Chapter 3: Tooling up the "Facility" and the Kit comes home, or How I became a Card-carrying Member of the "Handyman Club of America" #xxxxx.
The jig was ready, the garage insulated, the heater functional, the carpet scraps laid, the loft packed, now all that remained before the kit came home was to tool-up. Here, Pat once again showed his "engineering" background. No job can be started until one has absolutely the RIGHT tools for that job. Pat had heard, from many friends and colleagues over the years, that garage sales were fine places to buy cheap, good tools.
At that time, we had only been in Portland for a year and didn't really KNOW our way around, so reading ads in The Oregonian and determining where the "Tools for sale" garage sales were became quite a chore. Now, if one puts together the following data: the right tools needed to suit the job, plus not knowing one's way around Portland, what does that equal? One must have the right "locator" a mere $50 purchase of the p.c. program, "Street Atlas." Finding where the sales were was solved, all that remained was going to sales and simply loading up with tools at rock-bottom prices. Riiiight!
It fell to me to locate sales and sift through the multitudinous adverts and list all the relevant ones. Pat would then sit at the computer locating the address and printing out a map--at first in full glorious color and later a simple black, gray and white thing would emerge (perhaps somewhat symbolic of our change in attitude). We could not have been better prepared. No sale of tools would be ignored or left undiscovered. The first Saturday, we left home early striking while "the iron was hot," being "the early birds that got the worm," all those cliches were never more untrue than that Saturday and all the following Saturdays. We never got any worms, bargain worms or not. We never saw any tools appropriate for plane building or even plane repairing. What we did find however, were tools from raided electrical stores--huge fuses for such heavy current it would disintegrate the plane in 10 seconds, or else send it into the outer ether in one blindingly, blue flash of light We found umpteen old tires in varying degrees of baldness all for 1950 DeSoto's or else World War 2 wheel barrows. Not one digital level at any sale. Why does that not surprise me? Perhaps because most garage sales are held to get rid either of dead men's junk, or live men's junk--junk nevertheless dead or alive--and when I say men, I do mean mankind not just men.
God all those 1970's rope macramé potted-plant hangers in those gorgeous colors, which have now become even more interesting with permanently imbedded decades of dust!! No, we were never so unlucky at tool hunting as we were then--possibly it was not "tool-hunting season" or colleagues and friends were wrong, or we were simply not "that" kind of bargain-hunter. I mean the type of bargain-hunter who will buy leather bellbottoms three sizes too small in the confirmed hope that oooone day they would come back into fashion and would fit some poor, unfortunate family member. Thus, after four totally wasted Saturdays during which we never even saw one second-hand book we wanted to buy we gave this hunt up, and left those wild bargains to roam the hills and dales of Portland in peace.
We now realized that the right tools would have to be purchased at full price and we'd have to look rather for bargain price tool outlets. Consulting once again with our friend Cal Brabandt he put us onto Harbor Freight Tools. We explored all the usual sources like Aircraft Spruce, Lancair, Home Depot, Home Base. We became expert at the layout of every, and any, store or catalog selling tools within the 50 states. I, since I am an unemployed teacher, became the "procurement person." I called and ordered drill presses taller than I am but certainly not heavier. I order clecoes, drill bits, Dremels, sandpaper, acetone, latex gloves for large hands, things I had no idea what I was ordering--but I became an efficient ordering fool. I have, as a result, memorized the credit card number and can recite it at any time, in any place, with alacrity. Then on a day a huge colorful letter arrives announcing my dubious membership to "The Handyman's Club of America." A "Charter member" mind you--not just any old member, but a charter member, whereas I should have been inaugurated into the "Telephone Spenders of America Club" rather. But after some frantic spending and ordering Pat felt he had "enough to go on with…" which I knew meant that he'd always be "needing" more tools.
However, there have been side-line benefits to the extensive tool collection he now has--he could make our mailbox a lock-up one with a little roof against the rain. The mail carrier objected to the size of the slot, since he had to make 3 and 4 deposits (of the many and varied tool catalogs which now arrived in a flood) into our box each day rather than one trusty slam in one shot. After several adjustments, the mail carrier muttered his approval--which meant that the slot is no deterrent against mail thieves, because one can slide the letters out by hand easily. But his newly acquired tools facilitated Pat's task of rendering the mailbox almost impregnable to professional mail thieves.
