Day’s end at Lake Fairlee, by John K. Pietkiewicz
Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, a wry exchange, a poem or anecdote or reflection… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and that might strike us all as interesting or funny or poignant.
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Dear Daybreak:
This begins as a familiar story. Throughout the summer I waged a running battle with deer who mistook my flower gardens and shrubbery for a midnight salad bar. Their favorite pathways to and from surrounding woods were easily identified but impossible to block. Other measures of deterrence included gallons of putrid repellent, jarfuls of ground red pepper, and pioneer-woman stakeouts in the wee hours. Even face-to-face confrontations in the middle of the day, with dramatic hoots and hollers, hardly fazed these guys. The biggest would stare me down before leaving with a defiant look that said, “Okay fine, but trust me, we’ll be baaack!”
And so it went. “Have you tried human hair?” someone asked. On my next visit to the salon, my stylist was happy to oblige. She swept copious clippings from my own head as well as from those of other customers into a plastic bag and home I went to scatter them as strategically as I could.
Three weeks later, I pulled off the waterproof canvas cover from my gas grill (stationed in a graveled side yard), swung open the heavy lid, and proceeded to fire up all three burners. A ringlet of smoke arose immediately from the back right corner, so I flipped everything off to investigate. Oh ho! The smoke sprang from what looked like a full wig of multicolored hair tucked beneath the grate.
My first thought was a squirrel, curled up dead, but how did it get in there? Then it dawned on me: an overachieving mouse (nowhere to be seen, of course) had systematically located those many cotton-ball-size wads of hair from places 20 or more feet away, and conveyed them, clump by clump, up through the interior of the appliance to create what could have been the best winter palace ever—had it only known to wait until the grilling season was completely over! With a touch of regret for destroying another creature’s hard work, I skewered out the smelly remains and buried them. “Sorry fella, this is MY grill!”
It’s only September. There’s time to rebuild elsewhere and with other materials, ideally non-flammable.
— Rebecca Meyers, Grantham
Dear Daybreak:
My friend’s grandfather
a buddhist who felt
his time was near
built a coffin
in the kitchen
set on sawhorses
to settle in
and get comfortable
sleeping there
every night
for two months
but then got better
so the coffin
was stored away
and honestly
I’m no different
with a coffin or two
of my own upstairs
in the attic
but sooner or later
it’s time to clean house
and there you are
in the dim light
and spider webs
with a box of old letters
and before you know it
you’ve lain down
in those dusty words
passing from here
into another world
— Danny Dover, Bethel
Dear Daybreak:
I take great pleasure from simple things. Like a solid set of stairs.
I’m not talking about elegant, spiral stairs or ornate steps lined by a banister of fancy turned posts. I’m talking about a basic, solid, extremely practical set of stairs. In this case, they lead to our basement, a place which, by the way, I don’t take great pleasure from. The joists that support our floors are just a little too low. When I’m there, I have to walk slightly hunched over or risk getting a face full of cobwebs.
The basement stairs are a very small piece of a breezeway makeover that has been underway at our house for the past month. After the old stairs were removed, we started to get a more thorough handle on some existing problems. The wall on one side of the breezeway was resting on….well, nothing really. The old wooden sill had rotted out and you could see daylight from outside. Then there was the basement stairwell, constructed some unknown number of decades ago from stacked-up cinder blocks. Over time, the sandy soil had been leaking out from between the blocks, and they were slowly caving in. The width of the old cellar stairs was just enough for me to fit through, so doing things like getting a new furnace or hot water heater was complicated at best.
After a little consulting with a concrete contractor, we decided to go all in: create a new foundation for the one wall currently supported by faith; build a proper stairwell down to the basement; and pour a whole new slab because most of the old, cobbled-together mess would be dug out to make room for the concrete forms. After a flurry of activity spanning a couple of weeks, all the excavating and concrete work was complete. The next step was for our carpenter to build new stairs to the basement and the back door and to rebuild the wall and doorway to our back yard.
Our carpenter, Mike, came the other day to build the basement stairs. We had agreed on a design that would be sturdy but nothing elaborate. Just four steps with a wide-enough tread and a rise that won’t be too much as we age in place in our big old house. Mike showed up mid-morning and set up his saw in the driveway. He had built the stringers (I’m learning stair lingo) at home. Those are the zigzag-shaped supporting members underneath the stairs. I heard him outside working on the assembly, turning the raw lumber into a new form with a specific function. I don’t like to stand over him while he is working so I busied myself with my own chores until later in the day. When I finally went out, he was attaching the treads. He squeezed out a bead of adhesive along the surface of the stringer under the tread. “I don’t like creaky steps,” Mike explained, and I gave him a thumbs up as he set the tread in place to screw it down.
We were heading out on a bike ride, and he finished his work while we were gone. I had to try out the stairs when we came back. I knew the dehumidifier would be full, so I went down the new stairs, enjoying the solid feel under each step. I noticed the little details, such as the tiny notches in the treads so that they fit perfectly against the face of the new concrete walls. I truly appreciated the way each step was evenly spaced and wide enough, so I didn’t feel like I was taking my life in my hands just to go down a few steps. This particular set of stairs has evolved since we bought the house 30 years ago. At that time, the stairs consisted of some old wooden planks sitting on top of uneven brick and loose sand. After one near disaster where the bottom step slipped out underfoot, sending me into a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairwell, I determined to make some new steps. I calculated them out and made them with my passable carpentry skills. They were a huge improvement, but still narrow and steep.
Now, the stairs have been taken to a whole new level. The stairwell has almost doubled in width. Everything is at right angles and faced with smooth concrete instead of crumbling cinder blocks covered in sand and moldy leaves.
You don’t appreciate the simple beauty of something like a set of steps until you have them and realize what you put up with for so long. I don’t need a fancy McMansion with elaborate woodwork and twisting ballroom stairs. Give me a nice, solid set of stairs that will last the rest of my lifetime. I think I need to go check on that dehumidifier again.
— Jon Kaplan, Randolph
Did you miss Dear Daybreak last week? You’ll find it here.