Decorations of Remnants

If you go into my shop you will see all sorts of things. Things that to many have no good purpose. But to me are priceless, at least priceless because to most they are worthless pieces of junk. I do not know when I first began to hold onto things. I think it started when I began to spend days afield. At 14 when I harvested my first squirrel I remember my brother and I skinning it and “tanning” the hide, it still decorates my walls, missing most of its fur, but it is there in its special place on my wall and in my mind. And each time I look at it I remember that fateful day, the smell in the air the old abandoned house where it occurred. I remember cocking the single shot 16 gauge and squeezing the trigger, the feeling when the squirrel fell to the ground. I remember looking at it and feeling sad and proud at the same time. I still get that feeling each time I approach my harvested quarry.

In my shop you will find broken fishing reels and boots that no longer fit. There are tackle boxes full of lures missing hooks, plastic worms resembling tie dyed shirts and Rapala’s missing more paint than is left on them. There are bags full of empty shotgun shell boxes. I have so many empty shotgun shell boxes I had to store the “extras” under the house. I have flies that resemble dust balls. The old Ben Pearson bow I used to harvest my first deer, a collection of bent arrows, and bows missing stings. In one corner is the salt water rod and reel from a grandfather I never knew except through the stories I listened to around the dinner table. Sometimes I bring it from the corner, dust it off and imagine him hauling in a spot at Myrtle Beach, back when it was a beach. You will find pieces of wood from most of the projects I have ever begun and could not throw away the remnants. I prefer to call them remnants instead of scraps; there is more dignity in being a remnant than being labeled as scrap. Scrap carries a distinction of uselessness, while remnant implies “to be used later”.

My wife once asked me when I was going to clean out my mess. I was so insulted by the use of the word “mess” when referring to my place that I stayed out there consoling my things for two days. This is not a mess, on the contrary, it is a part of me, and it all has memories attached. On the pegboard is the lure I used to catch one of my biggest bass, a few flies I tried to make pretty but do not resemble anything alive or dead. I have empty brass from pistols, rifles and the like with no reloader to make use of them, but I always pick them up and bring them home. I have turkey calls that are more suited for paperweights than calling in turkeys. I have remnant antlers, saved during my stint at carving, an exercise, among many, in futility. But I may need them one day. So they too decorate my workbench. Clutter to one person is decoration to another. I prefer decorations of remnants, rather than clutter of scraps. It gives my things meaning and purpose.

You will also see here experienced fishing rods, long past their usefulness save for the memory they bring back. Shotgun reloaders, fly tying tools; sharpening stones, of differing types, soft, medium and hard, big ones and small ones, single stones and tri stones, grinding wheels, broken files, and a rasp that I have never used. The honing stone my dad had as a boy, framed with quarter round on a 2x4 when he was 10. Still the best stone I have.

When the rare time occurs that I invite someone to my place I am often asked where my trophies are from my many days afield. I stand in my shop and look around and point. “These are my trophies” I proclaim in a matter of fact manner. Each item has a story, each a memory, a recollection of a time, an experience; and I begin to share, one by one some of the memories. After all, I explain the real trophies of our times afield are not the animals on our walls, of which I have several; rather it is the times well spent, alone or with others. Those are the real trophies. Those are the real treasures, and these remnants remind me of times. There is the rifle casing from my moose. A simple piece of spent brass to many, to me it represents friendships made and the northern light witnessed for the first time. It represents blueberries as far as the eye can see, pancakes stashed for future use, bear tracks along a river, and cold days and even colder nights.

The faded orange hats, remind me of chasing grouse in Pennsylvania with a dear friend long gone except in my memory. Worn canvas vests, bring back days sitting beside my dad on his annual dove shoot when I acted as retriever. Three left handed gloves and two right, all carrying different patterns. The dull pocket knives honed past usefulness collect dust and horde memories of skinning raccoons, and squirrels.

No these are not scraps of old stuff, they are remnants of times, times with friends, times experiencing nature, times of solitude and times of camaraderie with those we care about. Clutter, scraps, junk, call them what you wish, but to me, they are decorations of remnants that collect in my mind, times well spent.

Piddling

I love winters bite, I love the barren trees and the nakedness of the mountains. There is something about the smell of pulling out sweaters, and old coats that invigorates my soul. Unlocking my coat closet and seeing that weathered Carhartt leads me to reflect on the times gone and those to come. Winter is where my favorite memories are made. Chasing whitetails on frosty mornings, pursuing squirrels with my sons, chopping wood for the seldom used fire place. I long for winter. Except when it rains. Cold and rain do not fit well with my aging body, it is similar to mixing bourbon with milk. Rain is for the spring, and bourbon is meant for ice. But when it rains in winter, then more than any time of year I find myself looking for something to do.

