Was it ten years ago? Maybe fifteen. According to the fair and industrious Trudy, Ben was still in high school, so … 14 years ago. That’s how long ago this was.<\/p>\n
There I was standing in our driveway rasumfrassing<\/em> to myself amidst a bunch of scattered branches. I was tired of cutting fallen tree limbs precariously perched on the garbage can. I needed a sawbuck. <\/p>\n I once saw a sawbuck made by a cousin of mine. He had slapped it together from scrap in a couple minutes just to make … well, to simplify the cutting of fallen tree limbs. Just what I needed. And I recalled my cousin whipping this thing together as naturally and second-nature to him as … deriving the Lagrange planetary equations<\/em> might once have been to me. Ok so perhaps as second-nature as … deriving the quadratic formula<\/em> would be for me now. QED. That’s how quickly I remembered him assembling that thing.<\/p>\n I had had enough. I needed a sawbuck.<\/p>\n Remember now, this is 10 or 15 or 14 years ago.<\/p>\n There I was in the driveway with the branches about me. In my rasumfrassage<\/em>, I determined to make me a sawbuck.<\/p>\n Of course, there were some long-ago scrounged 2x4s in the garage and some oft-used and oft-straightened über-nails. These would have been sufficient, but I had something more in mind. Earlier that day, I had spied a pile of lumber by the curb down the street. Someone was throwing away perfectly good stuff.<\/p>\n I walked down to inspect. And I proudly returned with six long, pristine tongue-and-groove boards under my arms. I set the boards down. Got the 2x4s. Got the nails. And got some screws that many years before I had scrounged from my father’s basement when he sold his house (which would have been like 30 years ago?).<\/p>\n And I proceeded to make me a sawbuck.<\/p>\n In the years since, the sawbuck has served its purpose well. But that was 10 or 15 or 14 years ago. You remember that, right? (See the opening sentence above.)<\/p>\n Time has passed. The weather has taken its toll, as it will on a sawbuck left out in the elements. Those tongue-and-groove boards have utterly decomposed. So this afternoon I decided that my sawbuck had become a hazard.<\/p>\n The scrounged 2x4s and über-nails from which the business-end of the sawbuck was composed are fine. My father’s basement-stashed screws were still in pristine shape. And there were four tongue-and-groove boards from that years-ago pile down the street remaining in the garage, stacked neatly where I put them them 10 or 15 or 14 years ago. (Ok not right where I put them then, but near enough by.)<\/p>\n Shining sun. Blue sky. Frische Luft. Fast-forward a bit (as you might wish me to do about now), and … I’ve got me a brand-ish new sawbuck. It’s a double doozie. This time I treated the tongue-and-groove boards with Australian Timber Oil, so the boards shouldn’t decompose so quickly, right? They should last … what … 20 years? <\/p>\n When that time does come, the two remaining tongue-and-groove boards from the pile down the street will be waiting in the garage for Sawbuck v3.0. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. The Need Was it ten years ago? Maybe fifteen. According to the fair and industrious Trudy, Ben was still in high school, so … 14 years ago. That’s how long ago this was. There I was standing in our driveway rasumfrassing to myself amidst a bunch of scattered branches. I was tired of cutting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6210"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6212,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6210\/revisions\/6212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Sawbuck v1.0<\/h3>\n
3. Sawbuck v2.0<\/h3>\n