Santa Claus’ Toolbox
In the south of the garden sat a new red barn with a John Deere tractor
under the east wing of the barn. The middle of the barn was no barn at all
but a home, a southern home painted in Christmas red, green and crystal
white paints with candy cane doors at the front entry. Life size toy soldiers
stood guard at each side of the front door painted in candy cane décor. The
recess in the middle of the barn house leading to the candy cane front door
was in essence a covered front porch balanced by the guard of Lloyd’s apple
trees. The west wing of the barn house, a welder’s shop of old in the past,
had been rebuilt to encase the man’s cave with a solemn, old, metal toolbox
sitting against a wall upon four plastic cushion pads to protect the newly
built redwood floors. Large, double wooden doors served for a northern
wall for the man’s cave so on a warm day the man of the house could open
the doors and look out over his garden while sitting in his wide frame
rocking chair nestled upon a hand made floor rug that’d been made in Santa
Claus, Indiana.
The man’s cave had a recliner next to his rocking chair, a printer on an
office desk with his author’s desktop computer, a relic of the past, sat on the
polished, wooden rancher’s desk. In a southwest corner behind his rocking
chair sat a gas stove with a baker’s convection oven and against the south
wall sat a modern chef’s table with an eloquent, pristine sink and
dishwasher. In the southeast corner of the man’s cave catty-cornered to the
chef’s table was a door that led into the lady’s parlor lacking the decorative
décor of a lady for the man was an old bachelor. Inside the lady’s parlor was
an open room with no furniture. Not a piece of anything a homeowner
would put in a parlor had graced the presence of the empty room with a
hardwood floor of true redwood construction. Back in the man’s cave and to
the left of the door sat the old welder’s toolbox hauled down from the great
Muscle Shoals aluminum plant in the bed of a Chevy during the not so
distant 20th Century. After the toolbox sat his rancher’s desk and a long,
narrow dinner table and then the television with the backdrop of the northern
doors that’d could be opened outwards to a warm, summer gardening day.
Against the west wall sat a long soft bed made of superior down with plenty
of room for a man and a woman. So was the man’s cave, the empty lady’s
parlor fronted by a covered porch and an east wing covering the man’s John
Deere tractor. A rectangle’s dimensions of 1,200 square feet made for a
small, barn house that sat west to east, east to west, with a five degree sloped
solar roof raised in the north and sloping to the south. Painted in Christmas
red, green and crystal white the barn house faced a garden. A grand, old
hickory tree sat behind the barn house. Under the hickory tree sat a
smokehouse made of oak for curing and smoking meat and dehydrating
vegetables and peppers. The barn house had solar power collected by solar
cells built by Alabama Power with the trusty land line crossing a hay field to
give a transformer’s insurance of constant electricity. Natural gas warmed
the barn house in the winter while the growing town of Phil Campbell
pumped ready to live upon Bear Creek water directly to the man cave. And
of the bathtub? It sat up on the roof so the water could be filtered and
recycled for watering the garden.
One day after the potatoes had been harvested and the peas were
blossoming into a summer’s bloom the man had the grand, north doors of his
man’s cave thrown open to a blue sky view of his garden. He sat in his
rocker with a cherished Sand County Almanac written by Aldo Leopold,
leather hardback in hand, for a golfing tournament was not to be seen on the
television. Ready to read Leopold’s words again about a true Land Ethic
where there were a balance in the bathtubs built and the natural resources
needed to build the bathtubs for all of nature is connected to all of nature
with man standing at the center of the circle of life, a neighbor younger than
he parked his pickup on a grassy spot at the end of his potato patch.
The lanky, stout man with machine shop muscles came a walking
down by the old man’s grapevine glancing at his potato vines and over at the
pepper bushes and down at the early black-eyed peas putting on a good
foliage. Along the grape vine the man walked until he stepped close enough
for Ole We to hear him.
“Hi, We, won’t be lone till you’ll be digging potatoes?”
“No, not at all, Sam.”
“Mind if I take a seat in your recliner?”
“No, come ahead.”
The younger machinist named Sam Firehouse sat down in the recliner
thinking to himself how’d he approach his question of life to Ole We.
“Mr. We, you’ve been around a long time here on the hill.”
“I have.”
“I rarely see you go further than the flee market or the truck stop.”
“I go to town one day a week for shopping and to sit in the barber’s
chair.”
“Barber’s chair? But We, you got long hair.”
“I get it thinned a bit besides that’s how I spread my wealth.”
“That’s not spreading a lot for a few dollars a week.”
“Sam, it adds up over a lot of people and when it gets multiplied and
cut up into pieces of pie, well, the country just goes around.”
“I know you to be a smart man with books and all but you understand
things for not having traveled off this hill at least not in my lifetime?”
“And you’re 40 years now aren’t you, Sam?”
“Yes, and I’m feeling it.”
