The Next Big Wood Project

by Marina Rojas

The Next Big Wood Project

  By Marina Rojas

  Copyright 2012 Marina Rojas

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Please note this note

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Author’s Bio

  Thank You to My Readers

  Please note

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or deceased, or places, events or locales is strictly coincidental. All characters in this book are products of the author’s imagination and were not created with any particular individual in mind.

  This book may contain sensitive subject matters that are not suitable for all readers.

  Please use your discretion wisely.

  INTRODUCTION

  This book was written for fun about people who I grew up with, about people who love life and laughter almost as much as they love their children and eating.

  This is not a book for someone who reads a book wanting to dig in and find spelling or grammar errors, because, well, you’ll find a ton of them in here because that’s the way the good ol’ boys speak, learn and listen. I’m sorry if you are unable to get your linguistic groove on with this story, but the characters are too rich in whom they are to rob them of the language of their surroundings.

  I hope you will enjoy this story; and although you’ve already been put on notice that the characters are not based on anyone particular, they are based on a lot of folks in general, but you just may think you recognize someone along the way. All I can tell you, is, it still ain’t them.

  Love to my people, the hillbillies of this world who live their life to the fullest in their charmingly manner of Carpe Diem.

  Please enjoy.

  CHAPTER ONE

  There’s just something about the good ol’ boys when they decide that it’s up and time to do something.

  Usually, you’ll find them sitting up on their porch drinking a beer and waiting for the afternoon to cool down, or sometimes, if’n a job comes up, they can be found out in the field a-hunting or butchering someone’s pig or cow.

  Most of the time, though they just be sitting around talking about their next meal or what they’d do if they won all that state lottery money.

  So, on this particular day of this particular story, the good ol’ boys would be found sitting in the back yard next to an old barrel they had fashioned into a cook stove.

  And Ernest was sitting the closest to the stove ‘cause he wanted to make sure those charcoals would heat up and not go out on ‘em. He kept pouring lighter fluid on the embers, and there would be a big ‘SWOOSH’ of flame and then he’d just grin into the fire and look over ta Bo Dean, who was priming the water pump so’s he could get the crawdads cleaned up for the cooking.

  It didn’t take long afore, Ernest didn’t have much in the way of eyebrows left, so Bo Dean told him that it pretty much looked like the charcoals were good enough hot, and that left Ernest with nothing fun to do, so he decided he would go next door to see if he could borrow some newspapers so they couldse lay ‘em out on the old picnic table for the time when the crawdads would be done. That way they could just dump ‘em on the table and not have it all messed up later with all the crawdad guts that could jack up the fine wood finish they had put to the table.

  You see, there was one thing about the good ol’ boys, and that one thing about them was that they were pretty good at working the wood.

  Their house was full of pretty pine cabinets, and lots of bookshelves that held stuff like their extra truck parts and whatchamacallits that they couldn’t figure out exactly what they were fer.. Their mama had asked them to build her a cabinet case for her rifles, and they were pretty proud of the job they’d done on that one. Mama was so thrilled to have a place to keep her shotguns in the kitchen, but she had been a little upset that the good ol’d boys had followed their normal suit by making the cabinet case a little bigger than whaten’d she had asked for.

  See, Mama had asked for a cabinet case to hold her five rifles and two shotguns, but Ernest and Bo Dean decided it twood be a shame if she had to get another one if’n she went out and bought some new guns, so they decided to expand on the original idear and ended up making a cabinet case that would hold up to twenty rifles, ten shotguns and about thirty to forty little’uns, like her old German lugar that had been handed down from Grampa alt the way back from World War II and the Colt 45 daddy had gived her for her birthday.

  Now, Mama did love that cabinet like it was her own child, but she was a little cranky when they had to move the refrigerator out to the back porch to get the cabinet to fit just right into her kitchen.

  At first, she was a little fussy about having the frig back there, mostly ‘cause of the visits from the local woodland creatures dropping by at night to forage through whatever she had stored in there for the time being. Once, she lost almost a whole side of beef ‘cause her own hunting dogs smelt at it in the refrigerator and figured out how to get the door open.

  Whoooo-eeee! Mama was purdy near ready to skin those old hounds when she saw all the mess they’d made, and then was twice upset when she couldn’t recover any of it from what the dogs’d left tossed all over the back porch.

  But Bo Dean saved the day by going down ta the Home Depot and getting a big lock and chain and attaching it to the refrigerator door so mama could wrap the chain around the whole thing at night so nothing could ever gets into her stuff agin.

  She was so proud of the work Bo Dean had done on her refrigerator the morning the old black bear had come up on the porch to try out his luck and all he was able to do was knock the thing over but he couldn’t get inside of it. It took her a few minutes that morning after that critter left to open the door and get the fixin’s for breakfast out, since the bear had managed to knock it on the ground and kind of turned it sideways. But she wrestled that refrigerator door fer a while and finally got to get what she needed out ta side of it, kind of had to stand on top of the refrigerator on an angle and all. But once she got all her stuff out, then she just made sure the cord was still running through the window into the wall so when the good ol’ boys got up they could figure out how to put it back on the porch and set it upright and all for her.

