The first spring after Airika and I bought our house, I built a
chicken coop. This isn’t a huge deal; people build things all the time. But
this beast was outside of my comfort zone by about 12 of the country miles we
now owned. Miles that we bought almost entirely because of how I was raised.
Because of my dad, who never met a neighbor he liked.
I’d ordered a kit. This had to be a large, secure structure.
It had to keep 25 really dumb birds safe in the summers and warm in the soulless
Minnesota winters. I’d built plenty of things before and fixed plenty of
others, but I’d never tackled anything with this scale; nothing with structure.
So I ordered a 12x12 shed kit that I’d
adapt for the needs of Our Filthiest Bird™. A kit would give me plans, cut and
marked pieces, maybe even some pre-assembled bits. Things that were vital for my success.
What I needed was a kit. What I got (three weeks late, I
might add) was a bigass pile of 4x8 plywood, a bunch of 2x4s, and some
shingles. No plans. No pre-cuts. No markings of any sort. You might as well
have dumped me in the Amazon rainforest with a handsaw and said, “Survive.”
Apoplectic, I nearly called the company to come get this
pile of raw materials and give me my money back. I was simply not equipped
mentally, mechanically or emotionally to spin a plank pile into any sort of
dwelling. Two things kept me from making the call. 1) We had a lamp-heated
cardboard box filled with 25 chicks who would soon need a proper home; and 2)
my dad.
Dad’s shadow -like all dads’ shadows, I imagine- greys the
natural light over everything I do. When I buy a piece of clothing, a tiny part
of my brain rises up and asks “Would you wear that in front of Dad?” This is
why my white-collar, professional self still almost exclusively wears jeans,
workboots and flannel. People say I dress like a hipster, but I assure you that
this is laughably and diametrically wrong. I’m a grown-ass man who still
dresses like his daddy. Which is why my
nipples have never grazed the inside of a polo shirt.
That shadow colors everything in my life, for better and
worse. Even when I’ve made peace with the fact that sometimes, Dad’s way isn’t
the only way, I still feel a tug, an unseen finger that I’m caving and doing it
the easy way. Tires, for instance. Every time I drop a couple hundred bucks on new
tires (always the cheapest I can get), I feel stupid. There are perfectly good
tires sitting in every junkyard in America, and I could have them for almost
free if I just wanted to go pull them off a junker and re-mount them myself.
I’ve been paying cash-money for new tires for 20+ years, and it still always
feels like the coward’s way out. The lazy man’s way. Literally the last two
words you’d use to describe my old man would be “cowardly” and “lazy.”
Back to the coop. Phone in hand, I stared at this pile of
gibberish, preparing to abandon the whole project. Maybe the chickens could
live in the basement? But then I felt that tug. That subliminal disapproval
from 800 miles and 25 years away. “Disapproval” isn’t exactly the right word. I
don’t think Dad was truly ever anything but proud of all his kids. So he
wouldn’t disapprove of my cowardly choice, exactly. But he would ask the
question, as matter-of-factly as you’ve ever heard: “Why don’t you just do it?”
As if learning the basic tenets of housing structure was something you could
just DO.
But it WAS something you could do. If growing up with our
lunatic father taught us anything, it’s that everything is, quite literally,
possible if you have a book and some gumption. When I was 8, our house had some
major electricity problems. Hire a pro? CACKLE. No. Dad got a book from the
library and he rewired the entire house with a toddling assistant. Not long
after that, he decided to turn our giant cinderblock garage-type structure into
a workshop. So we wired THAT for largescale power tools, built 17 giant
worktables, insulated it with that satanic pink fiberglass in the heart of
August, installed a furnace. Skills he didn’t have when he started. Etc and
etc., forever and ever.
So I’m there staring despondently at this 6-foot pile of
sticks and thinking about my dad. At the time, he was still somewhat active,
despite being pretty much crippled by arthritis. He’d relatively recently decided
that he needed to make his own metals. I’m not sure the exact impetus for this
decision; the cost of lead, the scarcity of pewter at the time, boredom,
whatever. He had his fingers in a lot of projects, but he had a milling machine
and time on his hands, so WHY NOT learn metallurgy? WHY NOT build yourself a
smelting pot, scour junkyards for wheel weights and other scrap metals, melt
them down to their component parts, then use the relevant compounds in exact
ratios to create, like, a harder version of pewter (because it has more
antimony in it or something)? This was Dad in a nut(ty)shell: Fuck it, why not?
I mean, the dude once built a radio-controlled shark fin
only to convince a 5-year-old that there was a monster in the pond out back. He
once planned to build a jet engine that he would mount on a go-cart frame (he
didn’t do that one for some reason, but he did learn how). He built multiple
upside down bikes (google it). He adopted a baby raccoon AND a baby possum. He
watched every program about bears that were ever programmed. He taught himself
oil painting, and was pretty goddamn good at it. For reasons that will forever
remain a mystery, he thought that shooting handguns with his natural left hand
wasn’t useful enough, so he sort of taught himself to be ambidextrous. Why? Why
not?
If you have the tools, why not do it?
Well, I had a saw. I had a nailgun. I had YouTube (something
Dad didn’t have until it was too late to really use it). Why not just build
this fucker? Dad would.
“Dad would.” I moved out of the house when I was 18. I have
lived at least 75 miles away from him for my entire adult life, and 750 miles
away for the last decade. We’ve been in the same room together MAYBE 10 times
since 2008, and every one of those times he was more withered than the last.
More stooped. Lesser. But the shadow never faded.
The last time I saw him, just days before he died, he was
barely there but he still seemed like he was up to something. Plotting his next
project. Tired and barely hanging on, his
shadow remained as thick and tenacious as ever. And not just to mom and us
kids. When people found out he was sick
–people who have never met him, mind you- they spoke of his legend. This
happens somewhat regularly anyway, but more so of late. “Hey, isn’t your dad
the dude who punched out that biker for saying something rude to your mom at
2am in an Elm Road parking lot?” they’ll ask. “Was it your dad who made those
wooden monster feet so he could leave tracks all over the place and scare the neighborhood
kids?” “Was he the guy who taught all his kids and grandkids to dive for cover
if an empty beer can rolled into their midst JUST IN CASE IT WAS A GRENADE?”
Yeah, we had grenade protocols. We STILL have grenade
protocols.
He’s gone now, but his legend lives on. His shadow is more
like a golden hue, coloring the lives of a lot of people. It will always color
mine.
Build the fucking chicken coop. Dad would.
