“BACK DECK”

by Fletcher Murray 

Two words.

Two simple little words.

Back deck.

In the summer the magazines, the catalogs, the fashion magazines are all showing how elegant life could be if only you had a BACK DECK.

It’s easy to flip the pages of the magazines and see all the back decks.  Fountains, flagstone, bricks, pools, verdant greenery, freshly-groomed pets laying quietly at rest (specially trained dogs on valium that don’t dig holes in the backyard like ours do).

Back deck.

Inside those two words are about 2,000 man-hours… or person-hours.

It is hard to divide up the man-hours versus the woman-hours when it comes to building the back deck.

You have “labor” and “management”.  Unlike the business world with its horrid glass ceiling, in back deck construction women are definitely in the management role, which may explain why they like the idea of their man out there in the fields with his shirt off and his manly gorilla belly swinging sweat rivulets as he works the shovel into the dusty earth.

Maybe it’s memories of the farm days that excites them.  Their big burly man coming home at dusk starving for supper, his rough hands taking the steaming soup bowl from her tender white hands.  His body moaning with the delight of every dish she’s prepared for him to devour.

Wait.  I’m steering this into Desperate Farmwives – 1890 episode.

Back to today.

So, after nearly 2,000 man-hours have been expended, management offers to help out.

“Can I help you, honey?”

It sounds so sweet.   But once invited onto the worksite the comments turn to quality control comments.

“Did you mean for the deck to not be level?,” she asks.

“Yes.  That way the rain will run off easily.”

“Oh.  But if somebody puts their drink down won’t it spill?”

Of course, she is right but hearing her critique after you’ve spent four days in the sun crawling under the deck in Spiderville with a level in your teeth and a blinky flashlight that goes out just when you see the largest black widow known to man scuttle by, you kind of simmer into a Mount Wailealea pre-blow.

“Yes, honey, it is true that if our darling grandchild set down a perfectly round marble it might roll.  But most marbles aren’t exactly round and we might get a break.”

The case is not closed, but she steps back and says, “Would you like some cold lemonade?  I’m making some.”

And she goes in the house to leave you alone to decide if you’re going to be a wuss or a man.

I always try for wuss unless there’s too much evidence of my poor craftsmanship  to get away with it. 

So, since the deck is listing like the Titanic, I will attempt a Gyro Gearloose fix.

Which brings us to the most marvelous invention after the wheel, of mankind… the shim.  def. - : a thin often tapered piece of material (as wood, metal, or stone) used to fill in space between things (as for support, leveling, or adjustment of fit).

If it weren’t for the shim half of America would be leaning, doors not closing, windows stuck, gaps in the trim.

So I’m off to Home Depot or Lowe’s with my “Shims are my friends” t-shirt on to confront the “helpful” sales associate and mine his vast knowledge of the construction problem I’m facing.

“I built the planters thinking the ground would be level,” I begin as the forklift starts to back up with its deafening beeper.  I know I now only have half of the employee’s half attention I had to begin with.

“But the ground isn’t level.  And the deck is finished and the planters are attached but I realize I should have poured concrete footings that are level and then shim up the deck, except I’d have to lift the deck in the air while I pour them and won’t that crack the joists… “

“Hold on, I’m in hardware. ” he says, “You want someone in lumber.”

“Angela, aisle 32, please. Customer needs assistance,” he says loudly into the PA.

Now all the real men, the ones you used to see on the Marlboro ads on TV, look around to see who’s the wuss.

I turn away from Jake quickly and pretend I’m trying to heft a 90-pound bag of concrete.

Here comes Angela.  She has a nice smile.  Looks like Robert Duvall’s mom or older sister.  But I’m not a male chauvinist pig.  I look at the person not the body.  We are not, as Oprah points out, our bodies.

Angela listens to my painful story of reverse procedure construction.  That’s the kind that most weekend contractors practice.  You start by building the roof and then slowly work your way down to the foundation.

In fact, I realized the other day that if I took my construction checklist and just reversed the numbers I would build everything perfectly.

The longer I talk, the prettier Angela becomes.  I begin to feel like if I ever get convicted of a crime and have to do hard time, Angela would be a good prison buddy.

I finish my story.

She nods slowly and then stops.

“You’re screwed.”

I am motionless with the depth of the truth in her statement.

She looks at her feet.  I can tell she’s thinking back to when she and Uncle Clem  built the bi-level pig enclosures… searching for a workaround.

“First of all, forget all dem books.  They just wanna sell you everythang we got in the store.

“What you wanna do is serve the drinks BEFORE the guests go out on the deck.  If they stumble you say, ‘You okay? Don’t worry about it. Have a good time. If we have to we’ll drive you home later.’

I smile lamely at her humor.

Her looks turns sour, almost mean.

Then, she bursts out laughing.

“Eyezzz f-------ing with ya!”

I laugh like the guy who’s just gone into the prison yard for his first afternoon with his fellow inmates.

“Get four sawhorse. Hire four (fill in your own racial slur) and tell ‘em to lift the f----ing thing up while you push the f----ing sawhorses under the corners.  Oh.  Get five.  One for the middle.

“Then, get all pissed off at one of them and fire all of ‘em.  Pay ‘em off and tell ‘em to get out.

“Now you don’t have to pay them while they stand around and watch you pour your concrete for your post holes.  Hell, that’ll take three hours right there and it’s got to set up before you can set your level mark… you do have a chalk line?”

“Yes,” I say like an old pro.  I think my daughter’s crayons will work for whatever a chalkline is.

“Mark level on all the uprights.  Oh, yeah.  You’re one of ‘em backwards boys. So, make sure they’re vertical BEFORE you put ‘em in the post hole.  BEFORE the concrete,” she stipulates.

“Then, you go to another Home Depot and hire four guys for two hours to lift the deck back into place.”

“Thanks.   That’s great,” I offer.

“And hey, if ain’t level then, get ye sum shims and shim her up.”

I start to turn away, but and she catches up to me and quietly says,

“You don’t mind me talkin’ straight d’ya?  Some think my langugage is a little salty.  But I tell them right out ‘Hey, you report me and I’m going to kill ye and yer prissy little family.”

I’m caught between a smile and a “you can trust me” look.

She busts out laughing.

“Eyezzz just f----ing with ya!  Cmon, man. Yer a little slow. Ya see, this is the only job I could get when I got out.  They like me cause I know about all this sh---t and I don’t wanna f--- it up.   So, you have a good day!”

I watch her walk away.  I feel like I’ve been in an episode of one of my favorite tv shows…

Lonesome Dove – the Home Depot Years.

Well, I’m off to aisle 28 where they have shims of all sizes.

(I grew up in Oklahoma and I love people like Angela, by the way. They got your back but like a fine horse,  they can sometimes get a littler skittish and you’ve got to calm ‘em back down before they commit any crimes.)

Love,

Fletch