  Bo Dean finally got the crawdads heating up in the pot, so he and Ernest turned to talking about building something else that would keep ‘em busy for a while.

  They had just completed building a mighty fine camper shell for their Uncle Tommy’s Ford F210 pickup truck, and it had been a project that had kept them busy for almost three weekends in a row.

  Fueled with plenty of Coors and lots of advice from their kinfolk and neighbors, the good ol’ boys had managed to take the leftover wooden two by fours they’d had kept in the barn and turn them into a dream-come-true camper shell for Uncle Tommy.

  It had taken them a while to figure out how to stabilize the wooden box onto the truck bed, but with some duct tape and a few ropes, the camper shell was sitting on the back of the truck like a real beauty. They had even built an overhang across the top of the truck, like a real deluxe camper shell would have, and they all thought it lookted real good.

  They had noticed it had caused some heavy wind resistance when you drove the truck, you know, being flat wood instead of a rounded piece of metal like the store bought camper shells would have, but they all agreed it was a small price to pay for having such a fine homemade piece of wood working genius.

  When they had put the shell on the truck and locked it down to the truck bed, it had only taken them three hours to cut out a door in the back big enough for Bo Dea
n to finally be able to get out of the back of the truck’s new camper shell. He was a little sweaty and kindly hungry once he got his freedom from the back of the truck, but the good ol’ boys promised themself that they would remember to make a door in the next camper shell they made, first thing, soes as not to have to have someone wait such a while to get out into the breathing air.

  After the camper shell was finished, they had painted it with the only paint they had out in the barn. It was kinda brown, but maybe beige, it was some of that paint the city boys uses to cover up graffiti on the walls nowadays. The boys had gone into town and Ernest had noticed the can sitting near a wall where some workers had just finished painting over some of that stuff, and since they had already moved on to another wall and just forgot that whole can of paint there at the side of the wall, Ernest just picked up the stray can of paint and set it in the back of their pickup. That was a good thing, too, ‘cause here it turned out to be so useful for the camper shell and all.

  So, as the good ol’ boys sat around talking about their wood working triumphs, time passed and they were soon sucking up crawdad heads with their family and everyone was encouraging them to get on to their next big wood project, whatever it would be.

  MikeyLee Barnes told the boys that he had just brought home a truck bed full of old things they were giving away at the old hardware store in town that had been demolished since Home Depot had come in and ruint their business and all. He tole ‘em they could take anything they wanted from the pile, that it was fresh and that no one else had even looked through it a’tall.

  Ernest and Bo Dean thanked MikeyLee for his generosity and decided that for that grand gesture, MikeyLee and his family would be the recipients of the next big wood project.

  MikeyLee said he couldn’t think of anything in the world he wanted at that very moment, so Ernest and Bo Dean said they would just go down to the junk pile and maybe get inspired by whatever they would find down there. Mikey told him they was surely welcome to come over any time and do whatever they wanted to do, seeing as how they was like the Michaelangelo of woodworking and all.

  They grinned big toothless grins at each other as they toasted each other with their Coors cans in one hand and crawdads in the other.

  My, oh, my, thought the good ol’ boys, this is shore going to turn out to be a wonderful day after all.

  So the good ol’ boys sat back and unhitched the button on their britches to let some belly hang out while they digested their crawdads and beer.

  The sun was going down and the squeeters were coming around with those little low pitched ‘zzzzzzzzzzzzz’ sounds they made righten afore they take a bite out of you. Mama brought some citronella candles out to the front porch and lit them up on the four corners by the porch swings and she coughed a little as the citronella started doing its job.

  Ernest complained a little, saying it sounded like mama was gonna cough up a lung and she playfully hit him on the back of his head and he fell off the old rocking chair he was sitting in but he sworn it didn’t hurt a’tall, although everyone noticed he kept rubbing that bump that had whelt up on his head.

  Ernest and Bo Dean finally started talking about their plans to get up early in the morning and head out to MikeyLee’s house so they couldse figure out what their next big wood project was gonna be.

  Ernest asked Bo Dean if he had ever been in MikeyLee’s house afore, but Bo Dean said he had never gone in tad a house afore, cause he twas thinking MikeyLee’s woman to be somewhat of a witch, and he had wanted to avoid upsetting anything in her life and bring the evil eye down on himself.

  “And what’s to making you think the woman’s a witch?” Ernest asked Bo Dean, who he didn’t think of as a superstitious kind of fella.

