He cut the boards in his shop. Treated two-by-sixes. He measured everything twice. He brought them
down in the bed of his truck.
I nailed them.
Every single one. With Grandpa’s old hammer, the one with the wooden handle worn smooth from
fifty years of his hand. Vern had found it in the shed when he bought the eighty. He gave it to me the day we closed.
It took us three Saturdays. When it was done, it was a dock. Not a fancy one. Twelve feet long, four
Discover more
Use Calculators
Identify Plants
Order Calendars
feet wide, sticking out into the water from the north bank, under the cottonwood.
Vern stood at the end of it and stomped his boot.
“She’ll hold,” he said.
“She’ll hold,” I said.
His cows had tramped most of the bank bare. Two years of Angus walking down to drink had turned it into a mudhole. The cattails Grandpa planted along the dam in 1972 were mostly gone. Just a littleIdentify Plants
