By Jim Hagarty
So there I was, surrounded by lumber. Five thousand linear board feet of it to be almost exact. The building supply store truck was zooming off again down the street, leaving me stranded in my back yard like Robinson Crusoe on his lonely island. Its driver turned out to be pretty much my only contact with the outside world for the next three months.
But, like good old Robinson, when I finally accepted my plight, there was nothing left to do but start building something, with all the materials available to me.
In my case, it wasn’t a boat I was interested in constructing as a way of returning to civilization. Far from it. My plan was to build a six-foot-high stockade around my little inner-city compound to keep out what had been passing for civilization in my neighborhood. What was it Dylan sang? How much trash does a man have to find, before he puts up a fence?
Chief among the many problems facing me on this project – I had never taken on such a grand scheme before – was the fact that the only tool in my meager chest with which I would be able to slice through the 760 boards which surrounded me, was a handsaw. A decent one, I must say, though last sharpened about three changes of my eyeglass prescription ago.
But, a good workman uses the implements available to him, and so I started the long, laborious job of cutting. Two little chip-chips to make the tiny gouge I would follow and away I went. Back and forth, down and up, back and forth, down and up … Whew! Time for a break.
It wasn’t long before I became reacquainted with a curious characteristic of much of humankind in our modern age. People are genuinely offended by the sight of a middle-aged man cutting up the lumber for a 230-foot-long board fence using nothing but an old handsaw. Offers of the latest and greatest power tools started to pour in as passersby witnessed the painful work in progress. It turns out, it was driving most of them nuts, watching a poor homeowner sweating profusely while heaving up and down with a wood-handled steel blade, the only remaining proper use for which is as a last resort for a job a power saw can’t do. Such as lopping the top of a 60-foot-high tree, for example.
Like Noah resisting the jeers of the ignorant masses, I put off every would-be power tool donor with a polite, but firm, rejection. Whereas I might have used a power saw had there been one in my shed when the project started, I now grew more and more committed to my handsaw as the clamour for me to change to something speedier and easier grew.
But finally, when my father-in-law showed up with his circular, steel-bladed beauty, in a moment of weakness, I gave in. After less than one scary hour of precariously slicing off boards with this powerful, wobbling, whirling demon, I could see I probably wouldn’t be needing any gloves that winter and maybe wouldn’t have to bother pulling on any boots either. After each board was cut, I’d conduct an inventory of my fingers and toes, certain I’d eventually find a few in the grass or up in the tree.
I also realized I would probably spend the rest of my life sitting two inches away from the TV so I could hear the news, as I was sure I’d popped both eardrums within five minutes of turning on the saw.
Back to the handsaw I went with new appreciation and determination. And, gradually remembering the lessons my father had taught me many years before, I began to let the saw do the work, rhythmically applying gentle pressure as the saw moved forward, and lightening up as it drew back. Soon, peace returned to the neighborhood and to my vibrating mind. One by one, the ends dropped off the boards as I slowly erected my fort, one lovingly cut stretch of lumber at a time.
By the end of my 90-day adventure (a journey any handy carpenter could have completed in three busy days), I was reminding myself of an old man I used to see working in a quaint, ancient lumberyard in my hometown. He moved methodically, and purposefully, and slowly. He made few mistakes. And never got riled up. He also lived well into his 90s. Somewhat ironically, perhaps, his last name was Robinson.
Twenty-five years later, my fence still stands, though it leans a little here and there. My handsaw, still unsharpened, hangs on my shed wall as it always has. No power machine has entered the building to challenge its authority.
And civilization now leaves its garbage on my neighbour’s lawn where it belongs.
