Bingeing and purging for New Years

New Years, for all intents and purposes, is about ringing in a new season of change. The excitement in the air is tangible. Good times had by all, the excitement of the ball drop, the insane kazoos, the silliness. Many a New Year spent with friends and loved ones provide warm memories, and some peculiar and hazy ones as well. To a lot of people there stands one New Years event that stands out as a 'miss' as opposed to a 'hit'. 

My personal stand out in the 'it-could-have-been better' New Years stories involved a series of well intentioned disasters that one can only laugh at with the benefit of hind-sight. That it ended up without any need for hired legal representation or calling-in-of-favors makes the ordeal all that much more hilarious.

In the throws of what seemed to be a burgeoning relationship, my paramour and I chose to spend the New Year in a delightful downtown hotel. What made it even more magical is that my date's employer decided to pay for a top floor executive suite in a gesture of thanks for a hard year's work. The room, in a trendy boutique hotel, was enormous, well stocked and quite beautiful. We were both riding high on a lot of really good feelings, not the least of which was this excitement of a new compadré.

Excited as we were to be enjoying such a grand time together we both started the evening downtown at a very accelerated pace. We dined on the bounty of Portland's great eateries, and drank with the sort of abandon two people enthralled with each other tend to. We attended the wine tasting in the lobby of our boutique hotel, and enjoyed a great deal of the fruits of Oregon's wineries at no charge to the point where we really needn't have gone out for more drinks, but it was New Years, who'd stop now! After a quick walk we found a bar know for its "insider vibe and unique presence" and we sat down to enjoy some more drinks before our dinner at he eatery in the hotel lobby. 

As we decided to finish up our third round of drinks at the very trendy bar, I should have recognized things were getting curiously quiet, but I was a bit beyond figuring that out. As we stood to leave, my partner in crime let me know that a quick pit-stop was needed, and I dutifully let her know I'd be outside in the fresh Portland air. I was there for about twenty minutes checking my watch, and standing on the sidewalk until I finally sent a waitress in to check up on her. This was not well received.

To make a long and painful story shorter I'll skip talking about the dinner which was ladenned with quiet insults, sarcastic chiding, witless retorts and unabashed flirting with the water boy. (Not by me mind you.) 

Upon our eventual and exceedingly quiet return to the executive suite, my bitterly drunk, but well fed cohort promptly walked in to the bathroom and began filling the alarmingly deep Japanese bathing tub. I could scarcely hear the tub filling as I took off my dress shoes, but I did hear her return to the room. That's when the argument that had made dinner such a remarkable pleasure began anew. For about five minutes we traded our opinions of the situation, and just as she began to take the helm for another broadside of vitriol, my ears picked up something. I couldn't tell what it was at first, and I ignored it in order to try to hear what she was saying. As I continued to hear her out, my mind decided that what I'd heard previously was even worse than her diatribe. I heard the sound of water, lots of real flowing water. 

My facial expression must have showed my concern, because her eyes widened and she turned mid-insult and began running for the bathroom. She got half way across the forty foot room before her feet started splashing in inch deep water. I know this because I was right behind her, in socks and dress pants. She stood at the door with her hands on her cheeks like the kid on that Christmas film as I passed by her to get the faucet. I had to reach across the enormous tub in order to turn the damned water off and I nearly slipped on the edge and fell in. In order to get the thing to empty I had to reach bicep deep in scolding hot water to get to the dammed lever. Who makes these tubs, sadists?

We immediately shifted into the most chaotic attempt to stop flooding either of us had ever been party to. We had three towels, and two bathrobes. In a backwards, understaffed version of a bucket brigade we mopped and squeezed water out as fast as we could. Then we heard the knock on the door. It was management. They were 'concerned' and they just wanted to let us know that we'd flooded five suites on lower floors. I glanced at my watch, it was 12:03 AM. Happy Verbally Abusive, Wreckless and Drunk New Year!

For the next forty minutes I pushed the hotel's leviathan of a shop vac over the floor of the room in a vain attempt to dry the thick carpet. I'd have let staff do it, but the late-night staff had no idea how to empty the machine of all the sucked up water. So I did it myself. Some MANVIL cards might have helped them. Plus, I made the mess, so I felt kind of obligated. As it stands, I spent more time draining the receiver bucket than I did vacuuming. When it was all said and done we weren't charged for anything extra, even though three rooms of the five were relocated at 12:30 AM due to flooding. 

