Golf Lessons Ch 01

Thank you, Erik Thread for your editing skills and suggestions.

This is part one of a three part story. The story is finished. Each chapter will be posted on the site about every day, which means the entire story will have been posted before the first part appears on the list of new stories. People seldom step outside of their personality. They may successfully hide some of their personality from even those who know them well, yet still they remain true to that personality.

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Stephanie was holding the ladder and passing tools up to me as I cleaned and checked the condition of the rain gutters along the north side of the house. She was also managing the water hose I was using to wash out the gutters, a chore I hadn't done since the previous year. We lived in the house her two times great-grandfather had built. After renting it from the estate for four years, we purchased the house. Less than a year later, we bought the remaining farm land from the estate to give Stephanie, her brother, and two sisters the remainder of their share of the farm's value.

In the eight years we'd owned the house, I'd continued to repair or rebuild it where needed, bringing it from an older farm house to something a lot more modern. We didn't want to spoil the idea that it was an older home with beadboard walls, a variety of decorative woods in the large rooms, and high ceilings, so repairs and alterations took a lot of time and extra work to match the workmanship inside the house. We were doing this work while trying to stay within our family budget.

The original house was built when lifestyles were much more elegant than how we live today. Originally, there were two bedrooms, a large country kitchen, a front room, and a very large, partially enclosed, back porch. Later a much larger parlor, study, and formal dining room were added. Last, the upper floor added six more bedrooms. The large area above the bedrooms was an unfinished, open attic, only part of which had flooring. Thrifty homeowners had used the open space to store broken or no longer used furniture and wooden boxes of clothing, along with the left-overs of several generations.

After Steph's father quit farming, he kept twenty acres around the house and began to sell the remainder of the land as three to five acre homesites. The old farmhouse, the barn and other outbuildings, were eventually surrounded by newer homes, many of them trying to look like farmhouses.

The nearest neighbor's house looked so much like our barn it was difficult to believe it was only ten years old. The wood on the new two-story building had weathered and the roof outline matched the barn's classic gambrel roof so well the two buildings looked like twins. The main difference between the appearance of the two buildings was that our barn did not have double-pane insulated windows along the sides. Even though the huge doors on the ends looked the same, theirs didn't slide open.

We still owned about sixty acres beyond our twenty-acre surround, and had been approached by a company planning to build a golf course. Our land was one of several sites they were interested in. The money sounded good, although it wasn't much more than we could get if we sold the land to people interested in building homes.

The golf course people preferred our land because in one corner was a long irregularly shaped stock tank that was partially fed by a small stream when there was even a small amount of rainfall. The rolling land, including the low-lying area around the stock tank, required much less earth moving to build their golf course .

In the fifteen-plus years since any of the land grew a crop, trees had matured and other spaces were overgrown with high grasses and small brush. The farmers on two sides of that land were anxious to sell and willing to negotiate a very good deal with the development company, which was rumored to be considering a high-end housing development and a retail center to complement the course.

"Hey Paul," my wife called up to me. "You know it's our turn for the 4th of July barbecue."

Because Steph couldn't see my face, I told her what I really thought. "I'll pass."

She knew I was teasing, "Don't be like that. You enjoy it as much as I do. You get to show off what you've done to this old barn."

As I started down the ladder, I asked, "I thought you liked the house?"

"I'm starting to enjoy it, now that you've finished my new kitchen. When do we get a larger master bath?"

"We need to sell another five acre tract before we can afford to buy the materials."

"Quit your job and get a real one and we could afford it sooner."

I started to tell her my job was more real than the one she kept talking about, but never made a phone call or looked in the newspaper want ads. "That's not going to happen, but you could go to work."

"I don't want to work. It would tie me to a schedule. I'd have to take off work to drive the girls to their events. Besides, I can't go to work in jeans and sweatshirts."

I stopped myself from saying there was a lot more clothing in her closet than jeans and sweatshirts, but I did say, "Then I guess your big modern master bath won't happen until we sell another plot of land."

