Tangy and tough at 98

Ref was cutting up some of the old siding for patches (soon to undergo invisible reweaving), and I closed my eyes and inhaled as his toughest table saw worked through them. "Good saw," Ref said. "When the blade's sharp, you can cut to a sixteenth."

You can't savor the tang through the picture -- planks packed with aroma after all these years, still full of the resins and oils that made old Dade pine so resistant to both termites and weather.

And because I didn't want to interrupt his work to "set up" the right light, you can't see the polished glow of the sawn edges. They were so dense they looked and felt varnished.

Ref saw my fascination with those pieces and broke off to walk over to a stack of freshly delivered 2-by-4's. "This is what they sell for No. 1 wood these days," he said, pointing at the knots and making a sour face. He found a piece of new scrap and made a quick cut through a section. It looked like styrofoam by comparison, bleached and character-free. "They dry this stuff out too much," he said.

"Now look at these," as he went back to the old planks. "This is No. 1 wood." Tight-grained, unblemished and beautiful behind peeling paint. Tougher than nails -- he'd had to buy a new gun to cope with the old degree of hardness.

Lord, I thought, if I ever approach their age, may I be half as sturdy and smell half as fresh.