planted after I removed the decorations? Our hand and footprints (Clyde's among them) in the concrete walkway. What about Clyde's handcrafted slate floor and the cedar shakes he had split for the roof?

For years Clyde had planned, made materials lists, made the cuts on lumber and actually dropped the trees for the maple floors upstairs. I too worked day and night as did Mindy. I shopped for the items on the lists; and Mindy and I held the boards as he put them through the saws, steadied the ladder, lugged shakes and other building materials, climbed up onto the roof to nail and to weatherize. We painted and sanded and glued. But we had not "priced things out", drafted or calculated angles.

Finally I calmly and coolly decided that I could not "dump this monster of a house" because I realized that, legalities or not, it was not "my" house. It was ours, and it was only a little more than half finished. "It looks as though I have the crown," I told myself, "and I'm afraid I have no choice but to pick it up and wear it." How, I wondered, do men learn to do the things that they do? Building, fixing cars, dropping trees…these skills simply do not radiate from the sky like sunshine. I have no guild of men to teach me, no family men to bring me up doing men things.

Finally I approached my problem as I had done so many others. I went to school. I took a year's break from my job with Employment Security and enrolled in a construction course at a vocational-technical school in Tacoma, Washington. The class of around twenty-five students was made up of an assortment of high school dropouts still in their teens, several laid off older men who qualified for retraining funds, and a handicapped young man who was trying yet another line of work. Plus a young little bitty Cambodian man and a nearly-forty year old Puerto Rican man I'll call Sufan and Santo. And me.

They called me "Gina". Sufan, Santo and Gina we became. We were odd balls, outsiders, and we first formed a bond because of that, I believe. On the surface it was an unlikely trio, but I soon realized that we had much to offer each other. Sufan and Santo froze at the prospect of talking English on the telephone for the purpose of ordering materials. They surreptitiously poked books, blueprints, lessons under my nose for low toned explanations. It was Sufan who first told me that no; I could not build much of anything in the air. First build it on the ground and then raise it up into the air. Santo once made what I could swear was a ninety-degree turn in mid air to catch me as I slipped. When I needed six hands to attach the rafters of my gazebo at the top, theirs were the other four there to do the job.

We made doghouses, sheds and gazebos as individual projects. Then the class built an entire building from concrete footing to 3-tab roofing on the grounds of a local high school. Both Sufan and I stood in the bed of the school pickup where together we handed up bundles of roofing material to one of the teenage hunks who cradled each bundle in one arm while climbing a ladder with it. Santo, agile as a cat, "walked the plate" holding one end of the roof trusses while one of the hunks walked with the other end. I climbed the ladder and grimly let go at the top of it to throw myself over onto the roof where I helped the rest of the class nail down 3-tab roofing in a snowstorm.

The three of us would usually go to lunch together. Sometimes Santo would give Sufan an English lesson in the restaurant, and I enjoyed the rare treat of listening to a Puerto Rican teaching a Cambodian to speak English. One day Santo began, "When joo see a goo' lookin' girl in a store, an' she sez Can I help joo, joo supposed to say…..(deleted)" and I yelled, "No! Sufan, don't say that! That's BAD, really really BAD!" As they convulsed in laughter I realized that I had once again lost in their game of Watch Gina Go Straight Up. Another time I was driving a work crew to the high school building site in the school truck, Santo beside me, and the rest of the seats taken up by teenagers. Suddenly Santo began beating on the dashboard of the truck and singing La Bamba. His performance gained reverence from even the most boneheaded teenager. "Man, no Anglo-Saxon would ever be able to do that the way he can," the boy said.

Sometimes the teenagers would compete on the noon hour, sinking 10d and 12d nails with only one hammer blow. Santo and Sufan would merely stand back, grinning, as the others, in unison, yelled a count of my hammer blows, "Seven! Eight! Nine!…"

We made it through the course, and my partners went off to do what they had gone to school to learn. I haven't seen either Sufan or Santo in a number of years, but when I look at the jobs I did in that big house I maintained, or when I talk to anyone about what I want done to this one, sounding surprisingly knowledgeable about pressure treated lumber, 10d nails…all of those things…I remember when I was in one of those rare things - a group that hums- and when I had a hammer. And a tool belt. And when I drove an 11,000-pound forklift. And when the Puerto Rican, the Cambodian and the WASP Grandma spoke the same language.

