Five days ago I started prying the thirty-five
ten-foot long decking boards off the thirty-year-old deck frame at the back of
our house. Then, with son Todd’s help, we pieced together a new wood frame of
fresh 2x6 boards on top of our old cracked cement patio, adjacent to the old
deck frame. Finally for the past three days, Todd, good neighbor Wayne, and I
have set, sawn, and screwed on some sixty-eight brand new decking boards to
create a new dance hall sized wooden deck that’s fifteen feet wide and twenty-five
feet long. All that effort is to have the new giant deck finished in time for
the late April wedding weekend of son Ben and his fiance Meredith.
You can see the nearly-finished product, and I
confess I’m pleased with how it came out. It took longer and cost more, as all
home projects do, and would have taken even much longer than anticipated,
except for a hesitant question asked by sweet Nita. She was holding grandson
Jackson and politely listening as I explained how every long board had to be
measured, cut, and laid in place to get a sharp straight edge on both ends of
the deck. I stressed how tedious and time consuming, but necessary, that sort
of fine carpentry work was.
When I shut up, Nita asked, “I don’t understand why
you are taking the time to measure and cut each board. Why not just set them,
screw them in place, and go back later with a circular saw and cut off all the
end pieces at once?”
Duh. I know
Jackson didn’t say it, but I still thought: From the
mouth of babes…
So that’s what we did from then on, and it more than
halved the time needed to place and secure each board. I just finished sawing
off all the end pieces at once, and it’s OK. Thank you, Nita.
The only other noteworthy point about the
construction of the endless deck was carrying forty-six 16-ft-long boards one
at a time from the garage, through the kitchen and breakfast room, and out the
French doors to the construction site. We didn’t sideswipe a single glass on
the countertop or break a single glass pane in the door.
Novel-wise, I have finally written the first draft
of the great failed attack on Little Round Top at Gettysburg. In this chapter,
Captain McBee and the Leon Hunters are in the maelstrom of the second day of
the famous battle that kept the USA united and was the beginning of the end for
the Confederacy.
In real life, the Fifth Texas Regiment was among the
eight or so Confederate regiments that attacked at the critical point (the far
left end of the Union "fishhook" position), at the critical time, or more correctly, an
hour after the critical time. A successful attack across the aptly named
“Valley of Death,” then up the slope of Little Round Top really might have won
the battle, and changed the course of the Civil War. But we know, of course,
that the attack faltered and failed.
Gettysburg is the first battle failure for McBee and
his men, and it was a bloody affair for them. I’ve pulled out books of memoirs
and the stack of old Gettysburg magazines I bought at the
park back in the 1990’s. I found four
different detailed articles in the magazines focusing on different defending
Union regiments that held the ridge and the Confederate units that were
attacking. I’ve studied maps, and have thought back to my own four visits to
Little Round Top to walk the ground. As a novelist whose characters are players in a very well known bit of military history, I want this chapter to be right.
I’m also striving to make the
Gettysburg chapter fast paced and personal, to show one critical slice of the battle through the eyes of a few men who I hope my readers have come to like.
Finally I want the chapter to show just how close it was. Or
maybe it wasn’t close at all. It depends on who is talking. Regardless, when people finish reading about Captain
McBee and Company C at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, I want them to shut the book
and say, “Damn, that was a horserace!”
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