A year or two before I came on the scene in 2008, Señora had the trellis over her patio replaced. A quick count on my fingers and toes makes this current iteration of the trellis to be 19 or 20 years old. I tell you this as one of the support lumbers going out from the house had rotted. I could not see that it was hurting anything, Señora, however, felt like it was an eyesore.
So, after much prodding, I trotted myself and my pickup down to Lowes for a 2” x 6” by 20 foot pressure treated piece of lumber. After I brought it home, I propped it up against the fence. And there it sat as I procrastinated as I knew it would be a tough project to remove and replace the rotted piece. Trouble was when I finally got around to doing the chore, the 20 foot board had warped to unusable proportions. So, back to Lowes I went.
Now I had a 20 foot piece of lumber floating around our yard. I started to cut it up to put in the trash, then I thought of giving it away. So, I advertised on a couple sites, and boy howdy, did the responses start coming in. As seems to be common in these giveaways, there were a few no shows after we set a time.
The person who finally kept the appointment drove up in a Honda CR-V, considered a compact SUV. Remember, this is a 20 foot piece of lumber, I was expecting some bubba in a 4×4 pickup, especially so as they had been texting me from a phone with a Tennessee area code.
Which brings up what happened next. What stepped out of the Honda was a country looking woman in her sixties, maybe, maybe, late fifties, dressed like she was working construction, which she was.
After introducing ourselves, following well established country tradition, my first question to her was, “so, what part of Tennessee are you from?”
To which she responded that she was not from Tennessee, but had lived there for many years, that the area code was Nashville and she had lived a little south of Franklin.
“Well,” said I, “I have relatives all over that part of Tennessee.”
Which of course, set off a chain of conversation. A little while later she said something that made me ask, “so what line of work are you in?”
Replying, she said, “I am chemist, but retired. I now work construction because I like it, and I am good at it.” She then went on to tell me a long story about how she came to have this skill set on top of being a chemist.
While she never said outright, from a couple things she said, I believed her to be widowed. Probably because we had touched on retirement with my question, she mentioned that before moving back to Missouri to be close to family, her and her husband had planned to retire to Oklahoma, specifically the Poteau area. Why Poteau? That never quite came out.
“Well,” said I, “I know the area well. My ex-wife grew up on the Arkansas side of the border, a little south of Poteau, between Heavener and Waldron. My daughter worked for the Poteau paper for a while as a reporter and editor.”
Which of course, set off another chain of conversation.
I kept wondering how she was going to transport the piece of lumber. We had also been talking so long that it had become dark.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, “I am going to cut up the board. I need a 12 foot section for a greenhouse I am building and I can do something with the rest.”
She went to her Honda and came back with a battery operated Sawzall. I dropped the tailgate on my pickup to have a “saw horse” to work on. Because it was too dark to see well, I went in the house for a flashlight. She measured off 12 feet, then marked a line with a pocket square. Because the wood was bouncing around, I sat my fat ass on one end my tailgate on top of the board to stabilize it as she cut.
As I sat there on the piece of wood she was sawing, she asked me, “So, do you have any unmarried brothers?” I was a bit taken back, but it was a fair question…
Replying, “I have two.”
I then asked her, “Do you like riding porcupines?”
My comment left her speechless which from my short experience with her was a hard thing to do.
I then added that they both lived in the Oklahoma City area which is a pretty good hike from St. Louis.
If I am being honest, being in a relationship with any of us Rush boys is like riding a porcupine. All I can say is God bless the women who have attempted to put up with us.
It was an interesting evening. What could have been a five minute transaction turned into an entertaining 30 or 40 minute conversation.
Just for the record, she did manage to get both pieces of lumber in the Honda, but I was worried about her windshield if she braked too hard.
It really is a small world at times.