Mr. Tacoma

Together we steadied each other
and stepped into pits.
We climbed the same mountains.
Flew on the same wings.
Awake and asleep you were here.

Some trees cast long shadows.
Their shadows don't say
what direction they fall
or how shallow or deep
their roots grow.

One day the path split
and you went one direction
while I went the other.
I stayed on our wavelength for years, listening.
Lost, I called out into emptiness.

The answer I heard was never
your voice on our frequency.
Just my own echo, telling me
I was hitting something solid.
And I walked on with just that to trust.

Abuser

You hid behind the others
holding ropes to those I will not hurt.
You struck with double talk, rewriting history.
Scrambled my thoughts.
Belittled my strengths. Buried my defenses.
The worse you grew the nicer I was.
Hoping "nice" prevails.
Such a good victim.
How did you keep me there so long,
slashing, punching, crushing?
Chipping away my essence.
I've stepped way back, and I can see you now.
We do the same play, another act.
I shoot those bottles off the fence,
dust off my hands, and shrug.
A tiny flame that would not die
Now, with a roar, burns up
the leading man whose feet are clay.

Since you want nouns to have gender
And put in pants or a dress,
I'll go along and not hinder.
Am I adult or adulteress?

LITTLE BOY BLUE

He was an angel who lit up our house with his love of life. Our attorney once remarked about him, "Never before have I observed such total unmitigated enthusiasm." He was nine when his father died, and by then his sister was already an adult. So Little Boy Blue and I were best buddies for many years. We rode horses, went river rafting, paddled a two-person pedal boat down a Florida river, hiked up a mountain, took many plane rides cross country. Then he grew up and decided he would leave with the military no matter how distraught I became. He tried to respect my feelings as well as he could, but leave he must.

The night he left I dreamed that I stood at the bottom of a mighty sky-scraper, gazing up at an enormous gaping hole in its side. The building resembled New York's Twin Towers. Little Boy Blue stood inside the jagged opening in an Army uniform, surrounded by other soldiers. They were ready to march forward, and I knew they would plummet downward to their deaths. I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them again I saw that the ground had risen up to meet them. They needed to take but a small step out onto safe footing. Please, whoever sent that dream, keep him safe.

A Reason To Hate

There's reason enough to hate
a week into a mortal's life
Little hurts and betrayals
Tended housed and visited
penned and fed
Raised and bred
to make more hate
Hate with heavy taxes
Labor intensive hate
No return on the dollar
Gobbling and slurping
And wanting more
Why look out on all of that
Bigger and bigger areas
with bigger and bigger pens
Bigger and bigger hate
It's a choice
A choice to love
will set us free
to fly with angels
To skim above the pens
with ego tended hate

Yeah, when people get born into our family they start trying to wrap themselves around ideas and to force those ideas to take on words before they can crawl. It's a curse.......that's when the family funny bone comes to the rescue. Thanks for the lovely compliment.

Mars
Hello. It's been awhile.
Old bald thing with wrinkles, bumps and scars.
When did you send off that rock
With seed for the Blue Planet?
Did my life force crawl out of that?

What carved those lines and craters?
Life giving water?
Where did you live then?
With what lush beauty?
What knocked you out of place
To live alone and cold?

So cruise your lonely orbit
In silence.
Hey! I'm talking to you. I'm back!
And I will ask and probe
Until you answer.

For Bluez

"I can't take orders," he said.
"What IS a boundary anyway?
I don't think of myself as liberated…"

Now, listen up, young feller.
And put your thinkin' cap on
As my Mama used to say.
Do not fear liberation
Or claiming it in verse.

"Liberated" does not mean
Running from what we owe
The others in this Human Race.
Nor does it mean predation.
It means, instead, "authority"
The offspring of,"authorship".
It means an unfettered mind
And the strength to use it.