“I’ve been in the navy and got my trade and came home then went to
work in a shop making a hard, honest living while marrying a good woman
and making a full house, but I’m 40 and I feel like I; I don’t know.”
“And now why you be visiting me, Sam?”
“You got a nag for being a jack-wise fellow, a loner.”
“Jack-wise?”
“You seem to know things and how to get along and be content even
without a woman.”
“Now, Sam, I ain’t that much of a loner.”
“You’re not married and I’ve never seen you with a woman.”
“When it gets dark on the hill a plenty of womenfolk know where Old
We lives.”
“That’s cocky and jack-wise.”
“Just the truth but you didn’t cross my garden to talk less than mantalk in my man’s cave.”
“No, I didn’t come here to talk shit and hang out.”
At that moment Sam Firehouse adjusted himself in the recliner not
having raised the footrest. He slide his Wrangler jeans against the smooth
leather as he peered out over the blue sky garden all greened in a late spring
lush. He noticed how the Blue Lake pole beans were climbing into a group
of pear trees at the south edge of the old man’s garden.
“We, what’s your secret to life?”
Old We leaned left of his rocker and opened a little wooden chest
made of cedar. He reached his left hand in the chest and drew a glass bottle
out of the chest. He showed it to the young man who thought he had a midlife crisis but merely was beginning the road to existentialism whereby a
good man questions all he’s been conditioned to believe before he dies and
learns the truth. Old We knew no man knew the truth of the afterlife and
that’s why such philosophy was best saved for a matter of individual faith in
God, a deep trust in God as Old We knew. Old We had his trust in God from
his own observations of nature and his own reasoning about what he’d been
taught was right and wrong as a child; but he knew a man had to find
himself. He knew a man had to know who he was and where he stood in the
cosmos which was a simple answer for Old We. He knew he stood on the
planet Earth at a given latitude and longitude and that the Universe was
expanding according to his hybrid theory of cosmic evolution at the hands of
an all powerful, all knowing God whom he worshipped as the Great Spirit.
He worshipped him as the Great Spirit of the Universe and all that a human
spirit could know in the afterlife. In short, God is God and that’s what Old
We knew and he knew young Sam Firehouse at an Eve-loving,
whippersnapper’s age of forty was thinking about things that not all humans
had settled in their hearts. What was the meaning of life? Why am I here?
What am I to do? What happens after death? God, I hope I don’t have to
pay taxes after I’m dead? Old We knew the answer but he knew young Sam
had to find it for himself. Thus he shew the glass bottle with a King James’
Bible etched artistically in its glass to the young whippersnapper sitting in
his recliner who had kept him from his love of reading the literature written
by the father of the modern conservationist movement that had evolved into
a true environmental movement.
“I’ve got bourbon, scotch, whiskey, brandy, gin, vodka, rum and a
collection of wines aging in the wine rack. But there’s American beer in the
fridge and potato chips on the table.”
“What’s in that bottle with the Bible on it, I’ve never seen that label?”
“It’s an old label, the un-taxed kind.”
“I don’t think I can handle it that strong.”
“This is high quality and rare, I only break it out for select guests.”
“So I’m a select guest?”
“Here have a sip.”
Old We poured Sam a preacher’s ounce of the golden-brown bourbon,
a sipping bourbon not a swigging bourbon, he’d been given to him for a
Christmas gift by a Baptist deacon who’d bought it off of a Mormon bishop
who said it’d been made by a Catholic priest up in Kentucky a few dozen
years into the younger years of Old We. This special bottle of bourbon only
came out of the cedar chest on special occasions and for special guests for
this American bourbon was rumored to be the smoothest, untaxed adult
beverage a man could drink. Sam took the whiskey glass, sniffed the
bourbon and sipped her love into his loins. His eyes grew wide with a grin
the width of Kentucky.
“Pour me a glass, will ye, We?”
“You’ll have a question need answering?” asked Old We.
“Yes.”
He poured two glasses of the Christian bourbon then Old We began a
story about a time in far off Russia when a writer named Tolstoy told of a
king, a wise man and an assassin.
“Now Sam, what’s the moral of the story?”
“Each human has a time, place and business and that’s the secret to
life.”
“No, the secret to life is being in that time, place and business with the
realization of all that is around you while taking care of that which you can.”
“So the king was in the right place at the right time and doing the right
thing?”
“And what did Tolstoy want us to learn?”
“That the most important time is now, my place is right here in your
man cave and my business is listening to you as we drink your bourbon.”
“Now then get your ass out of my recliner and go home to your Eve.”
“Thanks, We, but before I go; what’s in that big, green, rusty metal
cabinet?”
“That’s Santa Claus’ toolbox.”
Sam Firehouse rolled his eyes toward Canada and lifted himself from
the old man’s recliner and walked past his television and to the edge of the
garden. Then he turned and told Old We to have a good summer before
walking along the grapevine to his pickup.