The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

A few years back we came home from a vacation to find a tree had blown down and made a direct hit on my boathouse, limbs punched through the metal roof, rafters broken in half, support poles leaning at precarious angles, nothing you want to find after a relaxing trip to get away from the problems of your world. Fortunately the little sailboat I’d built back in 1990 hadn’t been crushed but it was a close call with the collapsed roof a few inches from smashing it. I don’t sail it much anymore but it’s a much beloved possession.

With some winches and a few fresh poles I managed to jerk the building back upright, sistered up the broken rafters, bandaged up some holes in the roof and figured, well, sure, it was kind of ugly now but worth saving rather than rebuild from scratch. Year after year it kept leaning more and more, but I would shove timbers in front of it to slow it down. This week I emptied the side shed of rough cut lumber, planed the whole she-bang, took out the aluminum I’d stored for glass installations over the years and decided maybe it was time to do a little upgrade on the building so with the sun at my back, a house jack at the ready, couple of new beams and a maul for beating the old ones upright, I went at it optimistically.

But when I would get one corner upright more or less the opposite side would lean worse. I tried shoving poles and beams against that side to keep it from falling over but nothing I did seemed to work. Being an impatient sort, I finally tried to just force the bastard up and into place, got the tall corner sort of squared away before a beam let go and I found myself shouldering the weight of the entire building as it started to fall on me before frantically pulling the support pole into a precarious angle that stabilized things. Momentarily. Back in the rear I latched onto that pole, gave it a little encouragement with my 8 pound maul … and watched the whole she-bang let go, pulling the back support of the boatshed down too.

Lucky for me I wasn’t on the inside with that last tap. Unlucky for me the boatshed let loose too. I could see my little sailboat, the SS Pterodactyl, with part of the roof seemingly resting on its rear transom, a sad sight for this Popeye, just another idiot who sailed into treacherous waters without proper training, no life jacket and no one near to come to the rescue. Some of us never learn….

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