Picnic Table
About 25 years ago I stopped raising hogs, which meant the hopper bottom bin behind my feed shed became surplus to needs.
In an odd coincidence, around the same time our local Soil and Water Conservation District had leftover trees at the end of the planting season. So, I bought five tiny Ponderosa Pines at a steep discount and stuck them in the ground at the very north end of our slough and pretty much forgot about them.
Then, a couple weeks ago a granite company near us discarded a chunk of quartz countertop material. I don’t know why they discarded it, but I know it was a stroke of luck for me that it appeared on their junk pile.
So, what did I do? Well, built a picnic table, of course.
It started with the quartz. I swing by the junk pile every now and then because as time, ambition, and the state of my lower back dictate, I am slowly paving the paths in my wife’s garden. The junk pile is full of flagstone material, if you care not at all about size, color, and texture, which I do not.
This time there was a big piece, too big to lift, but I have a long history of bad judgement regarding the kinds of things I can do by myself, so with a little thought and effort I was able to get it in the back of the pickup without lifting the whole weight.
I think it was on the way home that I thought of the picnic table idea, as kind of a joke. I have a couple of friends who hunt ducks at that end of the slough and the thought of them coming out this fall and seeing a pristine white picnic table squatting among the cattails and pine trees made me smile. There is also a guy who mows the grass for hay, and he has a couple of pint-sized hired men who I thought would enjoy it.
It would need to be durable, since I planned to just abandon it out there, and I found a nifty plan for a frame made of steel tubing, which would last longer than I would. I priced out the materials and discovered it would cost about $300.00.
That seemed like a horrible idea.
I knew I didn’t want to spend $300.00, so I tried to figure out what I could build without spending any money.
The old grain bin crouched in a corner of our grove. It had rested on eight angle iron pillars – 5 inches wide and a quarter inch thick. By stringing all my extension cords together, I was able to get a grinder out there, and in a sweaty couple of hours was able to whack off steel for the legs. A sturdy base. In fact, sturdy doesn’t cover it – the cross pieces were sixty inches long and I could barely lift one at a time.
If you’re thinking this is an impractical project, you’re not wrong. But one of the pleasures of being 68 is that after a lifetime of relentless practicality revolving around making a living and being a good husband, father, and citizen, I’m starting to embrace a certain level of whimsy. Granted, spending an entire day with a grinder and a welder doesn’t reach the level of whimsy of hitchhiking around the world or believing in politicians, but it’s as whimsical as I’m likely to get.
It was almost dark before I put on the second coat of paint. The next step was to get it set in place, but with the help of my wife, a trailer, and a forklift it was easy-peasy. You know, every now and then in life something wonderful, spectacular happens, but not that often. And, of course, every now then the bad news comes. Luckily, that doesn’t happen very often either. But while waiting for the great news and coping with the bad, it’s important to take the small pleasures in life seriously. One of the pleasures of being an adult, particularly an old one, is that you get to decide just what those small pleasures are. No one is going to look at that 500-pound old steel and junk-quartz picnic table a mile and a quarter from the closest road and think, “That makes sense.” But looking at it certainly makes me happy.
And that’s not nothing.
Copyright 2023 Brent Olson