If there is anything I learned from that New Years experience it is that a deep tub should not be able to fill faster than it's overflow tube can purge. 

The forest through the shrubs...

Living on an island has a lot of advantages, but it isn't entirely without drawbacks. One issue that never seems to go away on a fertile rock surrounded by warm weather, ocean breezes and lots of sun is nature in its greenest form. The plants in the valley I was raised in grow like plumes of smoke at a shuttle launch, and they're about as easy to contain. A yard let go will consume a house in this environment, and unless weapons grade defoliants are to be used to counter the invasion, a long and tedious battle will ensue to take the house back. The best defense in this situation is an eternally vigilant stalemate of garden boundaries, and nobody, but nobody I know of, has ever fought the great dead-even draw of gardening as well as my mother. She did not fight this battle alone. She enlisted the services of  all available household dwellers. Consequently, my love of plants was, at the time, akin to my fondness of brussel sprouts, or asparagus.

When facing an opponent as single minded, and driven as a croton, various tea plants or a lawai fern, there are several ways to go about rebuffing their advances. I should mention now that gas powered tools were not as available then, and the electric ones were lame!

My primary mode of attack back then was to take to the advancing menace with a set of shears like the ones above. Slicing and dicing, I would have feverishly hacked swaths of eviscerated leaves strewn all about the lawn. Afterward, the plants looked as though I had lifted a lawnmower until the blade was vertical and had simply run down the aisle of greenery with the blades spinning madly the whole way. The chaos of tattered leaves and twigs would be raked up and dumped in a mulch heap as large as a Volkswagen just off the property line in the jungle. 

At the end of the culling I'd have the cautious realisation that the plants would return the following week. It seemed to me that in this everlasting battle for yard supremacy a quick victory and the celebratory beer were to be relished. Within an hour or two you were finished, a returning victor from the fern wars, and yet I considered that only the battle had been won, not the war. 

My mom never chose the 'shears of mass destruction' mentality. She was more of a 'precise extraction with hand snips' sort of gardener. To my mom, yard work wasn't a forced battle against the foliage. She loved the plants. Hell, she planted most of them, and she spent literal hours reaching, plucking, pulling and pruning them. She would negotiate with the shrubs, shoots and sprouts in order to create a simple detente for backyard borders. I came to believe that if mom did the cutting, the plants would voluntarily hold their ground for an extra week before stubbornly rekindling their quest for more sunlight. I admired her ability to come to a sort of agreement with the plants, and I still do, but I never found the passion for the greens as a kid. 

I moved off island, and eventually my folks sold that house to move into something without the awesomely green and time consuming a yard. At about the same time as the sale, in another state, a good friend of mine asked me to help out with some gardening for a client. Somewhat surprisingly I agreed to help out and I found that although I worked slowly, I did enjoy the experience. I stopped using the speedy, heavy-handed cutting shears and turned to hand snips. I lost the yearning to just be finished. I was enjoying the plants, as well as the effort it took to make them look good. Thanks mom!

You never know if the things you hated as a kid will ever serve you with a sense of enjoyment later in life. Individual tastes change all the time, but give yourself the opportunity to try them in order to find out. I think you or somebody you know might like the MANVIL cards, but I'll bet you still hate brussel sprouts, just like me.

Flexibility in an inflexible tool.

All tools were produced for a specific purpose. If there hadn't been a need for such an implement, there wouldn't be such an implement. The screw driver, the camp stove, the mitre saw, even the salad spinner; these tools all have a use for the betterment of human life. Ok, maybe not so much with the salad spinner. Some tools, though, are duty specific, yet able enough in their abilities to allow for non-traditional uses by out of the box thinkers.

The waffle iron, for example, is a tool for creating delightful battered breakfasts. It's also a tool that can be credited for helping to create the athletic footwear giant Nike. In the early days of Nike, when the company also went by the moniker Blue Ribbon Sports, co-founder and designer Bill Bowerman put an un-shaped rubber sole inside a waffle iron to create a grid-like pattern on the bottom. This grid, not unlike a waffle, allowed for traction with a low weight rubber sole. Anybody who remembers seeing the effects of that early 70's technology can remember the very distinctive shoe print left by runners and Nike wearers of the day. Subsequently, the shoes were called 'waffle trainers' and their light weight and relative durability made them a runners favorite.