"We could go to the bank and borrow enough."

"Yes," I answered as I took the last step off the ladder. "But we'd have another payment. That means we'd have to cut some of the extras out of our budget, the girl's piano and gymnastic lessons, plus there would be no more gym or cheer leader summer camps."

"It wouldn't cost that much."

"It would if we tried to pay it off as fast as we could. Otherwise, all we're paying is interest to the bank."

"Well, are you thinking about that other job offer?"

"Not hardly. Both of those guys owned businesses that failed within the first three years. When they fail again, I'd be out of a job and my old one would no longer be available. I think I'll stay where I am. In another year, Spike is going to retire and I'll get paid for the job I'm already doing." I stopped beside Stephanie and looked at her. She wasn't happy, and with me the only wage earner, I couldn't give her a life any better than what we had. Her occasional comments that our lives were too plain showed her dissatisfaction, but still she acknowledged we had a pretty good life.

Including my last two years of high school, I'd worked almost twenty years to get where I was and I wasn't going to put in with a couple of guys who had big plans and no money with which to implement them. They wanted me as a partner because I had the land they wanted for their big garden center with statuary, artificial ponds, and landscape advice. It was a good idea but the area wouldn't support something like that for another ten to fifteen years. A large city was expanding in our direction, but it was going to be at least that long before we would see any substantial changes to our small rural town.

"Come on, Honey," I was trying to encourage her. "In a year I'll be warehouse manager. In two years, the house will be paid off and we will have three teenagers in high school. That's pretty damn close to the American dream."

Her voice was shrill when she told me the same thing I'd heard for more than two years, "There's no excitement in my life. I need something different, Paul."

Steph took a step back, put her hands on her hips, and declared, "You're a stick in the mud, and I'm the mud. UGH."

Before I could say anything to counter her complaints about our lives, she stomped off around the side of the house, leaving me with my mouth open. I usually didn't mind watching her walk away from me. She had a cute ass, and the way she moved it could always entice me into giving it a little rub or a pat. But I just didn't like that I couldn't always make her happy.

When I got to the house I reminded Stephanie, "The bus is coming. Don't forget to give Cindy the check for this month's bus fees."

"I wrote the check, but I think it's still in my checkbook."

Charles Jerome, who lived down the road, was a history teacher at the nearby high school. He jumped at the chance to purchase a school bus the district was selling. He and I, and a couple of the other fathers in the neighborhood, rebuilt the motor. After paying for the parts, the only remaining cost for each family was gasoline and insurance. We continued to pay during the summer, building up a fund that would cover future repairs and might eventually be enough to purchase a newer vehicle.

Charles drove all the kids to school. If our children had to ride the regular district school bus, they would leave home when it was still dark and not get home until almost two hours after school ended. In the winter they would get home when it was already dark. We figured it was a bargain having the kids at home those extra hours instead of on a rowdy school bus with drivers who really didn't care what the kids did as long as nothing hit them in the back of the head.

Charles was an ex-marine, which meant the children sat in their assigned seats and some of them even got their homework done on the bus. Occasionally there was a little subtle tutoring going on. When Troy's algebra grades started going down, Charles assigned him to a different seat, beside Charles's son, Dillon. Within two weeks, Troy's algebra grades began to climb again. Soon Troy had a new friend who spent almost as much time at our house as he did at his own home.

I walked to the coat rack by the back door and took her big heavy handbag off one of the coat pegs. I got to her about the same time she reached for the ringing telephone. She fished around in her handbag for the checkbook as she jiggled the telephone against her shoulder. I started to take the checkbook from her so she could manage the telephone, but she jerked it out of my hand, turned around and tore the check out, handed it to me, and then put the strap of her purse over her shoulder.

