OD Talisman

Early Friday afternoon I send a clipped email to my Utah people...."Coming in for a quick couple for Laura's happyhour."

Laura is the bartender I've been following for twenty years at this point.  Wherever she bartends, I go there.  She always hooks me up for a couple free tugs on something.

I get there on Friday afternoon and Lee's got a bar stool.  There's a plastic bag on the bar next to him with something in it.  I sidle up, it's pretty crowded in the Utah so I don't have a stool.  Laura pours me a beer without needing a prodding from me.  The guy next to me halfway spills his beer, it's running towards Lee's tied up plastic bag.  We rescue the bag.
Lee starts..."Paul, I had an inspiration............."  That's about as far as he gets before I can't remember what interrupted him.
TequilaJohn and Cary come in, the three of us move to the far end of the bar because there's room down there.  Lee is left on his stool.
Motion for Lee to move on down to our end of town, he drags his stool and the plastic bag with him.

"Paul, I had an inspiration.  I was issued this blanket (he pats the plastic bag) when I went to Vietnam and have always considered it good luck.  It is the reason I made it out alive and have kept it ever since.  I thought it was time to give it to your son.  I know it will bring him good luck too.  I just know it will."

A wave of humanity comes in on me knocking me to the ground.

I'm sort of speechless.  "This is the one thing that you think kept you alive and you want to give to my son?  Are you sure?"

"I know it will bring him good luck, I just know it will and so yes I do."

I wait until I get home before I cry.......

Olive Drab Talisman

And it's fate has been decided.

I grew up in a house.  On Countryside Drive in Beavercreek, Ohio, USofA.  Wonderful place to grow up.  There was a field across the street (Drive I guess) filled with cows.  Next to it was a field of horses.  There were creeks with fish and tadpoles and turtles.  There were woods you could build forts in, build tree houses and play in for hours and hours.  The house had a basement we roller skated in, my dad's workshop in one part that was filled to the gills with the most magical of stuff you could ever imagine.  My mother decorated the main floor with colors and patterns of things that if I didn't know better had come from LSD trips. A baby grand my dad bought at an auction. My room was upstairs in the peak of the roof with it's sharply sloped crazy angled ceiling.  There was a bass fiddle in the corner.  I kept my drums in my brother's room down the hall.  His bed was on wheels that rolled into the roof somehow.  Off his room was a tiny door, maybe three feet tall that went into a room over the garages.  That's where I first smoked pot with him after my first summer away to college.
I have always described my childhood as perfect.  Living in Beavercreek, Ohio, USofA.

But houses give me the heebegeebies.  The willies.  Can hardly stand to be in them.  They contain or maybe better constrain me to the point where I feel the need to flee out the door to the big sky and the big wind and the big air.  Sooner the better.

Maybe it's because for the past 20 years I've been living the warehouse way of an unpartitioned constantly moveable life.  Most of my stuff was on wheels and almost every day everything was moved around.  The big roll up door was always opened.  It brought in the California sun and air and wind but also the random people off the street.  The inside and the outside were one.  No 8 foot high drywall walls to make your spirit kowtow.  Tall spaces allow the head to fly and roam.

I don't know the spirit of the island top but I'm hoping it's spirit is ok with being in a house because that's where it's been screwed down to.  It sure does present itself well, what with the contrast of the walnut color holding court in the whiteness of the walls.

Couple pics of Ken brushing on some stuff.

The dovetails came out very tight.

Just a short portion of the top had a live edge.  The rest was it was square edged.

And this is how I live.  Right now.  I'll be able to roll things around again soon.

Hanging the bike on the snap ties.

Island Waterfall

Time for the install of the 15'x3' walnut island top with a "waterfall" cascading down one end of it.


Ken and I get it to the jobsite and find that things that were supposed to be done for us, weren't and things that weren't supposed to be done, were.

Head scratching and looking at the plans

So we left when neither the owner nor the contractor answered our phone calls.  Over night questions were answered and we came back to glue the dovetails.

Letting Ken sand some of it.

And at this point I'm done with it.  There's little joy in me in the finishing stage of things so Ken will take that upon himself to do.