The midnight levitation was unexpected and you’d think more than merely endured.  Maybe it was the landing somewhere amid the city darkness to be feared.  Astride a lamppost?  Athwart freeway traffic?  No.  Calmly, silently upon a sidewalk and at once into Barnaby locked into reverse gear speeding along Santa Monica Boulevard.  Backward.  No brakes.

By thrusting into Drive back and forth Barnaby halts, haltingly and I’m able to jostle into a dark parking spot just before dawn.  Do I still have my TRW passcard?  I have some kind of card I slide into a slot next a graffiti scrawled metal door inset down the alley.  It opens into a filthy, littered passageway that leads to a set of stacked milk crates down an elevator shaft 20 feet.  Crack-addled FutureMan on his way up the crates and I fall into a blind cubicle where Ms. Hostess-Malley asks for her ID back as that was how I accessed this secret TRW location.

Things got easier from there.

Truck and I motor toward TJ’s for the Nearly Weekend O’boom rations, the Del Monte – Pacific intersection still closed; detour up the hill to Van Buren Street – had this traffic interruption been only a weekend, only a week, I could understand.  But this has been a six weeks.

As my attendance at the Monterey City Council Meetings have been scarce, I cannot assume my assumption that an important Rumsen burial ground has been unearthed, or that the town is secretly emplacing a nuclear power plant next the PortolaPlaza and Green Peace has descended.

TJ’s has that for which I have come.

Grocery Cheaplet, the Seaside incarnation docks me only a Jack, but no cheese bargains.

Ka-nob Hill Market their usual GAWDAMN prices but they have the Palermo rolls and yogurt I like, plus jalapeno cheese gracknoids 2 fer $5.  Waugh.

In spite of the furiously brilliant blue skies, absence of windshield-wiper defeating torrents or/and plagues from Exodus, reach homeslice and the wasteland that is my future.

But not my immediate future.

Krack open The Shop and get kracking on Kabinet Kren.

Dry-fit the kabinet front so as to assess front door-leg gap.  It is found variable and unacceptable: .025” at max, 0.008” at acceptable yet only one corner.

The Plan is this: plane down the close corner, then cut the existing tenon shoulders 1.25 mm to bring the overall door gap to uniform.

Ambitious?  Yes. Importance? Yes, maybe.

Yet all is not sunny and bright out on the Slack Deck setting the table saw for uniform 1.25 mm tenon cheek reduction.  Due to certain irregularities in the Kab parts – hinge collets, floor supports, dopey dumb non-symmetricality, One Blade Height does not Do It All.

One Fence setting does, so I’ve got that going for me.

So it’s mostly what I like least: One Off It.  Gawd.

Yet, it was a satisfying and useful exercise.

What came next was not.

The left door is intended to overlap the right door on a 45-degree angle.   The left door angle is cut.  The meet line is marked on the right door, the angle is marked.  I move to the table saw to make the cut.

Had I intended to mosh it up, had I wanted to be 180 degrees out of phase, had I tried to make a hash of the thing – like MacArthur invading Iceland instead of Luzon – I couldn’t have performed more perfectly WRONG.

Cut the angle backwards.

Retrench – maybe I can glue the cut piece back on.  Clamp two oak stretchers down each cut line (wax paper buffer), then lam on the monkey glue to the cut piece, then clamp gingerly.  Since the meet of both pieces is wedged shaped, too much compression will only slip the glue face, like tectonic plates.

I hate me.

Amid this sturm und drang arrives The Congo for a couple of quick one’s.  He’s a report from Cavalry Member Berkey who had arranged with Steve Palumbi, the Director of the Hopkins Marine Station, to have the Cavalry again meet at The Lab under the aegis of the Station’s 501c.

With conditions.

Limit of 15  – Only 10 fingers  to add up to…
Three hour limit – no prob, if you can’t get shiny inside of 180 minutes you’re not trying
A city staffer present at the rate of $17/hour – As PBL Commissionaire, I could quality!
Missing from the list
The appropriate paperwork must be completed – There’s probably three guys in the Cavalry that HAVEN’T pimped fo da man…
No alcohol.

