CATEGORY: METZGER
PHOTO: ANOTHER WOMAN OF STRENGTH AND CONFIDENCE

I loved to use my strength (and I really had tremendous strength for someone my size) to do surprising, even amazing things.  In my Walter Mitty secret life I was a combination of a magician and the strong man in the circus!

When I was married to Howard and we were living in our little house in Metzger, these feats of strength inevitably consisted of undertakings for the house or the garden.  I would work very hard to accomplish something that would cause Howard to gasp in amazement–that didn’t seem possible for me to do, or at least to do in one day.  But I always quit in time to take a bath and fix my hair and face before he came home so it would seem even more unlikely.

He was pretty amazed, for example, when I decided to build the carport and then dig the dirt from under the house.  Another memorable feat was when I tore out the wall between the kitchen and the laundry room that was behind it.  I tore it out all the way across the end of the kitchen and beyond to include the part between the laundry room and the bedroom.  What made removing this wall difficult was that there was, at that time a stairway to the attic on the laundry room side and a kitchen cabinet on the other side; so I had to tear the main part of the wall out from one end.  It was such fun to see the expression on Howard’s face when he walked into the house that night and found the wall gone.  He never got angry.  I guess he had become numb by then.  But the MOST memorable thing came the next day.

Somewhere, somehow, Howard had acquired some bridge timbers.  Whomever he had gotten them from had dumped them onto the upper part of our property where they could be unloaded from the truck by rolling them down the bank from the side street.

I don’t know what Howard intended doing with these timbers.  They were creosoted which made them heavier.  Maybe he was going to cut them into fire wood.  Maybe he was going to use them to retain the bank at the far west of our property.  I can’t remember.  At any rate, they were HUGE–in section as well as length.  The largest of them was 12 x 16 inches in section and about 12 ft. long.  One of them was 20 ft. long, but only a 6 x 12.

The next morning after the day I had torn the wall out, when Howard left for work, he said to me jokingly, “OK, today I want you to move all those bridge timbers down here by the driveway.”  He gave me a big smile.  He thought he was being funny.

I thought, “OK for you”!

I was so naive back then.  I didn’t know there were such things as hernias.  Fortunately I had very strong stomach muscles.  As soon as he left, I put on my work clothes and a pair of heavy gloves.  I didn’t know if I could even lift one end of the largest of those timbers.  I discovered that I almost couldn’t.  I had to shovel the dirt from under the end, just to get my fingers under it.  Then, using all the strength I had, I was able to lift that end.  I wanted to swing it around so it was headed down hill.  I found I could only swing it about three inches.  I quickly put it back down and accumulated some other pieces of wood to use for blocks with which to prop it up so I wouldn’t have to pick it up from the ground each time I moved it a few inches.  This was not a steep hill.  It was a gentle slope.  When I finally got the timber turned, I found I could still only drag it a few inches at a time.  It took me almost half the day to get that one timber down where Howard wanted it.  Moving the others was easier, but only a little.  I was tired by then, so it was a draw.

After I got them all moved, I went in, took a bath, washed and styled my hair, so I would look fresh and pretty.  Then I got dinner.  When Howard got home, he saw the timbers right away.  I watched out the window as he walked around looking them all over.  Then he came into the house where my current Walter Mitty role was being a daisy fresh from the field. He said, “OK, how did you do it?”  I said flippantly, “Oh, I just rolled them down the hill.”  But he had seen the drag marks.  He said, “They were DRUG down.”  I didn’t say anything more.  I just looked wise.  He said, “Dick must have been here and helped you.”  Dick was a friend of ours who sometimes stopped by.  I said, “Dick wasn’t here.”  I added, “Be sure to ask him.”  After that, I didn’t say any more.  I left him to wonder for the rest of our married life.

But by then, I had done so many off-beat things that he must have believed that either I had been the lone perpetrator or that I was a witch and knew the ancient art of levitation.  He probably preferred the last possibility.