  “Well, I was up thar one day, I was,” replied Bo Dean, “and I was just a-drinking my beer whilst keeping my eye out on the front yard while MikeyLee had run inta get his hunting rifle, so’s he could go wit me out to see about ketchin’ some rabbits over nearby the Rivers’ pond.

  I went to set down on an old chair they had there, and looked up to see her peeking at me through the kitchen window curtains. She had one of those looks on her face likin’ to a witch, all squinty eyed and teeth a blarin yellow and all. Kinda looked like one of them there trick or treat pumpkin faces and all. I swan, it looked to me like she was a setting a curse on me, I tell ya what.” Bo Dean shook his head and shoulders in fright.

  “Well, when did that be? I don’t remember that time?” Ernest asked, since he and his brother were rarely apart.

  “Oh, when you was a up visiting Junior Bailey at’n the county jail up in Burlington a few weeks back. Being the friend that he is, and knowing hows I woulda been kinda lonely and all withoutst my brother, MikeyLee spent the whole night that night a hanging out with me and a helping me with my drinking, and then that next morning about 5am, well, he decided that he needed to accompany me in my effort to go rabbit hunting,” said Bo Dean, “So’s we went to his house and banged on the front door fer a while til his old lady let him in and that’s when I saw that there witchy look on her face and realized he was living with a cursed woman.”.

  “Hmmm. That’s why I’m not ta recalling it,” said Ernest. “Oh, well, who can understand women anyways? Maybe she is a witch then, I’ll be on the lookout for her evil eye, too then.” He stood up and buttoned his pants back up.

  “Well, let’s get along to sleepin’ then, we gots to get a early start over to MikeyLee’s place in the morning so’s we can figure out what our next wood project will be. We gonna need our rest tonight,” Ernest yawned.

  “Yep, it’s bed time, alright. I’m gunna go round and chain up the refrigerator, and I’ll see ya in the morning time.” Replied Bo Dean.

  CHAPTER TWO

  So the next morning, the good ol’ boys got up bright and early and headed out to MikeyLee’s house. Their mama had fixed them a lunch already, packed tight along with a case of Coors in the Styrofoam ice chest she had drug out and threw in the back of their pick up.

  “Now, don’t y’all be too late into the night with this big wood project, you come home early to eat dinner and then head out again in the morning if’n you has to,” their mother admonished.

  They waved bye at her and the others as the dogs ran alongside their old rickety truck, barking like they were real watchdogs and all.

  It was a few miles down the dusty road before getting to MikeyLee’s, so Bo Dean reached back into the ice chest and pulled out a couple of beers, popping off the twist tops.

  “Now you remember, Bo Dean,” reminded Ernest, “If we get stopped by the poll lees, this here bottles is yur’n, not mine. You gonna lie, and I’m gonna swear to it, you got that?”

  Bo Dean leaned his head back to chug the cold beer and brought his head down in complete agreement. “I knows! I knows! Heck, everybody knows you can’t drink and drive round here! I knows what to say, Brudda!”

  Ernest grinned and put his eyes back on the road, confident that he could now drink his beer in peace and not have to worry about getting arrested.

  A few minutes after he took the last few gulps of beer, he turned into MikeyLee’s long driveway. The dirt road had a fork someways down the ways, and Ernest veered to the fork on the right, knowing it headed down to the barn and where MikeyLee had left the pile of treasure from the old hardware store.

  They only drove a little bit when the pile of stuff came into view, and they both whistled in appreciation of how much stuff MikeyLee had gathered into that big pile of stuff.

  “Dang, Brudda, MikeyLee made him a killing down ta the hardware store! Lookit all that stuff!” Bo Dean’s voice showed his admiration towards MikeyLee’s acquisition.

  Ernest parked their truck right next to the edge of the pile, and they jumped out of the front seat to take a look at what was available to them.

  “Looky here, looky here,” said Ernest, touching the plywood piled up in a stack, “This be looking purdy good,
it do. I like dis here wood stuff.”

  They both walked around the great mound of things, and could see that MikeyLee had been able to get many things from many of the departments of the tore-down store. There were plenty of things from the electrical department, the plumbing department, and even from home interior stuff. Both of them made appreciative grunting noises as they surveyed the stacks and stacks of things.

  They returned to the truck, talking about what they had seen and what they thought they should do for their next big wood project.

  Bo Dean reached into the cooler once more and this time brought out a couple of egg salad sandwiches along with two fresh beers and they sat down on the tailgate to talk about their project.

  Pretty soon, nature called, and Ernest had to walk over and go behind a tree to take care of his personal business.

  Bo Dean thought Ernest was being chased by a bear cause’n the way he came running back

  towards the truck, but instead, Ernest was whooping and hollering and shouting that he knew what their next big wood project was going to be, and he just knew that MikeyLee would be in awe and amazement of it and that he was probably gonna have to deal with some jealousy and envy from his kinfolks and neighbors, but Ernst just knew what was gonna be their crowning glory as the region’s best woodworkers.