Author’s Note – “Build It Right” was one of my first stories when I started writing about a year ago. I’ve learned a lot since then, so I went back and significantly changed (and hopefully improved) it. I also wrote a sequel last year that I am revising and I’m working on a second sequel I hope to finish in the coming weeks. Please give this a read – it will serve as a good base for the new story I have coming soon.
I dreamed a beautiful dream of an epic battle off the coast of Florida between a silver swordfish and me, a master deep sea fisherman. Suddenly three gunshots rang out. I jerked straight up and had no idea where I was. Then it hit me – bed, bedroom, house, home. I was in my room.
“Get up boys!” I heard Dad yell, followed by more pounding on our bedroom door.
What time was it? It was barely light outside, but just enough came through the window for me to see the face of our alarm clock. On the first day of summer break, after staying up late watching The Incredible Hulk and Mission: Impossible, I hope most would agree that a 6:00am wake-up is cruel and unusual.
Off went my covers, which by morning usually meant just a thin sheet; at bedtime, I would start with two blankets covering me, but each of them usually got kicked off during the night because I would start sweating like crazy. Then I would get cold, so I would pull one blanket back on me and the sweating cycle would start again. One day I licked my sheet just to see if sweat really tasted like salt. I probably won’t do that again.
I rolled out of my bed and grabbed my jeans off the floor. I sat back on the bed, slipped my legs into them until my toes were touching the knees of the pant legs, and then jumped off the bed and pulled them on the rest of the way before my feet hit the wood floor. Since I had ripped holes in the toes of most of my socks by pulling them up wrong, this time I slid my feet in until my toes were at the end, then I pulled them over my ankles and up my calves, although I knew they would fall down later because my calves are so skinny. I picked my least dirty t-shirt out of the clothes basket and pulled it over my head. I was dressed and ready to protest.
Johnny hadn’t made quite as much progress. Actually, he was still in bed and I assumed asleep although I could only see a mess of blonde hair and the toes of one foot poking out from under his covers. I picked up one of my pillows and gave him a whack on the legs. I figured that was a safe place to hit him rather than on the head, which mattered because if he got riled up after a head shot, he would probably grab me and put me in a headlock. He could do it too, because he was three years older and about thirty pounds heavier.
After another whack on the legs, Johnny got up robotically and dressed with slitted eyes. Since we had taken a holiday from brushing our teeth last night in celebration of the end of the school year, we tamed our dragon breath then headed downstairs into the kitchen wondering what wonderful adventure Dad had in mind for us. Was it to be fishing at Sweezy’s Pond, or target shooting with our new twenty gauges? More likely, he’ll want us to fix the fence along the hillside edge of our property so the cows won’t wander off again into the Campbell’s land.
Dad must have been outside, so we wolfed down a bowl of Sugar Smacks before he came in the house. Despite orders to report to the backyard, we finished another half bowl quickly, threw the dirty dishes on top of the ones from last night and met him by the open field next to the pole barn. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a huge pile of wood stacked along the side of the pole barn along with tools, ladders, and a bunch of other stuff. This didn’t look good.
“Boys,” Dad announced, “We are going to build a barn this summer.”
The groans from Johnny and me were probably heard across the whole county. “But Dad,” I said, “It’s summer break! We were going to practice our target shooting so we’d be ready for pheasant hunting season in the fall. How are we going have time to do that and build a barn, too?” I thought this was a great point and I waited for Dad to agree and skip the whole barn-building plan.
Dad folded his arms across his chest like he did when I said I was too sick to go to school. “Boys, building a barn is more important than messing around all summer. We’ve needed a barn since the old one fell in during that storm last month. Consider yourselves drafted.”
Dad liked to talk in military terms because it reminded him of his days in the Marines.
“But I will double your allowances since we’ll be working a lot this summer. We’ll have to take care of chores first thing in the morning, and then get to work on the barn.”
Now, that extra money would come in handy for rides, games, cotton candy and saltwater taffy at the state fair in August. While I could come up with other good reasons why we shouldn’t have to help build a barn, I figured he wouldn’t listen. I could tell Johnny was thinking the same thing. We just hung our heads and stood there.
“So fall in!” Dad said, trying to build our enthusiasm with his most excited voice. “Just think how good you’re going to feel when you step back and look at our beautiful new barn and know you had a hand in building it.”. Yippee.
Dad had staked out a flat area behind and to the east of our house where the barn would be raised. Our first job was to dig up the sunflower garden on that spot. As we pulled them from the ground, I got one last sweet smell of nectar from them. I shoved seeds into my pockets, but Johnny said they weren’t ready to eat yet, so I threw them at him until he dropped his shovel and started throwing dirt snowballs at me.
