BIG TIME TAKES SMALL STEPS: THE GATE

The big time is closer than you think, closer than I thought.

It’s easy to miss if you don’t look closely.

The wood in the picture is an example.

Over four years I’ve talked to a homeowner and new dad about putting up a fence in their side yard.

Without the huge expense.

With a three year old roaming the land it was time to open up things up on the side.

Fence and a gate and boom, there it is just like waving a magic wand on a tictok.

Baby boomers working their hardest to enjoy their few remaining years hire a fencing company, book a cruise, and come back to a finished piece of work.

Sounds like shades of tictok to me.

But one man can do it all alone, just ask the neighbor.

He said he put up his fence by himself, all by himself, which means one of two things: He’s horrible to spend time with, or it’s therapy.

Maybe a little of both?

The homeowner I worked to convince about a fence, also known as my son, could have done it alone.

Drive around your town and look for screwy looking fences and you’ll see some homemade work.

Some look like wood nailed to a post in disorganized patterns, or screwed in sideways with a vaguely artistic look.

Those are homemade efforts to beat the high cost of materials and labor done by someone who knows the priorities of homeownership.

The paint is good, the roof solid. The fence? Meh.

My favorite is the pro fence with beautifully planed wood, top caps, and borders like it was made for a National Park.

The house behind that fence has a sagging roof, worn paint, and rot.

The sweet spot is the solid house and solid fence, which means making a big time gate so you don’t have to walk round the house every time you need something from the garage.

 

Introducing; The Gate

You can buy a pre-made gate on a metal pipe from, or bring a bunch of wood home and saw it up.

Do it yourself and face the endless check and re-check with a tape measure and a level.

Do it yourself and face the endless checks of tolerance between gate and gate post.

Will the hinges fit?

When you get down to nuts and bolts, the final pro-move on gate building without the sag is the diagonal piece.

The neighborhood engineer said the weight load of the gate aims toward the bottom hinge.

Because gravity?

The proper placement of the diagonal is low end near the bottom hinge.

Look at other gates and you’ll see different things. Rookies.

Because we already used corner bracing we couldn’t do a cut-to-fit forty five degree angled 2X4 and slide it in.

What to do? Remove the bracing? Naw, we cut wood bracing and used fence hangers to stick the finish.

 

A Big Time Crew

I’ve never built a gate. I don’t think my kid has either, so it was a journey of discovery.

In my experience a journey of discovery can go wrong in every way possible.

From ‘do you know what you’re even doing,’ to ‘this looks great,’ the grind of moving forward is  slower than expected.

I helped a guy move once. He smoked in the garage, smoked in the trailer, and I asked him to stop.

He said if I didn’t like it I could go home.

This sort of thing can come up, but not with a cooperative crew.

We built in such harmony that we talked about building other things together.

Call it project euphoria.

 

Blue Sky, Rain, More Blue Sky

What you get with the Crew of Two? You get to pick through the wood piles for the best pieces, then wonder how so many broken boards got in there.

You get to pick the kind of fasteners that will last longest in treated wood based on some guy at Home Depot, stainless steel, and know they are what you paid for, even if they are more ferrous than they should be.

You get to customize the gate when it won’t close over the stainless steel bolt heads, which called for an ingenious solution.

At every check the fence and gate were level. I was in shock. Level the first time is not normal.

Like veteran teammates we worked a few steps ahead of the plan and laid out materials where they’d be used.

Mixing and pouring cement with a shovel-guide? Check.

Whack old fence posts with sledge hammers? Check.

Digging post holes a quarter inch at a time? Check.

Today is the final day on the second part of the plan. I’m excited.

 

The Big Time Is Right Where You Are

The big time is hidden in plain sight.

Back in last October I drove the car from Portland, Oregon to Albuquerque, New Mexico and back.

I rolled past cities and towns like those endless trains.

All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields

Passing trains that have no names
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles

Good morning, America, how are you?
Say, don’t you know me? I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done

I’m old enough to know the big time was happening every place I passed by, where people care about others for  a better life.

As a young man it never occurred to me to care that much.

Then I got married and had kids.

That dialed things up to a whole ‘nother level of much caring.

I became a museum man who cared about artifacts, even the silliest piece of trash to make the leap from garbage to artifact.

After caring about old things I became a caregiver. From old stuff to an old man, I got tested.

Becoming a granddad revealed how much caring the world needs.

When you see some delusional old baby boomer staring at a kid in wonder, they are hoping against all odds that grandkids get a chance at their own big time.

Building things together is a way of handing it down to them.