Now a waffle iron might be considered a kitchen tool, but for now, MANVIL's flashcard series doesn't carry kitchen implements. The tool displayed above is a pair of vise grips, or locking pliers. Normally a vise grip is set into action in order to squeeze things tightly in to manipulate the squeezed item one way or another. They do a great job at squeezing, and if you ask a person who has ever done home, or auto repair with vise grips they'll admit, off record, that you can also use this vise grips to pry metal, twist old, seized bolts into well rounded, useless nubs or to beat the snot out of anything that looks like a hindrance to success. They're tough tools, and built with a stout solidity befitting their job. 

When the ham fists at the yard misplaced the oil filter wrench (another card for another day) and I needed to change the oil on the cab-over (again, an eventual card) I turned to what there was at hand to pry the oil filter off. Enter vise grips, climbing rope, and a little pressure. I clamped the vise grips tightly on the ends of a 10 inch strip of rope, twisted the grip-locked-rope counter-clockwise until it was wicked tight around the filter and pushed... counter-clockwise. Now I'm certainly no Click and Clack, but the vise grip/rope thing worked, and I didn't have to pound a screw driver through the filter to coax  it off. 

Tools of strung up urban brush dwellers...

People who rock climb seem to have a sort of willingness to test fate. They chose a sport that kicks in the endorphins. They get a high from being in the air, and choosing to go mano-a-mano with the patient, omnipresent, and unforgiving law of gravity. Gravity; treacherous, tyrannical and the bane of beautiful, yet constantly concerned ageing people everywhere. Who in their right mind would chose such a foe for a weekend competition? 

In the same vein, who in their right mind would chose to fight this stalwart foe every day, without much more than a crazed glint in their eye, an up-armored bike helmet and a 3/4th inch nylon rope. An arborist, that's who. Not that guy on the Discovery channel, the guy next to the monkeys in the tree. The monkey in the Carhartts with the helmet on.

I've been privileged to see several wild-eyed fruitcakes doing things that probably would best have been left un-done, but if I were to chose the single job that rated high in OSHA's 'Oh, that's just too dangerous' file, the madmen in the trees take the cake. Oh, it's not that they're nuts, they get out everyday, do their endorphin spiking labors, and when they return to terra firma, the rest of life is on level ground. Without the lunacy, which is a constant, I'd imagine things might be kind of a let down on hard ground. I think they deserve that cock-eyed grin, the twitches and the wacky swagger. I've never seen any of them call off a days work due to inclimate weather. 

Constantly up in whichever tree beckons, with a trusty chainsaw and the alertness that allows them to watch each others back and get the job done. These guys hang from a tall tree for hours, wielding, with one hand, a machine that has the soul purpose of severing things. In the other hand, they're holding the string that keeps them aloft. It is a bit crazy, but the guys who do this are great to have a beer with. They revel in their comradery, their tree work and their tools.

These are the folks who introduced me to the gas powered drill. Apparently, some tree trunks have two seperating forks that might split. To hold the split together bolts are driven through them to keep the split from expanding. This requires a large drill bit to be driven through the tree limbs in order to install the bolt. And drilling that hole, often through a foot and a half diameter limb, takes quite a drill. No cordless drill has the capability needed to perform such a task, and only a very large household drill might work for their needs. Alas, extension cords aren't a good idea at an off-ground work site. That electrcal cord, along with the rope that serves as a life-line against falling, could get mixed up. If a climber were to grab the wrong line, it might be a quick ride down with dire results, so any power corded electric drill is frowned upon. 

That's why this crazy tool exists, and I can say without provocation that I'd buy one if I were building a back-woods forrest treehouse. Oh, it is bit large, but I used one to drive an eight inch screw through two oak planks two inches thick. That requires a lot of chutzpah, and this thing was all over it. Since the back-woods treehouse is still a long while off, I guess I'll have to keep my memory strong with the image on my MANVIL cards. But I'll relish the opportunity I've had to meet some pretty wacky people who live their lives in trees already.

