The days have been rainy and misty and mizzely of late. There have been a few short heavy rainfalls interrupted by hours of dripping rain, spattered now and then with a gust of wind. Too wet to get yard work done and too drizzly for tractor work. But not enough to fill my 30,000 gallon tank. I checked it earlier today. About one third full!
I am reading about Robert Falcon Scott’s trek to the South Pole in January 1912. The weather he endured was of course much worse than what we have here in Buffalo. It was actually at its most deplorable when the temperatures rose above freezing, for then everything – tents, sleeping bags, men, horses – became soaking wet. It was much better when it was 20 below! So, in a way, you might say I am enduring weather he would have feared.
Thus it is fortunate that all the wranch house work is now inside, or at least on the porch under cover. Main tasks this week are building a bunkbed in the blue room and installing clothes rods in the red and green rooms.
Have I not mentioned the color scheme of the bunkhouse rooms? The bunkhouse has three bedrooms. We decided to designate them after our boys birthstones. So JP has the blue room (sapphire), Jack gets the green room (emerald) and Michael has the honor of the red room (ruby).
We are also completing the master closet shelving and the pantry barn door. Then the concrete floors will be cleaned, acid-etched and stained. The house will be ready for the final stage: installing appliances and final testing, commissioning, inspection and acceptance. There will still be some landscaping to do and moving in some furniture. But the end is tantalizingly close!
During my working days, I built two offshore platform rigs for the South China Sea and a geothermal rig for the mountains in Java, Indonesia. While working in Venezuela, I managed the contract for building three LMDBs (Lake Maracaibo Drilling Barges). I was also involved with various teams that built three jackups and two barge rigs for Gulf of Thailand work. In other words, construction projects are not new for me. But I think the most satisfying construction job is the one here in Buffalo, Texas.
In Cherry-Garrard’s account of Scott’s last and fateful attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole, Scott tells him, during the provisioning journey known as the Depot Run, “This is the end of the Pole.” Cherry-Garrard does not elaborate, but I think I know what Scott meant.
Scott could have meant that he was exasperated by the tragedies of the Depot Run and was ready to finish the job. The Pole’s mystique in those days attracted adventurous men such as Scott and Amundsen and Shackleton – it pulled them like a black hole sucks matter and energy. They were unable to escape its seductive allure or to overcome the blind desire to be the first to conquer, to deflower, to tame that untouched geographical spot at the bottom of the world where all the lines of longitude converge.
Or he could have been expressing a wistfulness that conquest spoils the mystery. It is the feeling I find growing within me. My house project is coming to completion. I know that I will miss TKO and Angel and James and the other lads and lasses who have worked with me. It is a feeling akin to what I experience when I am walking the last few days of a Camino. This is the end of the Pole.
I must mention something that occurred to me recently, for it has been on my mind. I was doing my “long walk”, a 5-mile jaunt around Hermann Park. About a mile in, going by Bodegas Taco Shop, I passed a homeless woman who put her hand out as I walked by. I probably gave her an unkind glance and kept going but soon turned around and walked back towards her, beckoning her towards me. I asked her what she wanted to eat. She said fish tacos. I told her to wait on the patio of the taco shop and went inside to get her some breakfast. They did not have fish tacos so I got breakfast tacos. And a large coffee and some utensils and so forth. I went out to the patio where she was huddled over a table in the corner. A man sweeping the patio looked at me disapprovingly and disappeared with his broom. I laid down the food in front of her apologizing that fish tacos were not available until after noon. She did not care. She stared at me and I could see the light behind her dark opaque eyes.
She moved her hand towards mine. My hand moved away, unwilled, mechanically like maybe our hands were magnets of opposite charge. She continued to stare at me with remorseful eyes. Her head was covered in a scarf. Her face was gray. Her hands seemed unwashed and her fingers were bony. Good loves you, I told her. And I love you, I said and walked away.
Later I realized that although she was hungry for food, her soul needed nourishment as well. She wanted to touch me to say thank you. She wanted human contact that I was unable to give her. I think she needed someone to hold her and hug her and not be repelled by her. She did not need Gods love. She needed human warmth.
That has been on my mind.
JP Ranch 