[AT] Old work boots ramble

[Dean Vinson]

Spent several hours trimming trees and cleaning out gutters today, the 
kind of chore for which I dig out my old leather boots.  Over the course 
of many trips back and forth across the yard, dragging tree branches to 
a big pile that will supply indoor kindling and outdoor bonfires over 
the next few months, I noticed that much of the yard is pretty rough 
looking.  Bare spots, dips from where I'd burned out some stumps but 
never really filled it back in right, weedy places.  "Maybe I could buy 
something small like a Super C, and find a rear-mounted tiller for it," 
I thought to myself.

The northwest corner of the yard is where the barn would go, the one 
where I'd keep the Super M (and I guess the Super C, too, as long as I'm 
daydreaming).  Probably keep the bikes and lawnmower and extension 
ladder and such in there also, I suppose, but mostly it'd be a barn. 
I'd have to build it myself to keep the cost down and because I'd need 
it to be an honest barn rather than one of those pretend things I see 
out in front of the Home Depot.  Have to have a pretty high door to 
clear the muffler on the Super M, and of course some good workspace, so 
it'd end up being pretty big.  I'd have to add some barn details, maybe 
a haymow door up high.  I'd wear my old leather boots while I built it.

Right now the woodpile is on that spot.  Not this summer but each of the 
two before, we had a crew thin out the trees in the back yard and cut 
down some dead ones from the front, maybe 20 total, decent-sized, 6" to 
12" in diameter I guess.  The crew ground the tops into mulch and cut 
the wood into fireplace length for us, and by now I've got all but a 
little bit of it split.  That's a job for the leather boots, and while I 
split I remember splitting with my dad and loading wood into the old 
two-wheel wagon, hooked to Dad's '48 Case.  We just had the one wagon, 
so it hauled everything.  Kids, manure, firewood, fertilizer, seed, hoes 
and rakes.  Pumpkins and corn and tomatoes.

Somewhere in those years as a teenager my feet found a comfortable size 
and settled down in it, and I didn't outgrow the BiltRite Huron crepe 
soled leather workboots that I'd gotten somewhere along the way.  They 
were with me when we baled hay with the Rosenberger's down the road, and 
when I painted the Ross's barns, and when we fixed the fenceline.  They 
were cold and wet and later stiff on days when I should have chosen the 
rubber knee-highs instead, but they were warm and clean and felt good on 
evenings when we looked back on an empty hayfield and a full 
sweet-smelling barn.

Most of the years since then, 27 or 28 I guess, haven't seen me often in 
the field.  Now and then the boots still come out, soles too smooth but 
okay for what little I ask of them.  The tops seem unchanged, soft and 
light brown up high by the little brass ears that I wrap the last few 
turns of the laces around, but down low the bits of roofing tar, flecks 
of paint, anonymous scuffs and nicks blend into the deep gray-brown of 
history.  Such a plain thing, these boots, but they remember, and they 
wait with me.  They keep faith while my work years are filled with desks 
and talking and thinking and writing, while too many bills leave too 
little left, while toy tractors on my desk and tractor shows in the 
summer, and dreamed-of backyard barns unbuilt, fill in for the life of 
my past and future.

  Dean Vinson  --  Dayton Ohio
<http://my.voyager.net/~vinsond/>