Chapter four, continued

Father put me to work in our shipyard for a couple of months one time. I wasn’t there long enough to become very skillful, but I swung axe and adz long enough to develop some callouses.”

Aunt Rachel smiled and said, “I have been wondering how to let you earn your keep. There aren’t enough chores around here to keep you busy this time of the year, and I am sure that Sarah is all the help I will need in the house. How would you like to help Mr. Sayer build that barn for me?”

Sarah didn’t look like she relished the idea of being left alone with Aunt Rachel to work all day, and I didn’t much like being paired off with Sayer. Since he wasn’t a slave, I really wouldn’t know how to treat him. I said, “I’m not sure I know enough about building a barn to take one on by myself.”

Aunt Rachel’s eyes were dancing with mischief. She said, “Oh, no, you wouldn’t be. Mr. Sayer is a master carpenter. He will teach you everything you need to know.”

*****

The son of a true southern gentleman would have been so insulted that he would have stalked out of the house. The trouble was, Father was not a true Southern gentleman. For three generations – I would have made it four generations – the men of my family had gone to sea, and the sea widens a man’s horizons. The local customs which seemed like God’s word to our neighbors, were less holy to us.

The upshot of it was that I couldn’t think of anything to say. Saying nothing let Aunt Rachel have her way, and an hour later I was walking along the road, dressed in work clothes two sizes too big for me that had been Uncle Alan’s before he died, on my way to build a barn with a negro as my boss.

(No reader would buy this if groundwork had not been laid.)

I wondered what Father would have said.

The place where Aunt Rachel had chosen to build was on the edge of a wheat field about a half mile east of the main house. I could see the rocky prominence of Little Round Top across Plum Run Creek. 

Ben Sayer had already done a good deal of work. He had dug a trench for the field stone foundation, and had completed more than half of it.

*****

I grew up on a farm, where you built anything you couldn’t afford to buy. It might not be professional; it might not even be that good, but if it didn’t fall over, it was good enough.

I took shop class in high school and eventually became a pretty good self-taught woodworker. I’ve lost track of how many bookcases I’ve built. I’ve never had the opportunity to build a house, but my wife and I rebuilt a shed into the heated and insulated building I’m sitting in as I write this post.

Decades ago, I discovered the Woodwright’s Shop on PBS and spent a lot of time studying old fashioned building techniques, including timber framing.

My point? Nothing is ever wasted to a writer. If you haven’t written about it yet, you will eventually.