Beside the Stream

When our first big January snowstorm knocked out the barn light, I didn’t think it was a very big deal. 

I was wrong.  Since then, we have had little triangles of metal screwed onto the roof so the sheet of snow can’t slide onto the light:

That was $80.00

Next Bob took the lamp to be welded at Animas Radiator

where Tim put some careful flanges on it.  Two of them.  The flanges were so careful they cost $70.   The nails’ll rip out of the wood before these flanges let go, said Tim. 

And it’s still not done.  Andy, who wired the house, came by as a favor on Friday afternoon to put the light back up. 

He has a new van/ before he used his truck and had to empty it into a storage locker every Friday.   A van makes his life much easier. 

Andy is an elite rock climber who often jams his fingers.  I didn’t ask him what happened this time because I didn’t want to visualize it.  Andy has spent dozens of nights sleeping in hammocks suspended from rock faces, and his cliff stories give me the willies.  He put up our weathervane by tying himself to a rope looped over the roof and attached to the truck.  And since his Mom was a librarian, he always returns books.  This visit I’m returning one of his books; we both thought the author was annoying.  Plus I’m sending along a jar of jam for his fiance’s opinion: she had a restaurant and I thought she’d like the jalapenos.

Andy is putting up the rewelded, rewired light, and you can see me in the window taking his picture.  

In the end, it took both Bob and Andy to get the light back in place.  Finally.   

This story has three lessons.  The fixture came from a gas station in Georgia–it’s a piece of 1940s Americana, and it was a big bargain: it cost about $100 including shipping.  It’s an Ebay item.   I liked it a lot but hadn’t anticipated a multi-step, multi-person, multi-lesson task.  The first lesson is, inexpensive Americana may not be a bargain by the time it’s installed.  The second lesson is useful for me but probably not for you: old exterior fixtures from the South are not designed for snow load.  And the third lesson was my Grandfather’s mantra: Education is expensive.