Toilet tanks, gates, latches, door locks, closet clothes poles, landscape grooming, Weedeating on occasion, Special Carpentry Projects, all manner of Honey Do Handyman work – these are the things that I currently do for self-employment and have done for these past 16 years. Before that I cleaned roots and clogs from sewer lines in three […]
The A Cappella Handyman: Songwriting
I never would have guessed when I was a senior in Mechanical Engineering Design at UC Berkeley back in 1965 that I would have an armload of songs on YouTube.com by the time I was 75. Or that Herb Caen would list all the lyrics to my “Laid Off American Man” in 1994. Such are […]
The A Cappella Handyman: Code Blue
Code Blue It’s a borrowed title from another story but its weight fits the mood. These are the prosthetic hooks that taught me how to use my hands. Fortunately too we had Mom who taught us the best a Mother can teach. But Dad was our Dad. Best mentor an eight year old boy […]
The A Cappella Handyman: Farm Truck
After we bought “the Farm” in 1984, the next task was to maintain it and the extended side yard that gently curved to the sidewalk and then up the hill towards Seaview. The first 30 years weren’t so bad, but then I hit 70, and my work clock began to slowly unwind. The City Fire […]
The A Cappella Handyman: Fan Mail–Yippee!
“Fan mail,” I thought, “Yippee!” There it was in my P.O. Box 234 down at the Benicia Post Office (Am I soliciting more?), tucked in a back corner behind two week’s worth of crumpled up Shopping Flyers – It was almost unseen, tucked in so close to the Box wall, like a narrow missive not […]
The A Cappella Handyman: Bottom of My Bottom
At the bottom of my economic bottom, in 1999, I went to the Want Ads and looked for work: “Plumber Trainee, No experience necessary. We train. Must have own tools and truck.” How hard could that be? I’d always done my own home plumbing and that of my parents since I was 15 so I […]
The A Cappella Handyman: Thibodeau
Thibodeau Thibodeau came to me in the middle of the night while scratching my own back. I went downstairs to check him out on Yahoo to make sure he wasn’t carrying some hex from a cane field or Botany Lab. No, the coast was clear, I could spell him anyway I wanted, my Thibodeau wore […]
The A Cappella Handyman: Mabel and Babe
Mabel and Babe In the late 1940s my maternal grandparents, Adolf and Karen Larsen bought a small dairy farm in Orland, Calif. Farr, Danish for Father, first worked his farmland chores with two plow horses, Mabel and Babe. My Dad later helped him acquire a John Deere system of farm equipment. Mabel was a friendly, […]
The A Cappella Handyman: My Logo
My Logo When the suburbanites moved into Walnut Creek and its walnut orchards in the 1950s, the once dry orchards with seasonal irrigation now became very well-watered lawns.The water table changed substantially and the walnut trees developed Crown Rot and died. One of my jobs as a teenager was to dig up and remove the […]
The A Cappella Handyman: Crayon Box for Christmas
Crayon Box for Christmas There were so many colors! It’s not like I was gonna do that much coloring, but somebody had made and packed this box, bigger than my world to date. Sometimes when I go to an Open Mic’, the experience is the same. I may or may not be stirred or […]