Sweetwater Days Part 7

Of Buck and Turtle

A few weeks ago, the evening Annie and I were released from our two-week COVID quarantine, we drove to Oklahoma.  We had missed celebrating our granddaughter Ally’s birthday while we were homebound, and we were eager to see her and the rest of her family.

While we were there, J.B. and Candi took us to see the nearby lake.  Walking around below the dam, I found an interesting piece of driftwood.  It was roughly the size of my thigh (but flatter), dark brown, and quite rough and weathered.  I said, “I’ve got the perfect place for this…

“…in my bathroom.”

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Since Annie and I bought Sweetwater we have been cleaning up the property and fixing up and remodeling the cabin.  One of our goals is to save money while getting the results we want.  While Annie and I have different ideas about what looks good and what is tolerable, we definitely agree on saving money.

From the first I’ve wanted my hunting cabin to be rustic.  Within the bounds of what Annie will tolerate, I’ve been working in that direction.

For instance, I want to replace the vinyl siding with rough wood.  Annie objected, rightfully, to the expenditure of cash but, when I pointed out how the old siding was crumbling due to age and sun exposure, she came to tolerate my idea…a little bit, at least.

Hey, that’s a start.

I conceded to her demand for rural electricity.  I had originally wanted strictly solar or wind power.  The whole off-grid idea appeals to me, but she had a point about comfort and convenience. 

Hey, I can’t help it; I think a hunting cabin should be rustic. 

With a raised eyebrow, Annie agreed to discuss my ideas on a point-by-point basis, while maintaining veto power.

Yeah.

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Last winter I was driving home from work and saw evidence of a car/deer collision.  Down off the side of the road I saw the unfortunate deer part of the equation.  It was a buck…and I saw an antler!

The next day I took my Ryobi battery-operated reciprocating saw with me, that buck in mind.  With my car parked safely off the road, I made my way downhill, through the muddy ditch, and hoisted the deer’s head, only to find that he had lost half his headgear in the accident, so I would have to settle for a single three-point antler. 

Oh well, the deer wouldn’t miss it.

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Last week, I looked through my stash of antlers with a specific idea in mind.  I hoisted every shed or sawed-off antler I had and settled on one that seemed as near perfect as it could be, at least for what I had in mind.  I recognized it as the bony half-a-crown I had cut off the dead deer on my way home from work a year before.

Although I had originally intended to use a piece of wood from when the boys and I had re-sided our barn about 15 years ago, when I found that piece of driftwood below the dam, I knew it was exactly what I wanted to use.

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I carefully drilled a hole in the base of the antler, then broke a screw off in it so had to drill another hole, this one a little bigger.  I was successful in screwing it to the driftwood this time.  The end of the main beam tucked into a preexisting notch in the wood and I took advantage of that to hide a little Gorilla Glue which attached that end of the antler firmly to the wood in such a way to hide the glue from sight.  Without trying to destroy my creation, I wiggled everything and found it strong enough for what I wanted.

Once I got to the cabin a few days later, I held the driftwood/antler creation up to the wall, then got out the same reciprocating saw with which I had relieved the deceased deer of the remaining half of his headgear.  After checking for fit, I took it out onto the porch.  There I braced the wood against the rim of a bucket for stability and removed a chunk that bulged out from what would be the back of my creation.

That was really all it took, other than attaching it to the wall above the porcelain throne. 

It’s one of the most beautiful, rustic, toilet paper holders I’ve ever seen, if I do say so myself.

And I do.

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While I was looking for the perfect antler for the TP holder, I ran across a box turtle shell I’d picked up while walking in the woods with my boys years before.  One of the shed antlers in my collection had been donated by the dogs.  Every spring the dogs bring home such sheds as they find in the woods.  I let them keep all the bones they find, but I have a thing about keeping antlers with projects in mind, and the dogs really don’t seem to mind.

At least they don’t argue.

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As most of you know, I am diabetic.  Well, the discovery of stevia allows me to drink my coffee with sweetener, and scientists have figured out a way to package it in packets identical to the ones sugar comes in.  Annie has a decorative box that she puts my stevia packets in at home, but at the cabin, up until that weekend, we had just been keeping them in the cardboard box they came from the store them in.

Until turtle shell met antler.

I used my faithful Gorilla Glue to attach the shell to the antler and that was all it took.  I had a nice looking container to hold the packets within easy reach and out of the cardboard box.  Annie seems to like it too. 

Oh, well, she’s been nice about it.

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As I said in a previous post, the big, 8’x4’ table, and two 8’ benches I made for our expanding family over 30 years ago found a new home at Sweetwater.  The boys drug the table out from under my studio and I rescued the benches from the front porch where my green-thumbed wife had been using them for plant stands.