WHAT!  NO!

Berkey had One Job.  One Job Only, and he muffed it.  White robes with peaked hats unpacked.  Tar, flaming briands assembled.

All will be settled.

Congo off to his estate to greet his son Milo home from school and supervise clarinet practice.

I’m off on designing, at least notionally, the arched Kren Kab top.

Measurements Sound.  Concept Sound.  Alder stockpiles Sound.

What’s that sound in the street?  Why it’s the Return Of Congo with Bonus Double Secret Probation Guinness!  Milo dropped the clarinet and went off to his pal Mile’s place just down the street.  Latch-key Dad slacks in my direction.

STOVEDAY –

Not my finger joints, worse, my cerebrum.

I’m convinced that the madness has begun in me, not because of the nightmare – get about four a year and I’m due – but because of the recursive in-dream questioning about in-dream did-I-dream-that-in-the-dream questions.  Market?  Short Johnson.

Send straight-jacket pattern.

Yet the perfect anodyne to my mania rang the doorbell at 0934.

It’s The Professor.  He’s got a line on a wood stove out The Sur, wants to power his own private sweat lodge.  Bloke wanted $550, apparently they go new for $1200 new, Congo dealt him down to $450 but the guy, who is a photographer, had to throw in two of his picies.

I’m technical assistance.  Tiny as it is, it’s still cast iron.

It’s a Stoopid Beautiful day driving south on a road that, if it didn’t exist and we wanted to put it in, couldn’t get past the preliminary environmental hippies screaming and throwing themselves under the arugula tractor review.

As we are early, we poke into Rocky Point for the view.  And are not disappointed, except how have these Neanderthal creatures out in the ice plant escaped scientific notice?  My Bad, nope, not primordial primates, merely a dreadlocked couple, which on closer inspection actually seemed to be a male and a female, one each, and their toddler brood.

We take Palo Colorado up stream.  The ocean-proximal knife-edge wide canyon is thick with original growth redwoods.  Cabins, and I’m generous with the term as in the mean between chicken shack and mansion, line the gulch, perched uneasily along the sheer green walls for the first couple of twisty bridle path miles.  One man’s shed, another man’s Xanadu.  Take the drive yo own sef.  It IS where rogue elves hide out from the Sheriff of Rivendell.

Once out of the creek gully and up, we park at the fire station awaiting our rendezvous with Stove Bloke.

Couple of does within almost-easy bow range, miner’s lettuce in abundance, near equinox lighting.

Stove Block shows, leads us up a rutty dirt road lined with cast-off culverts, abandoned road graders, and a 1963 Ford pickup until he hit the end of the ruts at his own private Esalen.

The stove looks barely used and while Congo negotiates his truck down the ski slope Stove Bloke shows me his ocean view – tour of the ganja patch not part of my visitor package.

38 23 04 06 N – 121 51 55 97 W if you’re curious.

We lade the 150 lb stove into the back of the truck crushing no fingers, then gingerly extract ourselves from Dogpatch and back to The Estate where happily, my spine had no part in off-lading the ballast.

I’m off-laded back at my private Eden for some beans and yogurt, meditation, yoga and pleasure that AOL is out of freefall.

Fall into The Shop to unclamp yesterslack’s hopeful effort in dicknation remediation.

Not bad, not bad at all.  The offset is about 1 mm, well within sanding range and unless you look at the end grain you can’t tell it’s been fucked up and fixed.  Even I’m surprised.

Yet cautious.  Call Rent-A-Carpenter and they send over a Real Guy who supervises the proper cutting of the 45 on the right door.

As if there weren’t compelling structural reasons enough for mortise and tenon, another clutch benefit is its relative ease in/for assembly and dis-assembly, which was here put to the full as I tested out the door fit.

Door Fit is GOOD!

Can now proceed to the arched top.  Will not trouble the reader, if reader there be, on just how this arch was inscribed on wood, nor will I belabor the excellent fun had free-handing its cut on the band saw.

Aerobic rasping, filing and sanding follows.  The curve is Good.  Although non-symmetrical, which is troubling.

Rent-A-Carpenter now on my speed dial.

