These June days just before summer arrives are see-thru. We find ourselves in the weeds, young growth, green and strong framing our afternoons. Underneath the canoe the panfish flit in and out of the weedy roots in and out of sight. In and out, picky about their bite, like we are about the days that we can escape here. No wind, sunshine, cool enough for bugs to be mostly absent.
Among the lines on my fingers, lines just this side of cuts, from pulling fishing line taut to free up snagged jigs, there’s still the stain of some JB Weld that I was using to fix broken old things and secure metal tails and dorsal fins on my fishing decoys. Black, but now faded brown on the tanned skin so that it looks as if I’ve been staining furniture. Akin to these tannin-stained waters. These small things and the slow, repetitive rocking of the canoe in the breeze, slide together into each other blurring the lines of memory to settle on one in particular. That happens to be one of you.
We pull up to a barn somewhere in rural Illinois and you stop the old truck and we get out and you say something like, “this looks to be about the right amount of old. You wanna knock on the door this time?”
This is how we used to freestyle.
Driving the countryside, usually after work on the backroads, taking our time to get home. Not on a Tuesday, because that was the Chana Sale: a giant junk auction in which folks brought flatbed trailers full of their stuff and usually after emptying them, won enough auction items to go home full up again. Anyway, I remember seeing the heat rise off the hood of the truck as we got out. The way (not so much in Minnesota) but south of here that heat has its own texture, like a sound wave almost, as it ripples through the air.
We parted the waves and “swam” through the humid afternoon towards the farmhouse door.
You said something like, “Good afternoon, my name’s Jim, we’re buying old stuff. We’re pickers. Do you have anything in the old barn you’d like to get rid of?”
And the next thing I knew we were breathing in the half-century old dust of a barn that had been shut up for-ev-er. Inside we found a legit, “barn-find” Harley Davidson under a tarp but you took a half a glance at it and said, “I used to carry a tow rope in the saddle bags of my Indian Scout just to get my friends who drove those things back home.”
We bought a couple of old cupboards with the baseboards rotted off.
The owner of the old farm thought they were worthless.
I thought so too, although even though I hadn’t spotted them because I was focused on the fender of the Harley sticking out from under the tarp, I knew why your eye was drawn to them.
Stepback cupboards with wainscoting. Whether one or two pieces, the tops weren’t the same width as the bottoms, they were set back a step providing a very useful shelf in front of the twin doors. They were not too deep and they worked great as a pantry or for storage. You were not concerned with the loss of four or five inches of dry rot and old water damage on the bottom from the pieces sitting in the dirt of the barn floor for eons. You had become practice-perfect at rebuilding bases and matching woods and refinishing these mostly pine beauties.
I’m learning to see the potential through the old haymow dust and chaff floating through the hotter heat inside old barns. I’m learning not to get stuck in the minutia of the weeds.
I’m learning to look past the not-sobright- but-shiny.
We load up and I’m reminded why we drive the truck instead of the car that gets better gas mileage. It’s all about the potential. What if we need the truck and we don’t have the truck? What if we never stopped and asked? What if we didn’t knock on the stranger’s door? What if we never took a chance? What if we never stepped out -- we wouldn’t find the stepbacks… Back to the canoe, and the weeds. I don’t often get lost in the weeds these days. It’s been a long, hard lesson, not to get bogged down. It’s something that traveling by canoe teaches you, actually… Don’t load up your pack too heavy. You need the pack just like we needed the old truck, but you don’t need to fill it just because you’ve got the space. You need the essentials and extra space is a good thing. A pack full of stuff that you never need to take out of it is just extra weight and baggage. You get it right? Holding on to stuff, feelings, people and stress that only weighs you down like an anchor, well that’s just going to drown you.
Take. A. Step. Back. Take a deep breath. Look for the heat burning away the fog and remember who and what got you here. If you didn’t have a Dad, like I did, then shout out to whomever showed you the ropes.
Somebody had to help you figure out how not to get stuck in the cabbage.
Hey, I gotta go, there’s a fish on my gold bladed Mepps’ spinner! Happy Father’s Day to the best Picker I’ve ever known.
Est. 1987