When we finished that work, we started digging postholes – Dad said we had to dig down two feet by hand, and then he would dig another four feet with an auger. He said the foundation was the most important part of the building. I could tell this was going to take a while!
The hole digging left our backs sore and our hands splintered, and sakrete got all over our hands and arms, partly because we stuck our fingers in it to carve in our initials after it was in the holes and before it dried. Dad told us to wash it off quick because it could burn our skin, so we ran over to the hose on the side of the house. I made it there first, and I slowly washed mine off while Johnny waited. When he turned his head, I soaked him good and then dropped the hose and ran away as fast as I could back towards the barn. Score one for me!
The next day was a Sunday, and after we reminded Dad that God got to rest on that day, he let us have the day off. We needed it. Being thirteen years old, I didn’t have a lot of muscles, but what I did have were sore, so Johnny and I went over to Sweezy’s and spent the day doing cannonballs off the float and lazily swimming in the cool water. Johnny also grabbed some flat rocks and we had a stone skimming contest. I managed a personal record ten skips on one throw, but Johnny beat that with a Sweezy’s record fourteen skips! Johnny carved his name, the date and his record number of skips on the tree above all the previous record holders and created a thirteen-and-under list on another tree so I could record my throws, too
We walked back home and as we got close to the house we caught a strong whiff of evil; we knew what would be waiting. Dad wasn’t much of a cook so most nights we had simple stuff like burgers, hot dogs, or chicken spaghetti, but our family had a tradition that Sunday night meant chili or chicken potpie. Dad made a mean chili, as hot as road asphalt in August, and it took a lot of Pepsi to flush it down before it burned all the skin off your throat. We had chicken potpie last week, the store-bought kind, which meant chili was coming tonight. Johnny and me weren’t the biggest chili fans, but we knew Dad wanted the tradition that Mom started to live on.
Before we started the next morning, Dad said he forgot to tell us the most important thing. “As your grandpa would say: Build it right and sleep well at night. This barn we’re building has to last us thirty years, and it will if we build it right. There’s also a few rules we’re going to follow: first, if you aren’t sure, ask; second, don’t settle for ok even if you have to do it over again to get it right; and third, if you make a mistake, own it and fix it.”
We started framing the structure of the barn with 2×6 pieces of cedar. I liked the smell of cedar. It reminded me of Christmas trees, which reminded me of presents, which reminded me of the tackle box I got last year, which reminded me of fishing, which I wished I was doing now. Framing the barn was easier than posthole digging, but after about three hours Dad saw me yawning and wiping sweat off my face.
“Fall out soldiers,” Dad bellowed from what would become the north entrance to Barley. Johnny and me decided on that name; it just had a nice ring – Barley the Barn. We climbed down our ladders and followed Dad over to the picnic table under the red oak tree to suck down some sweet tea. We drank and rested while Dad started telling us stories about the old barn, the one that fell down.
“I spent many days in that barn when I was your age, boys. One of my chores was to muck out the stalls every day, so I had to get used to the smell of cow manure. Actually, I just kind of lost my sense of smell, thank God. When I’d finish that, I’d milk the cows just like I taught you boys. Even when I wasn’t doing chores though, I’d stay there and talk to your grandpa while he worked. Besides taking care of the cows and horses, it seemed liked he was always welding something in that barn, a tractor wheel, a plow tooth, something. There would be so many sparks flying around, it looked liked July 4th and it’s amazing the barn didn’t catch on fire with all that hay around. But it never did.”
Dad kept talking until he said the break was over and we all went back to work. The framing took us three weeks to finish. I did everything perfectly, except the three times when I tripped over boards and face-planted, and when I lost my hammer in the grass, and when I twice stepped on nails. Dad only yelled at me once, when I shook the ladder while Johnny was way up at the top. Other than those adventures, the framing days were pretty much the same unless it rained, which it didn’t do often enough.
When the framing was done, we built the roof trusses, twelve of them. Dad said the roof was the most important part of the barn, but I was learning that he said that about everything. We worked on the trusses in two and a half days and after the last one was built; Dad called for lunch and went back to telling us more barn tales.
“Got my first kiss in the old barn, you know. It was Shelly Butler who lived over on Chief Noonday Road back then. She was a friend of my sister so she was over here a lot. I thought she was pretty and I thought she had her eye on me, too. One day, on her birthday, I kissed her right on the lips and said, ‘Happy birthday Shelly’. You see boys, welding sparks weren’t the only sparks flying in that barn!”
Sparks? Dad kissed a girl and she started sparking? Does that mean something that I should get? Maybe he had a bunch of static electricity, like he had rubbed a balloon on his head before he did it?
Dad said, “You know…sparks!”