—–

It’s been an interesting day.

Banked up to Beaujolais Day on nightmares – Harvey driving Barnaby – “I’ve Got To WIN the Lottery!”  “It’s 500 feet deep” as we’re speeding up a bridge over the Ohio.

At onset, the day seemed so predictable: Swede’s to collect the sharpened table saw blade, tyre’s rotated, a hour’s quiet soak in the Monterey Bay Brewing Company, then the symphony at Sherwood Hall (don’t click on this link expecting to find what I expected to find….).

The crows urge me awake and up for plinking, but are not in aid to coffee making.  It then occurred to me that I did not know for sure just where today’s performance was to be held.

Good thing I checked.  The show was NOT in Salinas at the Rodeoplatz, but in Carmel at the SunsetCenter.  There goes that quiet soak.    Still, perhaps Something can be carved out of this abrupt change.  Flow with the Go.

Boodle north on 68 in the brilliant sunshine and cool temps nearly without Volvo’s ahead motoring 20 mph below the posted speed limit and all was handsome until that BMW made a (fortunately) leisurely lane change for which I had the time to screech to a halt.

The Swede (cat not seen) has my table saw blade at the ready.  Did I remember him saying that he could sharpen planer knives?  Better have a look.

“Nawww, these double sided jobs just peal off, here, let me show you the single sided blades you want to buy next….”

And so my home-built sharpening jig can do no harm.

Next – North Salinas skirting the War Zone Of Drug Gangs to American Tyre where Raul is johnny (Juanie) on the spot about rotation.  He says the best rubber needs always to go on the back, which is counterintuitive since most of the weight is on the front.  Well, he’s the expert….

It’ll be about 45 minutes.  Shop Man Talk for “We’ll tell you a number you want to hear but it’ll be longer.”

I know this and so begin my perambulation at a shopping precinct – Red Lobster, Shell Gas, Party Store, Chipotle Grill, Bed and Bath Etc. Etc – indistinguishable from Madison or Peoria or Tallahassee.

At Bath and Beyond the Kitchen and Beyond I find the SS putty knife I richly desire, my present tool imparts the rust sense a bit, I think, too heavily.  I can spend $5, I can spend $10 or I can spend $0.  Guess which I picked?

Out the doors and toward Party  Central…. Wait.  What’s that yonder?  BJ’s Brewhouse…?

Not bad product from what I recall from CanogaPark.  Better have a look.

You don’t go there for aesthetic, well, depends upon how fertile a product you are as the casual dining consumer of today’s merchandising marketing compost  – the warehouse is tricked up like Hollywood set filming “Real Fake Motif’s.”  Open metal rafters with ventilation hanging down (tastefully all in black), faux stone walls spotted with Heroic Grain Gleaning Murals, plastic, ill-fitted ceiling molding 12 feet beneath the inside of the roof, pillars on the wall supporting nothing and Tara Mansion chandeliers amid the air ducts.

The bar-back was impressive for its joinery, even though most of it was probably vacu-formed.

That aside, the service was A Plus, if the beer was found a bit wanting.

Red Ale – Non-threatening beer-ade, slightly berry with a modest tang: harmless

Pale Ale – Nice, flavor sneaking up the back street behind Sierra Nevada

IPA – Took a wrong turn on the Hops Highway to mire about in mediocrity

Lagunitas – The Final Test.  The Lag was about 4.8 on the Lag Scale.  But then again, the pipes from the cooler were 40 feet long.  Jess, the mid-shift bartender horning in affirms me that the lines are cleared every day.  Likely they need to be cleared every 20 minutes.

Seven house taps for which you’d like to make this your escape from banality, and 28 more to give a man a boost.  Yes?

The potato skin platter was artfully presented and crisply cooked and would have been a sound bargain at $3, which it was not.

The boyo from Castroville (Gang Boot Camp) next me at the bar was having his car fixed – “take at Least and hour and a half.”  “Oh, transmission replacement?”  “No, nail in the tire.”

It wasn’t until I caught myself that I realized The Wisdom and where we stood.  Of COURSE it will take At LEAST an hour and a half, if not longer.

