By Seth Boyes,
Seth Boyes, News Editor
Not sure how I manage it, but my home improvement ideas never work out well.
The deck I was going to refinish never even got sanded.
The broken tree branch that needed trimming bested me for at least three days — and it probably got the last laugh since I ended up on my backside when it did come down.
It only took me two months to reassemble the end table I totally convinced myself I could restore with hand tools.
Suffice it to say I’m not that handy most of the time, but I like to try from time to time for some reason — I’m reminded of a shirt an old school mate used to wear, which read “I might not be smart, but I can lift heavy things.”
And to that end, I’ve been working on a project this summer which fit that particular skillset. Most folks in the Decorah area know of the iconic pitted limestone which is scattered throughout the region’s karst landscape. It’s spiffy stuff to be sure, and I’m told it’s not necessarily an easy thing to get for personal use.
That is unless you’ve got your own private deposits and, as it happens, the temporary home my family has been staying in for the last few months has just that. My father-in-law likes to carry some of the “wormy limestone” as he calls it while he’s out setting up deer stands or doing other things on his property, with the intent to eventually have a hearty ring of it around his hunting cabin.
So, I got the idea in my head to help him in that effort this summer and bring back a backpack full of stones every so often – but most of them were too large to lift without some serious heavy machinery.
Most, I said.
That one stone became my white whale (heck, it kind of looked like a white whale).
None of the other ones mattered for a week or two, and I felt my obsession for hauling it in grow and grow as I inched it bit by bit every few days or so. The image of Captain Ahab came to mind more than once as I wiped the dirt from my hands and had to admit defeat time and time again.
But, of course, like anyone who consciously compares himself to the good captain, I was sure I’d avoid the consequences of such obsession.
I won’t bore you with the specifics of getting that arm-length slab of limestone out of the mud and up onto the grassy bank (let alone into a wheelbarrow).
I thought I’d finally done it, but of course, Ahab thought the same thing when he speared the White Whale for the last time.
I was wrong.
As I lifted the wheelbarrow’s handles, its lone-stone-load overcame the single rubber wheel beneath it and started tipping to the left — before I could even let go, there was a crack and I was holding about half the wooden handle in my right hand.
It looked suspiciously like Ahab’s peg leg in that light.
All this to say, I owe my father-in-law a new wheelbarrow. And the reason for that is because I tried to do it on my own.
That’s the danger of white-whale obsession, I think. They can convince us that not only must something be done, but it must be done by us under our own power. So my tale for you dear reader is one of caution.
Don’t be like me.
Things truly can be too heavy for one person alone, but they are rarely too heavy for a community. It’s a lesson we all need remember from time to time, because it too often clashes with our own sense of pride — of self-sufficiency.
But that way leads to the pain of self-defeat…and broken wheel barrows.
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