A nice thing not to block

So, the picket fence is in, and some of the railing on the porch -- doesn't it look great? -- and by this afternoon, the fence across the left addition, screening the AC and pool equipment, was up, too.

I got a great deal of satisfaction out of being part of the picket-making process: cutting a little, but mostly feeding boards to the cut man and taking off the finished pieces. "A lean, mean sawing machine," I said to Mr. B as we mass-produced slats.

(The highest praise I've heard in a long time came from Arnold today. He said, "I was going to tell you what to do with the factory edges when you were cutting yesterday, but then I looked over and saw you were doing it right already, so I just moved on.")

I stepped back to admire everybody else's job when . . . well, I won't go into gory details, but a huge man emerged from a huge van that had parked in front of our space after I'd asked him not to block our loading access. He was loud, vulgar and menacing. Apparently Darren, Nate, Arnold and Brantley thought so, too -- even Zachary from down the street -- because they spilled into the street to provide moral and muscular support.

The mildest thing the guy said was that he hadn't seen any "no parking" signs. . . .

Well, I can take a hint. And apparently so can he. The van was gone by the time I got back from Strunk's with the big, shiny signs -- Arnold had apparently mentioned something about towing -- and after I got the signs up we all decided to invite him to park there anyway once the workday was done, in a spirit of fellowship.

Then he came out onto his porch and shouted a few more things, and we rethought our plan. Arnold flipped out his cell and told Brantley to hitch up the work trailer, and put it in the best possible place.