Must hie away, Carmel bound for the Monterey Symphony.  And so it was.  Raul of American Tyre has the truck ready to roll and roll I did south on 68 again mercifully no tow truck’s dragging Volvo’s driven by geriatric Asians.

So far, so good.  Yet the ullage tank, even though drained at BJ’s, wanted venting.  What’s on the way?

Tarpy’s.

Been years.  Still the same, except a pint of Firestone DBA is essentially eight dollars.

Onward.  Make the transition to 1 South, roar up the base of the hill to Carmel …. and then: Sepulveda Pass LA 405 Thursday at 5:14 PM.  Walking pace up the hill.

Unlike the 405, where the stove-up happened hours ago, or not at all, at the top of the hill is a lorry rear-ended by a Nissan.  Cops can’t POSSIBLY move the vehicles out of the Number 2 Lane until they’ve completed their exhaustive investigation.

So I’m late for the Rodrigo.  It’s for the Beethoven I’ve come.

Couple of weeks ago, when I was busking at the AT&T, Jane De Lay representing the Monterey Symphony offered me free tickets.  I’m collecting.

Don’t know where my seat was as I hiked it up into the balcony.

Started bawling and it was only the orchestra tuning up.

We all of us compose music, we dream music.  But here’s Beethoven, and other gods, who get it out of their head and write it down.

It was his Second Piano Concerto.

I wasn’t too much of a wreck afterwards to not find Jane and thank her.  Didn’t stay for the Schubert.  Had no emotional reserves.

Need to get out more often.  Once.

Figure all I need do is extricate myself from this Rich White Gotterdamerung and home.

Nothing is easy.

Red light at Prescott turns me down it, figure I’ll cruise Taylor Street, see if Mr. Corn is in his shop.  Week ago striked past and the roll-up was up.  He hasn’t time to talk, grand-daughter’s ball game, but come back.

I’m back and he’s in.  Given the Admiral’s Tour.

He’s family taught – nice portrait of his grandfather and grandmum in the office  – Luther and Fannie who raised him – a re-upholstery guy, some frame fab, but mostly factory bought.  Has some Fabulous mid-19^th Century frames, settees and occasional chairs, an Eastlake piece or two in various states of state.  Must have $200,000 worth of fabric alone, not to mention tools.  Land alone must be worth 800 grand.  Why is he wasting his time with me?

He say’s come-on back again sometime.  What a dick.

To home.  Safe.  Crack an O-boom.

HEY!  There’s Phil and Barbara in to check out the Little Blue House and the Stevedore’s Cottage, which they own.  Rental up and new tenants due.  Phil say’s they’re doing well on the rentals.

Then it got worse.

Do I want a job? .
JATO bottles light off but are insufficient to loft me from possible cash.

Sure.

Your Mission, Mr. Phelps is to mount these two wrought steel plant holders suitable for a French whorehouse in El Paso to the front of the Little Blue Cottage.

Both will need underpinning and top edge lashing.

No, I don’t, but I’ll think of something.
THINKDAY –

I’m minding my own business when Congo arrives; he’s just bought a table saw from Sears and it’s ready for pickup.  We motor over there through light traffic admiring the green of Spring bursting forth in verdure.  At Sears, we had to wait all of 19 seconds before the table saw was wheeled out and put in the back of his truck.

All of life’s mission should be so smooth.

Smooth enough working out how to mount the ugly, I mean ornate plant holders to the siding of the Little Blue Cottage.  The main anti-gravity support will be beneath the lower edge in an L-shape with the short end pointed up.  This will carry most of the weight.

At the top of the iron, I’ll lash to the house two each for each plant holder a channel shaped board.  This, and the three screws each ought resist the pivoting force when the holder is loaded.

Redwood I have in abundance scavenged from Wildman’s former front porch.  It’s a simple matter to cut the L and channel.  Amidstride arrives Congo to serve as Administrative Oversight.

Once the forms are cut, pre-drill for the screw holes, cut off from the plant holder itself some extraneous frippery, then paint the parts.

Tomorrow, if I make it that far, Installation.

Wonder want the job is worth.

Wonder what I’m worth….