GRANDMA HOUSE
Little bitty house with just enough of everything.
The young folks said I must get something useless to
Put on a leash when I grow old. Just for the love.
I don't need to leash anything else.
This little house fits me, a smaller me who
No longer tries to own the county.
I work below where I can feel old joy
Sunk into the walls from others who
Puttered, dreamed and then moved on.
And I cut glass while everything I need
Is up there waiting for me to climb the stairs.
My life is happy working here
In the basement while I am making
Lamps to send out light.
Soon I'll go back up and let the house
Take care of me.

MORE ABOUT OLD FAITHFUL By Virginia

The VW Bug I owned in my twenties when I was in school, did sometimes fail me. This only happened if the outside air temperature dropped to below 30° overnight…not 32° which is freezing, but 30° on the nose. It would refuse to start, and no amount of pounding on the dashboard, crying, pleading or attempts to move it using my limited German worked. The driveway leading a short distance from my little house to the street sloped downward, and there was a slight dip just at the bottom. When the temperature had gotten down to the magic number I learned I would have to…push. I also learned in anatomy class that the leg muscles are the strongest in the human body, so I would back up to the front of the little VW, flex my knees, grasp the bumper behind me with both hands, and then use my leg muscles to push the Bug at a run backward down the driveway. I had to get moving at a good enough speed to clear the dip at the bottom and propel the car out into the middle of the road. (Try staying upright while doing this..it’s a challenge even for a twenty-something person). Then I would wait…helplessly…for someone to come along who would take pity on me and give me the push I needed to start the Bug. One night temperatures in the ‘teens were predicted, and inspiration struck. I raised the back engine flap (for non-VW persons, the engine is in the back), covered the mysterious….stuff…in there with a heavy throw rug and then shut the hood back down as securely as I could. The following morning the Bug sprang to life without the customary backward run down the driveway. I had solved my problem. Until I forgot to remove the rug one hurried morning before I turned the ignition key. Whappity! Whappity! OH, HOLY MOLEY! The rug was a mess, but the VW seemed no worse for the experience. From then on I combined the rug-over-the-stuff routine with a habit of leaving myself a note on the driver’s seat – TAKE RUG OFF OF ENGINE

Hi Folks, my name is Mike Fay. I am married to Gerry Johns/Arnold/Fay. Last March 17,while working on my outside deck, I was ripping up the old boards and replacing them with new. The stringers were fine, so left them alone. Just like a Laurel and Hardy shot I stepped back, fell and landed on a 2X8 on my left side. After spending 6-7Hrs. in Emergency Room in the hospital, the C/T scan came back. It showed that I had a lump on my Right Kidney. After several more x-rays, 2 more c/t scans, the lump on right kidney came back positive, slow growth cancer. .Last Wed, June 11 my right kidney was removed. The surgeons are pretty sure they have gotten all of the cancer, The kidney was sent out for further evaluation, Will let you know when results come back. For those of you who know me and have been worried, thank-you.
If anything good has come out of this, all I can say is I had a dull ache on my right side for approximately a year to a year and a half. I should have had it checked out. I mentioned it to doctor, but he never followed up, Do not leave it up to your doctor. If you think you have a problem, get it checked out.
Thank you for your concern
Mike and Gerry Fay

.........

When I soloed and when I got my pilots license. (First picture)

Flew to Orlando with my girlfriend, bought the plane and flew it home to Ohio after a few days of diddy-boppin around with it. We flew first to Clearwater and put down at the Clearwater Air Park. Rented a car and went visiting. Spent some time with my son in St. Pete, then drove to Aunt Reatha's house where Aunt Thelma was staying. Then we went to see Phillip and Ingrid, and then took off for home.

On the way, we hit a storm. Had to put down at theTifton, Georgia, airport. This young man, making love to my plane, was Dexter Moore, the night attendant. He was stupefied when two women climbed out of that plane. He had never seen a woman pilot before. Dexter called a Taxi and we went into Tifton for the night. We were transporting some Florida plants that Phillip gave me while I was there. Dexter took real good care of the plants and the plane.

