We lost a man of steel this week. I attended his funeral yesterday. Don was born in 1930--you can do the math. He was a metal welding wizard. He worked in metal with the ease that the more skilled members of my family work with wood and concrete, or sarcasm. I always thought that he looked like Will Rogers; he also had friendly philosophical thoughts from time to time. He and his wife were friends of my parents and they played cards together when they lived close. I worked with Don one summer back in 1978 or 79. He managed a farm and I did the unskilled labor: moving sprinkler pipe, fixing fence, clearing the broken straw, hauling and stacking hay and a thousand other tasks. I got $4.00/hour which was rather good wages for an under-size high school kid at the time. He never looked over my shoulder but would sometimes let me know how I could improve on a task when he examined it later.
I remember one time when we were stacking a load of hay. We had to use the hay elevator of the mechanized chain variety. Many people would climb the 20 foot elevator like a ladder to reach the top of the stack prior to activating the elevator. My technique (learned from my father, the undisputed He-Man of the hay bale universe) was to ride the elevator to the top of the stack by placing a foot on one of the paired prongs on the chain which were made to stick into the bales to haul them to the top.
In that instance, I stepped into place while the chain was in neutral and not moving. Don then kicked it into gear. The chain started with a jerk (not me, but the yank or tug type) which knocked me off balance. I slipped and finally fell backward with my Achilles tendon between the two prongs and my heel caught on the uphill side. The elevator was dragging me feet-first to my doom--or at least to potential injury (at the time I was convinced that it was to my certain doom. It was like I was in the desperate clutches of Gollum and we were about to fall over the brink into the molten lava of Mount Doom). After the machine had dragged me for a few uncomfortable feet, he shifted it out of gear so that I could extricate myself. We both laughed about it but his laughter was more genuine than mine. I can't say that I'm a better person for having worked that summer with Don, and I'm sure he was no better off for my association, but I enjoyed our work and our friendship.
***
The Gallows from Warbases Company arrived yesterday. I had to put it together immediately. There were no directions. The large pieces went together easily. The lever assembly was tricky but I eventually deciphered it after staring at the online store picture until my eyes turned into pixels. The trap door mechanism required some thought. I looked for instructions online but didn't find any. I couldn't find any pictures other than the view from the top.
I figured it out and I include a view from beneath the scaffold for anyone who would find that helpful.
As for the ever pressing need to write, I did it. It was a struggle to get to 65K words for several reasons. First, I remembered with some consternation that the rescue scene that I had written last week included the rescue of most of the distressed characters. I had left one of them dangling on the gibbet (which sounds like a way to serve shrimp or something: The special today includes sauteed prawns dangling on the gibbet. I highly recommend them). So I had to rewrite that scene. Time escaped me. By Saturday, I had two days worth of writing to catch up on. Also, I was distracted by the funeral, the gallows assembly, and hanging new blinds for my wife--the blinds were actually for the windows but my wife had selected them. Nevertheless, being the mighty splitter of infinitives and fearless dangler of participles that I am, I worked through the distractions and completed my goal for the week.
I'm rethinking the way I intended to divide this adventure series. I may opt for more, shorter books than for a trilogy of long books. Four to six books that I could sell at a less expensive rate might be more worthwhile, profitable, and fulfilling--the thrill of completing 4-6 books should be greater than that for completing only 3. I may end these in the 80K word range rather than the 120K range.
Next time: I may do reviews of 1632 by Eric Flint and Cthulhu Armageddon by C.T. Phipps. One of these was a DNF for me but I should set forth my reasons.
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