The Simple Life: Dad, there is life after becoming a fence post

I’m trying not to turn into my father, a man who paid his property taxes for a few years by collecting the empties scattered around our old hometown - and beyond.

He once opened his wallet and thumbed through a thick wad of twenties.

“I ride my bike a lot when I pick up bottles. It’s good exercise,” he said.

Sure, I pick up any empties I find while walking home from the Red Roaster a few mornings per week, and put them neatly with my own on the front porch, but actively collect - no way.

Not beer bottles at any rate.

Wood, that’s a different story.

While Pat and I played with Ollie yesterday on climbing apparatus at a nearby playground, I spotted - from my vantage point on the upper deck of a pirate ship - a pile of scrap lumber thrown into one corner of a fenced-off dog park.


Aarrr, me maties, I thought.

Part of the scrap was made up of cut-offs from cedar fence posts, and because they were round, seemed perfect for my first attempts at bowl turning on my new lathe, arriving soon from Busy Bee Tools.

From tapping nails into new birdhouses to turning cedar bowls, my workshop will be busy this spring and summer.

My Dad, scrounger extraordinaire, would approve.

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Will cedar turn, or is it too soft? Should I wear my hockey helmet during my first attempt? Buy goggles too?

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