Tinkering

Bill built a tool shed in the back yard behind his wood pile. It was a place to go to escape the never ending mouth of his beloved wife, Liz.

A man needs a place to go to tinker. Some guys like to work on motors in their cars, others will write until the sun comes up, yet some simply like to piss away time in tool sheds.

Women believe they have committed husbands when their men disappear for hours ‘at work’ on busy little projects in the garage or outback.

Girls do the dishes, mop the floor and throw in a couple loads of laundry while the boys do the hard stuff like wood chopping, mowing laws and fixing machines that break down.

Bill could never have enough wood to chop. Those high- tech hydraulic devices that split logs with a simple pull of a lever made his outdoor time go by way too fast. He got rid of his gasoline powered wood splitter and went back to the basics—an axe.

He’d balance pieces of oak and maple atop a thick tree stump and slam her down.

All day long in the summer sun he chopped his wood into smaller and smaller pieces, getting ready for the long cold winter ahead.

Liz would yell out the kitchen window at him, “Hurry up and get your ass in here Bill, I want to wash those dirty jeans you got on.”

“Don’t wait for me. I have a lawn mower to fix when I’m done here,” he yelled back with a Pal Mal dangling from the corner of his mouth and a six pack of cold brew waiting for him inside the small tool shed.

He decorated his shed the way he liked it. There were no knick-knacks taking up space in there. Only the antlers of deer, a few turkey feathers and a squirrel tail or two brightened the dull, unfinished walls of the shed.

It pissed Liz off as the summer went by and the wood pile grew taller and taller.

By the end of June, Bill would manage to hide his shed behind a wall of fire wood.

Only then was it safe to pull out that six pack and the greatest invention since the wood splitter and cigarettes—“Penthouse Magazine”.

After Bill died Liz decided to tear down the tool shed to make room for a flower bed.

“You wouldn’t believe all the nails that were in the dirt when I tried making a flower bed there,” my grandmother told me.

She didn’t mention those magazines that I grew up on as a child. Perhaps he was smart enough to burn them before he died.