As soon as she mentioned the name Rob, I knew she was talking to her older sister. "The 4th is on a Saturday. Are you and Rob going to spend that night with us?" This question was followed by Steph shaking her head, "No, no, I asked Tina, but she said it would be too hard for them to get home and go to church on Sunday. You know she won't miss a single Sunday at church." When she asked her next question, I knew they were talking about their brother, "Are they spending the night?" She paused a moment and said, "I didn't think so. Sharon won't stay in a dump like this. She'll want a fancy hotel so she can show off her expensive clothes."

I left the room to go outside for my extension ladder. I was getting a little tired of the way Stephanie talked about the house. We had done so much work in a few years. Six months earlier, I'd given her the choice of new living room furniture or a rebuilt master bathroom. She was upset that she couldn't have both and hadn't stopped reminding me the bathroom was a job I had not yet begun.

There wasn't anything wrong with the master bath, even though it was rather small and it hadn't been updated in forty years. The tile was all good and the bathtub was certainly large enough for a generous bubble bath, but it was not like the one she saw in an architectural magazine with a Jacuzzi tub, nor did it have a double sink vanity, special lighting, or his and her toilet stalls. I might enjoy a tub like that after a full day of handling heavy sacks of feed corn or fertilizer, but I thought her other wants were just a little excessive for a house that was well over one hundred years old when we began living there.

We had other bathrooms too. Formerly a small bedroom, the upstairs bathroom was shared by the children and a guest room, but it was never going to be large enough as long as there were two teen girls in the family. Our son had often gone out to the workshop and taken his shower in the small room we'd built for the times we were so dirty we didn't want to mess up one of the bathrooms in the house.

We'd taken an old tin box, sealed the seams, and mounted it on the roof of the workshop. Solar heated water wasn't as hot as what we had inside, but it was better than a cold shower. Although the floor and walls were wood, they dried quickly. We occasionally teased the girls and Steph that they could use our shower but they couldn't use their favorite soaps and shampoos because we allowed the water to drain into the small vegetable garden. The cosmetics they used weren't biodegradable.

We had a third bathroom, which shared a wall with the kitchen. Half of the room was under the stairwell. I'd turned off the water supply to that room until I could replace the old pipes. It was the house's original bathroom with a pedestal sink, claw foot tub, and a shower curtain ring suspended from the ceiling. A small alcove held the water closet, which included an overhead tank with a pull chain. I was looking for parts to repair the original water heater, if that was possible. Otherwise, it would be left in the room as a conversation piece. We wanted to keep that bathroom, particularly because it was adjacent to a small bedroom that held a bed and other furniture used by Steph's great-grandfather who built the house. Even though both rooms were small and had no windows, they were a favorite when we had overnight guests. Stephanie liked to call it the Guest Suite.

There was still one more chore I needed to do for the day. I was waiting for the children to get home because I would need a little help and I didn't want my wife crawling around in the attic. She had some problems with sneezing whenever I started any demolition, probably from stirring up so much dust.

While Steph finished her telephone conversation with her older sister, I fixed me a big glass of ice water and sat at the kitchen table to wait for our son and daughters to come inside. They left their backpacks around the large dining room table and came into the kitchen for drinks and snacks before they started their homework. I wanted to catch our son before he did anything else.

The noise increased when the children filled the kitchen. I got a high five from Cindy, Troy, and Lulu. After the children finished their snacks, I told Troy to put on some old clothes so he could crawl into the corner of the attic for me.

Not long after moving into the house, I'd discovered a treasure trove. After completing each phase of the construction, the original builder had saved every scrap of wood he could and it was saving us a bundle of money. The decorative wood molding stacked in the attic was the same as was used when the house was built, wood that was no longer available, and was very expensive to reproduce.

Troy went up the ladder ahead of me. When he started crawling into the corner of the attic, I stood in the taller part of the attic with my flashlight and the piece of wood I needed to match.

Lulu crawled up the ladder and stuck her head through the opening, asking for permission to look through one of the boxes of old clothing. She wanted to see if she could find an old ladies hat her grandmother had worn.

