If I Were A Carpenter....

  While I was working on my deck this afternoon, I was thinking about the multitude of projects that I undertook over the years.  Some successful, some not so.  In an earlier entry, In The Recesses Of Your Mind (August 19), I mentioned my feeble attempt to build when I was very small.  That continued to evolve into things like tree houses and play houses.  Anytime there was any kind of construction going on, boom, I was there watching and watching and watching.  When I was still quite young, there was an addition being built onto the YMCA in town.  Of course I was there to supervise.  I think this was the first time I actually watched masons at work, building with block and brick.  After the workmen had gone home, I would come back, find my way inside the work-in-progress, and get a closer look at what was going on.

  While I was in high school, in the 60's, there was a house being built in the empty lot behind our house.  Naturally, I was there to watch everything.  The builders were an outfit called Hamlyn Bros. out of Wells, ME.  A couple years ago, I called them up and had a good chat.  It was run by Bob and Charlie Hamlyn and their crew.  They got use to having me around and before the summer was over, I was working for them for $5.00 a day and they gave me a hammer.  I was tickled.  Actually get to do real work!
For the next summer or two after that, they kept me on at regular hourly wages.  The skills I picked up there were invaluable later on.
  Time went on, and I would occasionally do handyman jobs from hanging doors to putting in or taking out walls, or building decks or what have you.  After I had my first home, and there were too many kids for the number of bedrooms available, it was time to build an addition that added four rooms to the existing house.  It was very satisfying to see it all come together, thanks to what I learned during my summer jobs as a teen.
  When we had a house built in 2005, I was very involved with its completion and continue to enhance it with various projects of finishing off the basement, building a shed, and currently building a deck and a fence.  For all the various activities I do around the house, whenever I am asked what I am doing, I simply reply, "Puttering!"