The day was almost upon--the Ides of March 1997 when we would have to journey down to Redmond and load up the kit. Pat was pregnant with anticipation. Our oldest daughter, Maria-Elena, whom we call "Pinky" offered to come up and help load and unload the kit. I was delighted since she's very strong and very hard working--that certainly took all the pressure off my ever-depleting strength. She flew to Portland the night before we drove to Redmond.
The plan was drive to Redmond, get the ubiquitous U-Haul, go to Lancair, load the kit, Pat and Pinky would drive it all back to Portland, while Romeo (our furry, cocker-spaniel son) and I would drive the car home. Does life ever go as planned? No, of course not. Robby Burns has said it all in this poem, "To a Mouse,"
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Naturally, the best-laid plans go awry, leaving us nothing but "grief and pain" where there had been promised joy! We got the truck and Pat and Pinky bounced their way to Lancair with me in hot pursuit. We went into the offices where Pat disappeared. Finally, he re-emerged with a face he almost tripped over. The kit was not ready and we'd have to stay over one night and get it on the morrow, or else Plan B come back at some later date to collect it. I chose Plan A--we'd wait one day and sleep over and get it the following day--Pat was thrilled. Lancair were generous and we stayed at their expense and went trooping off to see Bend. We spent a very nice day exploring the surroundings of Redmond, which reminded me so very much of the South African, Karoo, which is a high desert plateau area north-east of Cape Town.
Romeo enjoyed driving around standing on my lap with his head out the window and his little fat, furry "arms" resting on the sill. He really like being in the hotel and eating snacks and being taken outside to the "flower bed" to do his "Bent-back Boogey" as Pat calls it. At dinnertime, we left him in the car and at first he would loudly offer the world his tortured heartache, and then settle down to "guard" the car. On our return, we'd always bring a little snack for him which he "wolfed down" is a flash of his white-bearded jaw.
The following morning we were all up early and not so very bright. The previous evening's expectation and disappointment had left us all feeling as though "hung-over." We made our way to Lancair not as optimistically as we had the day before. But there almost everything stood ready for loading. Pat and Pinky and other volunteers loaded the truck and we left to get the rest of the kit from Jerry Parks' place some miles down Highway 126. Jerry was putting the finishing touches on part of the fast-build kit and had done it in his workshop on his property. I think he has a set-up many men would kill for. He has his home, a private landing strip, and a job site all in the same place--he is doing work he loves, has a small crew and seems very happy with his life. He was very helpful and offered all kinds of advice to Pat and was most hospitable as well.
Finally, we had all the various parts and could leave for Portland. Thank Heavens for Jerry. He had been working on the wings and gave us the transport jigs for them--not only do they weigh (in my estimate several tons, but then after 50 lbs. I can't estimate weight)a tremendous amount , but they needed to be lodged in a jig for safe transportation--and he let us take his jig. Pat's face by now was aglow. He was in his 7th heaven and just wanted to get it all home.
I stopped in Redmond to gas up and that proved to be the last time I would see either Pat or the U-Haul until I arrived worried out of my gourd at home. I thought that Pat would drive a sedate 50--60 mph and that over the mountain I would certainly catch up with him. Who was I kidding? I think he must have gone at a bone rattling speed and arrived at least 20--30 minutes before I did. I showed up to two frantic people almost yelling at me in chorus, "Where were you? We've been waiting for hours!" Well, I was cool and casual I didn't admit that I, too, had been frantic and waited to see every U-Haul pass by so that I could confirm that Pat was not the driver. The garage door was opened and then started the second South African "Great Trek." This time the trek was not to evade gunrunning charges, or the British (depending on whose interpretation of history one reads) but to get the plane unloaded before dark. Even the neighbor's wife helped, after the husband offered to help to us, and then left in his car with his son. Larry and his brawn again came in useful--he and Pat staggered down the drive with those heavy wings--almost getting a hernia each in the effort.
The kit was asleep in the garage, the first parts were laid carefully, lovingly onto the jig. Now the days, the weeks, the years also lay before Pat before his "princess" would be woken from her sleep, as though with a kiss, --transformed into a sleek plane of speed and beauty.
From this, "Clear!"
To this one day!