"Troy, I need a piece of molding that's more than seven feet long."

In a slightly muffled voice, he called from the low-ceilinged corner of the attic. "Hand me the measuring tape."

"You don't need it. How tall are you?"

"Five, seven."

"Stretch your arms out, son. From fingertip to fingertip is about the same as your height. Just get me a length that's about that long plus the length of one arm."

Troy held up a board to show me, "There's one here on top that's already finished. One end has a miter cut."

"No that's from another door facing, the same thing I'm trying to replace."

"Okay, here's an unfinished one, but it's probably ten feet long."

"Keep looking, I'm saving the two longest ones for the facing on both sides above the dining room doors."

I didn't see what Lulu tossed down to the floor below, but I watched her as she carefully climbed down the ladder. Stephanie was going to have a fit about something coming from the attic. She would notice it the first time she walked into Lulu's room. She would back out of the room sneezing, demanding the young girl take her newest treasure outside and dust it off.

Troy finally backed out of the corner, dragging a length of wood molding with him. I matched the profile to the one I held, and then gave mine to him to put with the other wood. I was saving everything I could, too. I still had several windows that were going to need some facing replaced. As we backed down the ladder, I reminded Troy to go shower or his mother would sneeze all evening. He teased me that he might start sneezing, too, so he wouldn't have to crawl into that corner any more.

I took the length of wood out to my shop and waved as Steph drove off, taking the girls to a gymnastic class. Then I went back into the house to measure the facing I was replacing inside the guest bedroom. I was surprised to see Steph had stripped the old bed with the high backed headboard. She had removed the mattress pad, too. I was trying to recall when we had last had guests use the room. None of our family ever went into that small dark room. I couldn't understand why Steph had decided the sheets on the bed needed to be washed.

After I cut the board and nailed it in place, I began cleaning up after myself. I unplugged the small oscillating fan that was sitting on the kitchen stool so I could use that electric receptacle for the vacuum cleaner. I almost dropped the fan in shock. I ran my hand up and down the surface of the old cotton-filled mattress and felt an area that was cool to the touch. It had been wet recently but was now dry. At least the mattress ticking was dry. The cotton inside the mattress might still be wet, but this wasn't our bed.

I felt sick to my stomach. I saw red and heard a roar inside my head. I'm not a violent man, but at that moment, I could have done serious damage to anyone who got in my way. Without thinking about what I was doing, I went back out to my shop and got a beer out of my small refrigerator. I sat down on the old tree stump I was letting rot before I tried to dig it up. I was still breathing hard, almost panting, while trying to calm myself down so I could think rationally. Before I exploded in a wild rage, I needed to examine what I knew about my wife.

Charles Jerome drove the bus down the road and turned into my driveway. "Hey Paul, are you getting an early start on your weekend?"

I waved him toward the refrigerator in the corner of my shop and didn't give him much attention until he was sitting on the bench next to the outside wall of the shop.

As he popped the tab on his can of beer, he said, "I need to borrow your heavy duty car jack. One of the tires has a slow leak."

I didn't say much. I don't recall if I really said anything, my head was still swimming from my discovery. I just let Charles chatter... The spare tire was almost bald ... It was only good in an emergency ... It was a weekend ... Charles just had time to get the tire removed, repaired, and reinstalled before he would need to drive the bus on Monday. He'd tried to make the tire last through the next week, which was the last week of school before summer vacation ... He was afraid the tire wasn't going to make it ... He'd been keeping his small air compressor under the driver's seat for at least two weeks.

I guess I helped Charles remove the tire and load it into his truck when his wife drove by to pick him up. Their son Dillon got out of the truck, waved at me and went inside the house to look for Troy. About all I really recall is getting another beer and returning to sit on the tree stump to think about the question Charles asked regarding the golf course people. He asked if they were talking to me again about selling the last sixty acres of land. His wife had noticed another one of their vehicles in our driveway earlier in the day.