The next day, we gassed up, left Tifton and after a 4 hour delay because of a storm, got as far as Jonesboro. Jonesboro is just outside the restricted airspace of Atlanta's Airport. The weather was turning bad again, and storms were everywhere. My navigator found a small airport on the map so we decided to put down there for the night. When we arrived at this airport, I started praying. The sight of it scared me to death. It was short, narrow, unmarked, and ran down hill. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I had learned to do short field landings, but this one ran downhill. I just hoped I had enough brake. I short-fielded just fine, but going down hill, it wouldn't slow down. I looked up and realized that now I was going up hill. Praise the Lord for small favors. I managed to get stopped before the brake pads went. We taxied to the parking area and went in to the building. I noticed that there was a lot of old single engine planes sitting all over the place. The secretary greeted us with enthusiasm. She took us under her wing and all problems were solved.

We stayed there until she got off at 5 p.m. She entertained us and fed us and made motel reservations for us for the night. We found out that all those old planes were owned by retired Airline Pilots. These relics were their hobbies. I guess this was their own private little airport. I can see why. Anyone in their right mind wouldn't try to land there. I suppose that's how they kept it private. Lol

At 5p.m. the secretary put us in her new Mercedes (Birthday gift from her husband) and took us to the Motel. We had a very good supper at the Motel Dining Room. Bought some magazines and watched TV.
The next morning about 7:30, she came to get us in an old beat up car. She said her husband had made an appointment to have something done to the Mercedes, so she had to drive his old clunker. We didn't care. Sure beat walking. We offered to reimburse her for the transportation, but she wouldn't hear of it.

The storms had moved North and East so by the time we got to the airport, we had flyable weather again. We gassed up and took off just fine, headed Northbound again.

It wasn't long after we left Jonesboro that we began to notice some very ominous clouds rolling and building again. We skirted a few then decided we better get down before they got any worse or any closer.

Next stop was Hixon, Tenn. We found an airport called Dallas Bay Park. It was owned and operated by a woman. Her husband had operated it but he died, so she took over. She was so happy to see women pilots. She had a young woman there whom she was giving lessons to and she wanted her to meet us. The young woman was very apprehensive about flying simply because she was a female. She changed her attitude after meeting us. The lady's name was Irene FleWellen. You can see part of the name on the front of the hangar. We stayed there until the storm clouds began to break up and head East and the sun came out.

Next stop was Berea, KY. Needed gas and we were hungry. Not only that, but it had been quite awhile since we saw a bathroom. We landed at the Berea Airport and went to the office. Inquired about someplace to eat and was advised that the nearest place was downtown Berea. About 2 or 3 miles south of the airport. We asked the operator if they had a rental car. He said no but we could use his pick-up truck. That was great. He gave me the keys, and away we went. Berea has a big college campus there, so while we were near we took a drive through there. Very impressive. Kentucky is a poor state and not many kids can afford college, so they have Berea. Four years of college, tuition free for any child with high scholastic marks in regular school and whose parents can't afford tuition costs. We found a shopping center with a restaurant so we stopped and ate. Of course we needed to browse the shops while we were there. We bought a big plastic water jug and had it filled with ice water for the trip home. I found some really neat shorts in a store, so of course, I had to buy a few pair. We finally realized that a pretty good amount of time had elapsed, and we had that guy's truck. We cut the browsing short and headed back to the airport. This airport road was way off the beaten track and the road was windy and full of holes, but we managed it OK. When we finally arrived, the airport man was standing in the middle of the road with his hands on his hips. He was not a happy camper. We apologized but that didn't make him any happier. After a little discussion and a 10 dollar bill, he calmed down. He said he was afraid we had an accident or something. He had gassed up the plane while we were gone, so we just boarded and left.

About 4 o'clock in the afternoon, we saw Fostoria, dead-ahead. We had a roll of toilet paper in the cabin, so when we buzzed my husband's work place, Carol threw it out the window and teepee'd the place. When we got to the airport and landed, word had got out that we were back, so we had quite a welcoming committee waiting. It was quite an adventure

Stained glass by Jeanne in BBS kitchen window