Putting on my rubber boots I make the journey to my shop. Some men I understand have a basement where they go on such days. I could never have such a thing, it seems to me to be akin to a conjoined twin, individuals, never really apart. Seeking solitude and never being able to get it. So out I trudge. The familiar call comes from the wife, “where are you going on a day like this?” I pause and consider a lecture of ducks and horrific weather, and how the mallards fly low in cloud cover, or how the geese tend to hunker down by the sand bar blind, but she knows that, having seen me on many occasion go out after them on days like this. “I’m just going to piddle around for a while.” I state and head out through the rain for the comforts of my palace.

When we first married I remember giving this statement and I was greeted with a response I guess I never contemplated. “What is piddling?” she asked as seriously as a confessionary to a priest. It was then I knew for sure she was a bone-a-fide city girl and needed some educating. “Piddling, dallying in the trivial activities that need doing, but really do not matter at all.”

That is what I do on cold rainy days. I love to piddle. And if you are like me, I bet you do to.

Many a man has occupied hours of his life in the joy of piddling. It is an art form that many participate in, and few of us master. It is spending hours doing nothing and accomplishing little and enjoying every minute of it. Void of televisions and phone calls, it is finding this and that and figuring out what to do with them. It is tying broken leaders into one that will never be used, just to see if you can actually connect a 4x tippet to 20lb mono. Studying, calculating and surmising that it could be done if a blood knot or nail knot was used with appropriate saliva. It is drilling holes in spent brass to make key chains, gluing antler burrs onto old belt buckles. Straightening arrows, untangling the mess of an old tackle box that some how occurs no matter how hard you try to prevent it. Sharpening knives that do not need sharpening. And visualizing our next day afield.

Piddling I have learned is fast becoming a lost art as me migrate from our rural ancestry to the suburbs. It is being surpassed with the pressure to make soccer practice and little league, with piano lessons and PTA we have lost the art of loosing ourselves among the trifle and unimportant. But not me, I hang onto this art and protect it with the vigor of a security guard at the Krispy Kreme. I will piddle and I will enjoy every minute of it.

To do this without causing a coup-de-tat of the shop, occasionally I have to make something productive of my time there, so sporadically I will tie a fly or two, reload some shells for the embarrassment of a skeet field. I find myself refinishing old gun stocks again, wrapping serving on worn out bow strings. And intermittently repairing something from the house. Once I actually sawed the legs off of a bar stool for my wife. “What in the Sam hill took you so long to saw four legs off that bar stool?” “I was only out there three hours.” came the reply on my proud achievement in completing the task so quickly. I then began explaining that such a task takes great skill and that I was trying to calculate the potential weight load this stool would bear should her sister decide to come for a visit, then needing to miter the angels at precisely 15.335 degrees to account for the earths tilt at out latitude not to mention our sinking foundation to give it the proper alignment with our crooked table that it needed. - Somewhere between the earths tilt and the lunar eclipse she just turned and walked away leaving me to enjoy my piddling.

Piddling is where we get blowguns from old arrows too bent to shoot accurately but straight enough to launch a wire nail thirty feet with deadly accuracy. It is where we get our ideas for beer can turkey calls, and hide our chewing tobacco from the children. It is where we take scraps of antlers and make a vase, where old pieces of leather come to life as quiver decorations. Some of my finest ideas have come while enjoying the trifle and unimportant. It is a place to let your mind go and enjoy some work with your hands.

There is still something pure about being able to work with your hands, if it is taking an old galvanized pipe and turning it into a trap rod, or window weights into boat anchors. It is simple and complicated and few can find so much to do with so little as one can who piddles.

One such piddling venture got me to transform the old frame from a front tined garden tiller and a 35 gallon barrel and into a wheel barrow. I used that wheel barrow for years, pushing it proudly across our yard, hauling kindling and wood for the wood heater.

It is in piddling that I have had some of my most intimate moments with myself. It is a time to reflect, to clean guns and remember that squirrel in the thicket that always seems to get away. To pull out the fishing rod and wonder if the bass under the willow might fall for the plastic lizard come spring. To dust off antlers collected and treasured, old lures, patching waders and remembering the branch you slipped on that gave you that tear and the brook trout that took your fly just before the fall. It is the place I dreamed of my sons first hunt long before he was born. The trivial, the trifle, the unimportant to many, but to me it is just piddling. And it is some of the finest times I spend, with myself.