I love to build stuff!

I mean I love to build all-kindsa-stuff.

For years I've enjoyed designing and building smallish storage barns and other sorts of out-buildings. And when my wife and I were married in the early seventies, we bought a ramshackle old place on a riverside and spent several years renovating and expanding it. Over a fun-filled twenty-seven year adventure out on the river we cobbled together a unique and interesting place. We were a team.

Out of building things together, Nancy and I built a wonderful marriage.

We contracted large pieces of the renovation of that first home, and I worked with the building crews. What skilled men they were! They were unselfish enough to teach me all they could.

Nancy and I loved building things together. She was a bright and creative farm kid whose father was the sort of person who built anything he needed out of things he had at hand.

For example: during WWII when he and his equally inventive brother needed a tractor -- and factories were building war material instead of tractors -- the two of them went to the junk yard near their farm and dug up an old truck chassis, a broken-down-but-salvageable truck motor, and a batch of spare parts. Out this personalized junk pile, they fashioned the tractor they needed. Apparently there was nothing they couldn't black-smith, weld, rivet, and lock securely together into something practical and useful.

I don't know: is this American ingenuity? I suppose so.

Given time, out of a mongrel and disparate collection of energetic beings emerges the greatest nation on the face of the earth. Real Americans love to build things. America is less a place than a burgeoning movement based upon the notion that anything good is possible -- that anything good is bound to happen. Anything dreamed can be built.

Nancy was like her father and mother. She had the same talents and bent. She could make something special out of almost nothing.

She encouraged the same wild streak in me. Part of the fun we had antiquing was how she'd inevitably find several old junky things she knew she could tear apart and transform into something eye-catching, useful, and delightful. Our river home and spacious perennial gardens were full of her intriguing artistic inventions.

This creative process was some of the most fun we ever had together.

Nancy was a quilter. Quilting ran in her family. One of the first things she did after we married was teach me to quilt. The quilting process at it's most basic level is a creative process by which something useful is made out trashy bits of over-worn, outgrown, and junk-pile clothing -- at least the old-fashioning of quilt tops is like that.

Putting together the quilt-top, bottom, and filling, then stretching the whole of it for stitching quilt designs is another creative challenge, of course. Marking the top with beautiful designs, and patiently stitching these designs, is an artistic process that transforms the pieced top into a striking and useful work of art. Again, fashioning a quilt is making or building something out of bits of almost nothing.

Of course, man is largely reflected by what he makes or builds with his hands. Upright-bipedal is only part of the magic. Opposable-thumbs and prehensile forearms -- the ability to grasp and manipulate things -- plus a large and probing, problem-solving brain: these taken together are the fundamental aspects of Man, the Tool-Maker and User.

Throw in

stereoscopic-sight,
surround-sound,
minimal brightness -- or more,
chronic dissatisfaction with self
and the immediate world,
tad-bit of emotional turmoil,
sufficient restlessness, and
creative energy,

and you've got an interesting animal on your hands.

Never mind man's apparent propensity to destroy.

This brief piece is about Man as a Builder-Maker-Doer -- man, the artisan, the practical artist. On a personal level, I like hand tools, new, old, and antique. I like to grasp the handle of an antique hammer and feel the old worker's hand in mine. I also like power tools.

Last summer I got sick of having my garage cluttered with overflow tools. So I found a likely space in my woods, leveled it, dug and poured a foundation, and raised a storage barn. I liked every phase of the building:

clearing the small trees away,
leveling the area,
digging and pouring the foundation,
laying the frame and flooring joists,
sheathing the floor,
framing and capping the walls,
raising high the roof beams,
sheathing the whole,
shingling the roof,
building and mounting the sliding door,
mounting the lighting fixtures,
wiring the whole,
building the workbench,
shelving and cabinets.

The job took me about ten days. Every night after a long day's work, I sat on my deck with a cup of coffee and watched the sunset filter through the trees, down across the advancing work and pondered:

This work fulfills me, marks me a man.
Not just this moment.
Back through pre-history.
For all time.
This about man never changes.
I am a man!

And in the dusky tail-end of sunset I would trot lightly across the deck, down the stairs, cross the path into the woods, and place both my hands on the solid and square rising structure. It was a gesture of reverence. I could feel in that gesture my manhood.

I felt as solid and four-square as my work.

All my life I've built things -- large and small. I've worked with contractor crews -- men who've become my friends. Together we built additions to homes Nancy and I bought. I helped build the home of a friend. I'm drawn to the people I've met who've worked on my homes. They've become my friends.

During every project I've ever undertaken, late at night after my shower, I've stood in front of the unfolding work and heard the quiet voice within me speaking: "Next life I will cast aside school-teaching and books and be a home-builder."

I have no doubt I will.

But maybe not. Large bridges like the Golden Gate are beautiful. Men who build towering bridges stand at the apex of designing and building. I can't prove this. I don't know this. I just feel it.

This summer I cleared and leveled the top of an island twenty feet out into my pond and built a 16x20 deck on it. I boxed-in an easement and back-filled it. I built steps down to the easement, then up to the deck. Next summer I'll build a queen-post bridge -- above this easement -- over to the island. The following summer I'll enclose the bridge. It will be the only covered bridge in the area.

I love to build stuff. In my life after next I will build bridges.

Men are dreamers. They dream what they will next build. I dream of building bridges.

I confess I'm not much different from my colleagues and friends at school. Before I retired, we worked together and separately to design and build

curriculum programs,
classroom learning activities,
highly skilled student work teams,
competent and confident school teachers,
enlightened leadership teams.

As professors in a blossoming leadership program.
We dream of building bridges to better schools.

I love to build stuff.
Come build with me.