Rainbows in the pond

Back during the Nixon administration, we lived on a naval base next to the federal prison. The house faced away from the tall, grey, castle-like walls of the penitentiary, and instead it looked directly over a small lake that lay between the yard and the heart of the shipyard.

On a warm, spring mid-morning I sat out on the large entry steps and watched, with moderate amusement, as my grandfather set to work mowing the lawn. My grandparents were visiting from my father's home state in the west, and it was against their religion to really relax and take anything easy. So letting the grass get long while visiting town was out of the question.
To say my granddad, Oscar, was a quiet or reserved soul, would have been a bold faced lie. He was a character of the first order, with a pointed, booming voice, a “screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke” sense of humor, and he loved to be part of the action. He wasn't really tall, but he was broad and his personality loomed large.

One fine spring day I watched as Oscar hauled our large lawnmower down the driveway and set to work getting the machine to start. Referring neither to directions or any help, Oscar twiddled with all the controls of the mower, heaved on the pull cord a few hundred times, and eventually willed the curious machine to come to life. Now I say ‘curious machine’ because it looked like some sort of a mutant muscle mower a la Big Daddy Roth and Ratfink. Overpowered with an 7.5 horsepower motor, dubiously large rear wheels and horrid baby blue stripes, I wasn’t sure it was a great piece of equipment, but I did know it was great fun to watch with my granddad at the controls.

Once Oscar’d brutalized the machine to the point where it decided to run, the real fun began. With wry grin on his face, the sun on his white BrylCreemed head, and the machine belching clouds of acrid blue toned smoke, Oscar fought the mower the entire length of the driveway. I sat and watched, bewitched by his ability to control this spinning, puking, devil dog of dead grass. As his course began to take him horizontally up the hill, away from the pond and towards the back yard and the prison, the big blue grass belching bastard of a machine began to sputter, yet Oscar stayed the course pouring on more gas.

Fighting gravity’s pull down the slope of the hill and keeping a straight run across the face of the grass was no walk in the park. As he continued onward, perspiring through his gingham long sleeve, he remained smiling, but all the time I could have sworn he was muttering something. Something really harsh in a Norse tongue.

Eventually on the high slope, the machine began to wither and rebound. Then it began to wither and barely rebound. Oscar hurriedly twiddled with knobs and levers, and occasionally it seemed as if he had been successful. The mower held on for another two runs down the entire length of the driveway, and when the mower finally gave in, it did so quickly, and without mistake. It let off a bang that nobody could have mistaken for anything other than a death knell. If the bang didn’t get the idea of the mowers passing across, the black smoke did.
I knew the machine was dead, and in my young mind I knew it metaphysically, as well as literally. I could see doom approaching the smoking mower in a BrylCreem matted, sweat drenched, red gingham fury. If Oscar’s beet red face didn’t display his dissatisfaction for the dead mower well enough, perhaps the torrent of umlaut laden words and spittle coming from his mouth did.

He stopped abruptly, turned to me and asked me to excuse him for a moment. He paused and then asked that I go inside and “Perhaps take a nap.” I did so without being asked twice, because the tension was palpable. As I turned to go inside he was rolling up his sleeves.
The next day there was a brand new mower in our garage that everybody noticed, but few of the adults said anything about. In an aside to me specifically, Oscar quietly mentioned that the old blue mower was of no use to anybody anymore. Nobody could argue with that. I know I wasn't about to.

As planned, Oscar and my grandmother, Betty-Gail, were on their way back west within a week. Something as mundane as "what happened to the mower?" was never mentioned again. As far as MANVIL is concerned, though, the replacement to the old blue beast is the mower pictured above, and unless you’re itching for a work-out, scuffle or impromptu hammer toss, that might be all you’d need for a lawn in the city. Remember, you break it, you bought it, and if you throw it in a lake in a fit of rage, rainbow colored rings will rise from the fuel tank until the fuel has dissipated.

Is this growing up?

Where I was raised, when I was raised, there were scant few Ace Hardwares, there were no Home Depots, nor were there any Lowes. On the island that I still call home there was either City Mill, down by the enormous pineapple, or there was the ubiquitous Sears, jammed into a mall. Such was the nature of DIY back then. If work was to be done, it was often left to contractors or handymen. Homeowners where I lived had neither the inclination or the need to get their hands dirty. Contractors were efficient, timely, inexpensive and trustworthy. Not that they aren't today, it's just that homeowners today are less threatened by the scope of their home improvement dreams than they were.

