The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Randy Thornton has been a contractor since we first met back in about 1990 when I was thinking about building my own house and leaving the shack we’d lived in for 17 hardscrabble years. He wanted me to have him build it, you know, go to the bank, get a 30 year mortgage, pay the interest, stay in debt most of my damn life, something I told him I wouldn’t do.

“I get it, Skeeter,” he confided. “I’m going to build my own home some day, same reason.” Yah, two boyz with hammers, limited skill sets, plenty of spit and sass. Took me two years, cost me a total of $43,000 start to finish. Randy, in the meantime, built plenty of houses, the first just remodels, additions, simple affairs, but by the end, mansions for the rich, all the while living in the 1930’s house he’d originally rented but now owned along with 17 acres that adjoined our 7.

We’d pretty much lost touch over the years, mostly after he’d found Jesus and was admonished to avoid us sinners. The church did provide him with plenty of clients and maybe that’s proof enough as to the rewards of faith. But one day I found him under his 4 wheel ATV in a blackberry thicket where he’d been spraying weedkiller along the property line. Jesus wasn’t going to get that half ton vehicle off his chest but he had me to help so maybe it was the same thing. Might have saved his life, nobody nearby to hear him calling for help.

I guess Randy was appreciative, maybe even a bit sheepish about dropping our friendship when, after all, we’d been close for quite a few years. But bygones, as they say, are bygones. To celebrate his survival we went up to the shop next to the barn and he popped a couple of cold ones, religious strictures be damned. Temporarily.

“So you never built your own house,” I said, sitting in the fanciest shop on the South End, arched mahogany doors, stained glass by someone other than me, beveled leaded windows, architectural beams overhead, a Taj Mahal of a workshop. But he still lived in the little house down by the road.

“I keep trying to. But Janie can’t make up her mind what kind of house she wants. First it was a Victorian farmhouse, lots of gingerbread, even had Harold at Puget Architecture draw up plans. Then she changed her mind. Too old fashioned. We went through I couldn’t tell you how many design changes. One story. Two. Modern. Frank Lloyd Wright. Two or three different architects, a couple of designers. Every time I thought we were ready to go, nope, she’d think of something better. Mostly worried that the latest pick wouldn’t be up to snuff. Afraid to pull the trigger.”

“I got clients like that,” I said. “Keep changing their mind, find something wrong with the design or the colors or the weather that day. Some just bag the whole thing, no way they’re going to take a chance and be wrong. They want something that’s perfect. I try to tell em art isn’t about being perfect, maybe just the opposite. I spoze Janie thinks houses are the same way. Plus you got to live in it if you make a mistake.”

Randy muttered something under his breath. We opened another beer. I guess heaven could wait. Why not, heaven might not come even close to our expectations, just a colossal disappointment?