Dick's Hideaway

Dick MacKenzie - www.dickshideaway.com

It’s summer

Saturday was a day that began beautifully and just got better and better as it went on.
It began late Friday afternoon when my office called to say a parcel had arrived. It was my copy of “Freight Train Graffiti” which I immediately packed for camp. The evening was topped off with a little barbeque and hot tub in the dusk.
At dawn I sprang up, ready to plant flowers and tomatoes, assemble a small storage shed, and dig into a half dozen other projects.
The morning at sunrise was cool, but the planting - well, some of the planting - went well. I stopped often to sip some coffee and sneak peeks at the pictures in my new book.
Eventually the sun grew warm, encouraging me to shed a sweater. The planting dragged slower and slower, sips of coffee became more frequent, and picture gazing began sharing space in my imagination with happy looks at the lumber piles soon to be a new 28’ x 40’ floor and deck in my White Pine Palace. Among other visions, I saw an open air dance and barbeque.
Once Mary got up we had breakfast on the deck as we gazed out over the water, and then I thought maybe a little nap would help prepare me to tackle the storage shed.
Some time later I emerged fresh, the day was becoming very warm, and I was down to a tee shirt. With good intentions I got comfortable sitting outside, opened the instruction manual for that damn shed, and saw step one - level the ground... well, okay, maybe I’ll look at some more train pictures, I thought. That was pleasant enough to call for a glass of wine, so I poured one, and then guiltily opened the assembly manual again, only to be overcome by pictures of screws and metal strips and a left-handed guy drilling holes. So I got out my power drill and plugged in the battery charger to get ‘er all ready to go.
Then I poured another glass of wine, took off my tee shirt (it was really getting warm), and read the foreward in my new book.
That’s pretty much the story of the next couple hours. What an astounding, dreamy day. Wine and imagination held hands and skipped playfully through a wonderful summer day in May.
Barefooted and shirtless I made one more valiant attempt to assemble the shed. “Those screws aren’t going to drive themselves, you know,” I chided myself. And then I remembered in the nick of time that I shouldn’t drink and drive. And that was that. It was all the excuse I needed to close the manual and walk away from that project.
Earlier in the morning I had caught a small whitefish from the dock, so I decided, since the shed project was finished for the day, and quite a bit of the planting was done, I should smoke the fish. So I did that. The next couple hours had a thin haze of applewood smoke wafting over the deck, combined with the pungent aroma of the Cuban cigar I figured I deserved.
By mid afternoon the heat had become uncomfortable and I found myself basking in the sun wearing nothing but a baseball cap. I realized the honeymoon was over, though, when my hunny looked over and spied the big full moon lounging in a comfy chair. “Hey, I have to sit on that cushion, too, you know!” It’s my belief that no words are adequate to respond in that kind of situation, so I offered her some of my smoked fish.
The rest of the day was pleasant, filled with fantasies, barbeque, hot tub, reading, and sporadic plans to get that shed put together in the morning right after I finished planting the rest of the flowers and seeds.
Sunday was too hot to do much work. I did get most of the rest of the planting done, but otherwise hated to waste such gorgeous weather.