After we assembled them in the cabin, Annie cleaned them up and put felt pads on the bottom of the legs to protect the floor.  We haven’t had time to refinish them yet, but I know I want to take care of them.  They already look rustic enough.  They survived all six of our boys but I know condensation from cold sodas and water bottles will eventually leave an accumulation of water-rings on it.

That’s too rustic for even my taste.

So I bought a few coasters off eBay that had the Marine Corps emblem on them.  They were nice, just not exactly what I wanted.

At the base of the steps up to the front porch, there is a huge, flat rock.  I don’t know if it’s a layer deposited there naturally, or a big slab a small army of men had moved into position, but it is almost perfect…almost.  It doesn’t quite meet squarely with the bottom of the steps.  Annie wanted to fix the gap between them and I told her I would eventually like to see if the boys and I can use pry bars to move it into the proper position.  It wasn’t high on my priority list and “eventually” wasn’t soon enough for Annie.

Truthfully, she found a thin, flat rock in the creek that she thought would fill the gap well enough.  It did, but, evidently was too thin for my weight.  The first day the rock started breaking.  The pieces were odd-shaped but some of them were about the size one would use for coasters.

Hmmm.  We still had some of the felt we had put under chair and table legs.  One evening I cut some of the padding into about ½” squares and stuck them on one side of the rocks.

Maybe my stone-age coasters aren’t perfect, but they are rustic, and I think the Flintstones would approve.  Maybe Fred and Wilma will come visit us at Sweetwater.

I gave the Marine Corps coasters to a coworker friend who is a former Marine like me.  She seemed to like them.

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I have a standing invitation for my boys to come to Sweetwater anytime…and bring the grandkids.  Since I plan to spend a lot of time there during deer, bear, and turkey hunting season, that’s the perfect time for us to all get together, if they can get the time off from work.

My boys are passing-on the effort I put into teaching them to be safe with firearms.  The thing is, the learning curve is not forgiving enough for me.  I wanted gun racks to keep firearms out of reach when little people are around.  When J.B. shot his first deer about 30 years ago, I preserved the lower legs in the proper shape, and attached them to a couple pieces of oak wood we had gotten from some Amish friends for firewood.  Of course I sanded the boards smooth and stained them a rich, dark brown.

J.B. didn’t take the rack when he moved out, so it came out of storage to find a new home in the bedroom at Sweetwater. 

I had bought some cheap steel “gun-hooks” off eBay and attached them to some of the wood from our barn renovation.  Not pretty, but rustic and imminently useable…and they hold up to six firearms.  That makes a total of eight weapons up out of the reach of little hands.

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When I was shopping on eBay I ran across something I was pleased to find.

At some time, a talented craftsman in Germany had taken pieces of antler, cut them to length, and drilled them out.  They made some pretty nice salt and pepper shakers, then added a tooth pick holder.  Now, I don’t know if tooth picks are smaller in Germany than they are here in the good old “super-size me” United States, but the top they had made sat atop picks rather than on the container.  No problem.  The person made a nice wooden tray with an antler tine handle to keep the three necessities contained, and there is ample room so the lid can sit on it when the tooth picks crowd it out of its home, which will probably be…always.

Hey, but it looks OK that way too.

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I’m not sure what all I will come up with for our cabin, but I have one idea in mind that I haven’t had time to work on yet.

Somewhere along the line, I acquired a couple shed elk antlers.  The end of one had been broken off, probably in a fight for dominance, leaving it shorter but still substantial.  I’m betting it originally had six points, but it is now just a four. 

That’s perfect for what I have in mind.

My idea is to cut the three tines off equally and square to each other, and leave the broken off main beam sticking out, although I may have to round it off for safety.  Then I’ll attach it firmly to a board, probably another one from the barn renovation.  I’ll then mount the whole thing to the wall in the cabin’s bathroom, between the shower/bathtub and the door.  From there on out the antler will be known as “towel rack”.

I think it will go well with the toilet paper holder.

Yeah.

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The morning I had to leave Sweetwater dawned and I awoke to a pleasant surprise.  The weather reports had predicted up to a 60% chance of snow for a short time before dawn, but that 60 grew to 100 before I woke up.  Talk about beautiful!

Honestly, it was just enough snow to cover most of the ground with the white fluff.  The radio announcer I listened to on my way home said it was the most snow he had seen in years, but I doubt it was more than two inches…if that. 

Sadly, the four-wheel-drive in my pickup made getting out of the property no problem at all.

Dang it!  I wouldn’t mind getting snowed in at Sweetwater.

Just saying.

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