Carpenter Men
By Donald Holmes Lewis
I put an ad in the Cheboygan paper the other day. Maybe I shouldn’t have. It read, “looking for a good carpenter for small projects at our cottage.” The next day over fifteen pickup trucks arrived before I even looked at the coffee pot. In logical order of their arrival, the carpenter men, usually an assistant or relative in tow, walked slowly with me around my property in the cold rainy spring morning and assessed the work at hand. They all proclaimed that every year they had their work booked for the summer by this time, but no one had so far.
As I stood in the gravel turnaround making notes on a pad, another pair approached me. One of them was a tall, good looking dark haired guy with muscles of hardwood under his long sleeved t-shirt. He introduced me to is father-in-law and, like the others, said they really needed some work. He also told me his wife was killed in a car accident on the highway not far from our place the previous winter. He said it happened in a white out blizzard. A fuel truck didn’t see her little Camry. He said they hit head on, square over the middle yellow line covered with snow. His father-in-law in suspenders listened and nodded his head.
When the old man started walking towards the other trucks parked in a line down the gravel road, I asked him what he was doing. He turned to face me looking sure of himself.
“I’m going to tell the guys in the other trucks that they can go home. You’re picking Todd and me.”
“I guess I am.”
The Tom Sawyer Approach
"I'll Steady the Board"
By Donald Homes Lewis
When you contemplate the approach of summer chores and repairs, remember to invite for a visit your best friend who loves to fix things and finish projects in one day. You have to start out like you really intend to do it. He takes pity on you because he knows you too well. He drags you to the proper aisles at the hardware store. He buys some of the things you need since you have such a bad selecton of tools, nails and screwdrivers. Two hours later the project is done. He says, “what else can we fix?” I get two beers.