I looked over at Johnny and saw him pretending to kiss and hug a barn pole. “Oh, sparks!”
A year ago, I know I would have thought that was gross. But girls are more interesting now that I’m a young man. “So what happened then?” I asked Dad, knowing they didn’t get married because our mom’s name was Eileen.
Dad slapped his thighs, threw his head back and busted up. “She didn’t know what to do. She looked at me and started to smile, but then narrowed her eyes and said ‘William, don’t you ever do that again’ and she ran off. Didn’t see her for a couple of weeks after that and when I did, she didn’t look me in the eye anymore. I did notice her balling her hand up into a fist when I got close to her one time, so I figured I better not try that again.”
“Did Mom know about this?” I asked. She might not have liked Dad kissing another girl.
“Heck, I didn’t even meet your mom till about fifteen years later. The only person who was there was your grandpa, and he got a good laugh out of the whole thing. Still remember what he said too, ‘Build it right, son. Slow and steady will get the job done’.”
So that’s where that saying came from. Interesting that Grandpa seemed to often talk in rhymes.
“Guess I was like most boys, thinking their dads were born old and didn’t understand what it was like to be young and in love,” Dad said.
In love! Now I was sure Mom didn’t know about this.
After hearing about Dad’s romance as a boy, we went back to work on the roof. But I wondered what it was like kissing a girl. I didn’t know if I’d be any good at it because I had never done it. How do you practice kissing? What if I chickened out if I had the chance? I didn’t see myself being as brave as Dad: after all, he did become a Marine, so he must have always been brave. Now I was worried because there was all this pressure to kiss somebody and be good at it right away. Guess I better start looking for a girl who would want to kiss me..
I thought about this all afternoon and when we finished hanging the trusses and quit for the day, I laid down in the soft grass on the hill next to the other side of the pole barn, thinking. Dagger, our old barn cat, laid down next to me and pushed against my leg. She had probably the longest tail of any cat alive, so when she moved it back and forth, it tickled both of my legs at the same time. I felt bad because she had to sleep outside after the old barn fell down; she was impatiently waiting for us to finish building Barley. We both looked up into the sky for an answer to our problems.
Dad and Shelly Butler. If Dad had married Shelly, she’d have been our mom and she’d still be here. I’d have a dad and a mom, like all the other kids around here. It wasn’t Mom’s fault she got sick, but maybe Shelly wouldn’t have…
I almost punched myself in the face for thinking that. I hope Mom couldn’t hear my thoughts from Heaven, ‘cause I didn’t want another mom, I just wanted her here.
I hadn’t noticed him walk up to me, but when Dad lightly tapped me on the leg with the toe of his boot, I sat up fast and said, “What?”.
He could tell I was thinking about something, I guess, and when he asked, “What’s up bud?” I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t really want to talk to Dad about Mom and make him get sad again.
I said, “Nothing”, hoping that would be enough.
Dad stood there for a minute looking at me, and I prayed he didn’t see any trace of tears. He finally said, “OK, let’s get some dinner”.
Half the summer was over now and we still had a lot of work to do to finish Barley. Once the roof was in place, it felt like a real building for the first time. But now Barley needed walls. I had never seen more two-inch galvanized nails in my whole life (not even at Dorsheln’s Farm Store) and we were going to have to pound all of them through the wood walls into the posts and crossbeams. Sore arms, here we come!
After two days of this, I was pretty sure I could hit a nail on the head a hundred times in a row with my eyes closed. Johnny said to try my left hand, but when I did I missed the nail head about as often as I hit it. With all the pounding the three of us were doing, I was probably going deaf, too.
During our afternoon break one day, we were all pretty quiet. Johnny seemed like he was in a funk, which happened some days for no reason I could tell. Dad hadn’t spoken much all day when he finally said, “Did I ever tell you boys about how I met your mother?” Like I said, we didn’t talk about Mom much. Mostly I just remembered how she loved Johnny and me and Dad, and how she did things moms do around a house that kids love. I remember her making apple pies and chocolate chip cookies, washing my hair in the kitchen sink and rubbing it with a towel until it was dry but crazy messy, and kissing the top of my head before I went to school every day. We had a few pictures of her; one from high school, one in a fancy dress with Dad standing next to her in a suit (he must have borrowed it because I never saw it in the house) and one sitting on a bed with me lying next to her when I was a baby..
We knew she was from Iowa and had moved here when she was about our age. She had lived at home with her mom until she and Dad got married. I don’t think her mom liked Dad and we never her saw her much before she passed. Mom didn’t have any sisters or brothers and since Dad’s sister had moved to Virginia years ago, we didn’t have any aunts or uncles or cousins or any other family around.
