Can two guys with a combined age of 146 years build a house high in the mountains of Wyoming?
All by themselves?
Without heavy equipment?
Jury's still out on that.
For the second time in their lives, no responsible adult has taken them aside and told them what they're attempting to do is crazy. Impossible. Two geezers in denial about age.
Snap out of it, you septuagenarians. Wake up and smell the coffee. And join a morning coffee group, where guys your age hang out.
These two guys were roommates at the University of Wyoming – Room 427 Orr Hall, 1970-71.
Friends for 55 years this coming month.
I am one of these geezers.
Forty three years ago I bought an acre way up in the mountains, and we started building a cabin out of downed logs. The project was planned at Frosty's Bar in Casper. For four summers (can't get there most of the year - snow) we stacked logs, then built a roof. Then, over the decades we added a porch, a kitchen, another porch, and then I spent 10 years cutting and burning beetle-killed trees.
Sometime along the way the other guy bought the lot next to mine. But he was too busy working to build a place. Until now. When he's retired.
Suddenly the debt I owe him for helping build my house (14 feet by 14 feet) has come due, and I'm helping him build his two-story house that will be 32 feet by 24 feet. (My debt has clearly been compounding over the last 30 years.)
All this summer we have worked like rented mules, digging out foundation pads in land with so many boulders that you dig with a pry bar instead of a shovel. There are 15 pads, and it took two weeks of prying out boulders. (The worst was a tree stump in one location. It had to come out.)
Then there were 120 50-pound bags of concrete mix, to fill the pads, then fill the concrete blocks that went on top of them.
Then, since the site is so remote that a truck could never get in to deliver beams, we built “box beams” on site, kind of a sandwich with plywood on both sides and 2-by-6s and a 2-by-4s glued and nailed in between. Then we hung 68 2-by-8 floor joists. Then we put down 24 sheets of three quarter inch tongue-and-groove OSB flooring.
And now, as the end of the season approaches (it's up so high you can get snow after Labor Day), we're framing walls, laying them flat for the winter, ready to stand up next June when the fun begins anew.
My old friend has avoided the operating room over the years, so he's in pretty good shape. I, on the other hand, am an orthopedic train wreck, with repairs to a knee, both shoulders, a back, and the latest delight, a heart valve job, with a replacement valve made from a cow.
(My grand daughter told a friend her grandpa has “a cow heart.” Her friend said, “So he's a cowboy?” The reply: “No. He thinks he is. But he doesn't have horses.”)
Through all that, however, I can still pry out a boulder, handle my end of a box beam, and heft a 50-pound bag of Sakrete.
For now.
Neither of us is the strapping (and perhaps foolish) young man we were when we started my log house. Today it takes a lot of water, energy drinks and pain killers to ward off the aches, pains and leg cramps. Spending an entire day in the hot sun laying down floor panels can render you dizzy and disoriented.
It's dicey wearing hearing aids that can get knocked off and lost on the forest floor. So I go hearing aid commando, and say “Pardon?” a lot. And we find that after three days of hard work, you can get goofy and clumsy.
(Our wives think we're nuts, and make sure the life insurance is paid up.)
We're almost done for this year, thank heaven. Then next June, it's back to work.
This could go on for two more summers.
(Next summer we'll have a combined age of 148.)
Dave Simpson can be reached at: DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