What I'm trying to say is that there simply wasn't a market for DIY box stores in the islands. If you needed a well built tool, with a bulletproof warranty, you bought the brand that was available. And it didn't seem that there were all that many brands to choose from back then. Either that, or you borrowed the tool you needed from your uncle who worked at the shipyard. And it seemed to me that almost everyone I knew had a calabash uncle who worked at the shipyard.

One day, after a weekend that included the accidental and near-nefarious removal of a golf cart roll-cage, I realized I needed a heavy drill motor for 'metal fabrication' purposes. Due to the nature of the repair, borrowing a drill motor from my father or a calabash uncle would only raise eyebrows. This spur-of -the-moment need forced me to buy one of my first truly adult tools and I say 'adult' meaning more grown-up, as opposed to something from a late night video series. 

I studied what drill motors were available in town from the various vendors around town over the next week. This happened to be pre-internet, so my coffee table was awash in colorful bits of paper from the previous weeks sales sections. I made my choice, and on Saturday morning I prepared to get up and go shopping for the drill I hoped I'd own for the rest of my life. 

I didn't even get my car out of the driveway. What I ended up coming home with that day was a garage sale purchase from a neighbor's open house. It was a behemoth the likes of which would strike fear into the cold, soul-less steel hearts of even the largest of my home DIY drill bits. It wasn't the biggest drill I'd worked with. It wasn't the strongest drill I'd worked with either, what it was, was an old-school, all aluminum bodied tribute to the cold war era of Ike and JFK. A large, dull-silver, cast alloy body with a motor that sounded like a jet powered cement mixer full of pavers. It was probably the best garage sale item I've come across, and it cost me close to nothing. 

After many moons of ownership, the introduction of the internet (not by me of course)and sundry projects all over, it still works. It has outlived many of my other drill motors, with their fancy battery packs, LED-lit 'chuckless' drivers and high impact molded plastic bodies. Which begs the question: Who was the first guy to say "They don't make 'em like they used to?" and can I buy him a beer? If you couldn't tell whether the item above was a drill motor or a ray gun, maybe you could use some MANVIL cards.

Two shovels named Nancy.

Once upon a time, a stonemason came to the job site with a brand new shovel named Nancy. 

Nancy shovel was very excited to go to work, but when the sweaty, flatulent, furry faced man began to dig a trench in the hard packed soil, Nancy wavered. When the man pushed Nancy shovel's blade into the dry ground, she leaned to the right. When the man tried again, Nancy leaned to the left, in order to avoid digging into the packed dirt. This went on for several minutes until finally the man stopped.

"What's the deal Nancy?" Asked the man who looked like a wookie and smelled like an old hockey bag.

"Digging in the dry soil is hard!" muttered Nancy shovel wincing in pain.

"We don't have any other shovels on site. It's up to you, Nancy. We need to dig!" Explained the man while shrugging his plaid covered shoulders.

"OK, I'll try" Nancy replied.

Just then the homeowner came out and approached the furry faced man with a shovel that looked just like Nancy. "In an act of some kismet I have a shovel named Nancy too, and she just loves digging in the hard dirt, but she can't stand spreading the soft garden soil I have. Would you like to trade for a while?"

"Sure, if you don't mind?" said the stonemason. 

The hirsute headed mason took the second Nancy shovel and put her blade on the hard dirt. With some effort he pushed the second Nancy's blade with force and she dug deep into the hard soil. "Wow! This Nancy really does like to dig hard soil!" laughed the worker who looked like an enormous, soiled ewok with glasses.

As the day continued, both Nancy's got to enjoy a hard days work doing what they loved. The first one was able to spend time gleefully shovelling compost for the homeowner. And the second Nancy was able to help the hairy mason dig a footer 40 feet long through hard packed soil. At the end of the day, the homeowner and the stonemason decided to trade shovels for good. As both Nancy's went their separate ways they waved at each other. 

Having identical names doesn't really mean they are the same, even if they look the same. A closer look at the individual is very illuminating.  

If you'd like to get the names right when you are looking at tools, feel free to take a look at MANVIL.