Anyway, Dad didn’t wait for an answer, which was OK because Johnny and me always wanted to know more about her. “When your grandpa died about twenty years ago, I moved back here and took over the farm. The place was in decent shape even though your grandpa was in his 70’s when he passed. He still did all the work around here himself, too. The one thing he didn’t do was fix the barn. The roof leaked, the paint had peeled back so bad the bare wood was starting to rot in a bunch of places and that dirt floor, bot that was a mess. I worked most nights fixing it up. I patched the roof, put in a concrete floor and gave it a new coat of paint and that barn looked almost brand new. This was about 1978 and I know that because a friend of mine from the VFW came by and asked if they could hold their annual fundraiser dance in the barn that year. They held that dance every year and this was the fifth one, five years after our boys came back from Vietnam.”
Dad never went to Vietnam, I knew that, but he always was proud of his days in the Marines and it didn’t surprise me that he would do something to help veterans.
He continued, “They brought in a country band and probably two hundred people showed up. Now I was a heck of a two-stepper in those days, but I hadn’t been out dancing that night yet. I went to the bar to get a beer and there was your mother. I had seen her around and thought she was cute but I hadn’t ever talked to her. I said hi and she said hi and then she said, ‘Have you been out on the dance floor’ and I said nope, and she said, ‘Don’t you dance?’ which was clearly an invitation to ask her to dance, right?”
Johnny said, “Maybe she just wondered if you danced, you know, or she was just starting conversation?”
That made sense to me. But Not to Dad, “Geesh, you sound just like her. She always said she wasn’t asking but I know better. Anyway, we went out to dance and didn’t stop until the band was done for the night. You know, boys, any man who can dance is sure to in demand by the ladies. That’s how I met your mother.”
Now I really had problems. Not only did I have to find a girl and kiss her, but I had to dance as well. I knew right then that I was doomed.
Out of desperation, I asked, “What if you had- “
Dad was done talking for now. “Let’s get back to work boys,” he said.
The walls went up and all that was left to do was pour the concrete for the floor and paint the walls and then Barley would be a real barn. Dad brought in premix concrete in a big turning truck and poured it so all we had to do was level the floor and let it dry. Painting was another story because by now it was mid-August so it was like ninety-five degrees every day. We worked in our shorts with no shirts; because of the heat, our shirts just got all sweaty and stuck to our skin, and I didn’t need any help getting sweaty. Boy, did we get sunburned. My skin was beet-red, but Johnny’s looked more orange. His feet were blinding white because he wore shoes, and with his blonde hair, he looked like an upside-down piece of candy corn.
We finished the first coat of paint at dinnertime on Saturday, and we were so close to finishing Dad decided we were going to work our first Sunday of the summer. Saturday night we celebrated by cooking steaks and baked potatoes on the charcoal grill and eating under the red oak tree. Johnny was the biggest carnivore of the three of us, so he had a huge steak and still managed to finish what I didn’t eat of mine, too.
All of us were pretty beat that night so once we finished eating and talking for a while, Dad said, “One day and a wake-up, boys”, which I learned meant we were done tomorrow, so we hit the sack.
Sunday came and we were ready to finish the job. We burned through half the painting in the morning and then sat down for lunch. I just had to ask again.
“Dad, after the dance with Mom, what happened?”
He smiled and said, “Well, I drove her home since it was late. She was living about three miles away then, still living with her mom. I walked her to her door and I figured after all that dancing and the ride home, I had earned a goodnight kiss. But I decided not to ask for one after thinking about it”
“Did you chicken out?” I asked, hopefully.
“I was in the Marines, boy. You don’t chicken out if you were in the Marines. No, I really liked your Mom right away. So while I was standing there with her at her front door, for some reason my dad popped into my head and I thought of what he would say if he was still here: ‘Build it right, son’. I thought maybe I’d take it slow with her, so I just said good night and left. Your mom told me later that she was real impressed, thought I must have been a real gentleman. After that I called her up, we started dating and then going steady and a couple years later we got married.”
“I thought that ‘build it right’ thing was about building barns,” I said. I felt a little like I did when I was eight and thought bulls were just cows with horns.
“Well, it is son. But some lessons you learn in life end up being about more than you thought when you learned them. Thanks to my old man, I learned to build a good barn and I got a mighty fine wife too, your Mom. A lot of the reason why was I took the time to do it right when I was doing something important”
After that, we knocked off the last coat of paint and then stepped back a hundred feet and admired our work. Barley was a good barn, and even though fishing would have been better, I learned a lot that summer about barns, our mom and girls. After being scared to death at first, I was pretty sure it would be OK. All I had to do was take it slow when I met someone I liked and build it right – and learn to dance!
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