Tom Sawyer

My cousin asked me several weeks ago to help him build a privacy fence. Of course I obliged before considering anything else that might be happening in my life on that date. So this is the weekend I've lent my 'grunt skills', sprinkled with an occasional carpentry skill. (Thank you carpenters, for teaching me little tidbits). So my cousin has called on family members (current and ex), along with a friend who happens to be an electrician. He's in a construction trade, surely he knows how to build a fence! So there's not one of us who has been trained as a carpenter, but honestly, a privacy fence is not rocket science. Now my cousin, who happens to be an auto mechanic, announced early on in the project, that he's just not built for this kind of work. He is correct. His mind is geared (sorry for the pun) toward machinery, and making mini combustible explosions of fossil fuels, within a cast steel or aluminum block. His job requires a little more precision and little less brute strength most of the time. So throughout the day, while most of us were digging holes, setting posts, mixing concrete, cutting through tree roots, putting up pickets, he was doing things he felt more comfortable with. He worked hard, but in a different manner. There was a moment when he had a stroke of genius, and put together a post extraction contraption. It involved wooden posts bolted together, a chain, and a pulley system with a tool called a 'come along'. We had some remaining metal posts that needed to be discarded, but were firmly cemented in. This engineering marvel made the job ten times easier. He also spent the day 'gophering'. We needed 10' 2x4's, more bags of concrete, new sawz all blades, and beer. Unlike Tom Sawyer, he was on site for the majority of the day, but like Tom Sawyer, he did get his fence finished with a little help from his friends.