Tho Tho Thore
Do you remember that old superhero joke about Thor, the God of lightning and thunder that wields his mighty hammer across the heavens? He wakes up after a drunken one-night stand somewhere on the other side of the tracks in Valhalla and has the familiar awkward issue of waking up in some unknown mere mortal’s boudoir. So, he stands up and does what a Germanic God of mythology is supposed to do, he beats his arm across his chest with high mighty hammer and says, “I’m Thor!!!”. The young woman, who hails from someplace like the northeast shore of Staten Island (somewhere like Stapleton or Saint George) props herself up on her elbows with her “big hair” in a sticky disarray (from the overdone hairspray, you pervert!). She blinks as she looks adoringly at the golden-haired figure who looks like a dime store version of Chris Hemsworth, and says with her lisp, caused by severe overuse of a pacifier in her early days, “Thore, thore? I’m tho thore I can hardly pith!” Ba-dum-bump.
It’s not particularly witty or high class, but it is a very memorable joke that always come to mind when I hear the word sore. To be more precise, it comes to mind when I find myself thinking or saying “I’m sore.” Depending on the crowd, I am next usually hearing someone say, “How sore are you?” And to that, I am always inclined (current company depending) to say, “I’m tho thore I can hardly pith”. It falls into the same sophomoric category as the old joke about what time it is when a person from China (usually better in the joke to call him/her/they a Chinaman even though it is not politically correct and is only one step up from calling him Oriental or something even more archaic or ethnic) goes to the dentist. The response is “Tooth Hurty” as opposed to “2:30pm”. I mention it because it has both the characteristic of being a joke at the expense of some speech defect had by a person, or a person from a specific area, or even a person who does not have English as his/her/their first language and thus does not easily deal with the pronunciation of certain word constructs. The lisp-inclined generally add a “th” sound where an “s” sound should be, but the foreign language speaker like someone from Asia or China has the problem of blending words like “two-thirty” into a mis-combination of “tooth-hurty”. Hence the hilarity at the expense of anyone who cannot enunciate (that would be “enunthiate” to the lisp-inclined since a soft “c” hits the pallet similarly (“thimilarly”) to the “s” (“eth”)).
But the more important similarity of these two bad jokes is that they stick like glue in the mind of someone like me, making me feel even more sophomoric than I probably am most of the time. There does not seem to be anything I can do about that tendency at this stage of life, so I will just try to exorcise this demon from my soul by writing this story and laying it all out in the open to get aired for anyone who has gotten this far in the story and has not put it down for displeasure with its apparent sophomoric line of consideration.
The point of the recollection of all this wordplay is that this morning I awoke as expected with great muscle aches across all of my upper and lower body (a.k.a. Soreness). I have been working hard every day on my new Moonstruck Hobbit House playhouse. So far I have leveled the site, removing miscellaneous rocks and stumps (saving the rocks for foundation and fill deployment), laid a set of 12 creosote-infused railroad ties (which from the look of them were very much in use on some portion of track or other) filled in the foundation with the excess soil and cut and built the framing for three of the four walls of the house. Let’s start by saying that those foundation ties each weighed between 160-200 pounds by my estimation and the research I have done on railroad ties. Some were more “petrified” and therefore heavier than the others. Besides added heft, the petrifaction made cutting, drilling and staking the ties that much harder. I have only broken one extended drill bit and no extended saw blades in the process of making these ties fit and connected into a small foundation and “porch” for the Hobbit House. I am a flexible Hobbit House builder and have three types of connective implements and find myself using all three for various purposes. I have 18” x 1/2” rebar stakes that I sledgehammer into the ties (through toughly drilled holes), feeling like a Nineteenth Century Chain Gang member putting in the transcontinental. Those work best for grounding the base level ties. I have 12” galvanized nails that only go into the ties if pre-drilled. Those are good for toeing into the corners, but you really do have to strike them dead center or they will bend like a pipe-cleaner. And then there are the expensive stainless steel bolt-headed 10” screws that also need pre-drilling and are best to suck up ties against one another. They all have their use.
All of this work is harder than it needs to be due to the creosote that makes these ties last 60+ years in the ground. I ignore the ecological effects of creosote ties since these are used ties and exist whether I use them or not. I am not concerned that they will pollute my hillside since I think they are still more natural than putting in a concrete foundation, which I something that I consider beyond my own capabilities. These ties work fins and have the advantage of ending up creating the very clear start of a structure and can easily built upon with the 2×6 framing lumber I am using for the walls. As you can tell, I am very proud of my Hobbit House foundation and now of my three 2×6 frames, one for a solid Eastern wall, one for a large windowed Western wall, and one of the northern entry wall with the free-form Hobbit door (which is sort of a mushroom shape). But all this hard physical labor this week has taken its toll on my poor muscles and joints. They say its important as you age to do weight-bearing workouts. I have no interest in going to the gym and lifting weights, but I am happy to work on my projects like this and in the process get a full-body weight-bearing workout better than any nautilus or free-weight workout. The resulting soreness gets solved by a combination of ibuprofen, Advil, extra-strength Tylenol and my weekly two-hour deep-tissue massage from my trusty Andrew, who knows how to force lactic acid out of my largest muscle groups (legs and back) better than any massage therapist I have ever had. I find that massage to be less a luxury and more a necessity as I get older and take on more of these physical labor projects.
The next stage is to cut the sheathing pieces for easy application on site, then to cut the 5 4×12 12’ beams with a lateral elliptical pattern that will give a 2” slope towards the back to the barrel roof. My plan is to do as much cutting and prep up in or in front of the garage and then hire two Mexican laborers again for a day to carry the forms down to the site and help me put them up. That will leave the roof (and all its accoutrement), the tree entry posts as well as the stone paver floor to be done in addition to the prepping and stuccoing of the walls.
There is bad soreness when you do something like take a spill on your hillside and that is no fun. And then there is good soreness from using your body in some endeavor that feels productive, and that is a lot more satisfying than painful. Some might wonder what is so productive about a Hobbit House, but it matters not what the project, it just matters that we strive and do. I look forward to more thoreness.