I go back and watch shows with an obsession. I don’t know why. Lately I’ve been going back and watching Mulder and Scully. Sometimes I miss the skepticism and paranoia of my childhood. An odd turn of nostalgia at that, being a child raised in a world in which the infrastructure was crumbling and being repaired with Hubba Bubba and Brillo Cream caked prayers.
But you miss little things the first time through, watching for the plot. Like Lawn jockeys; just an odd transition shot that had nothing to do with the plot. The lawn jockey was about establishing tone, true; the Caucasian face paint was starting to chip off and was meant to make us think about zombies. But you could argue that it was almost a non-essential shot. A little extra little taste from the director. A little wink and a nod, darkly funny. Lawn jockeys could make any trailer a royal compound, right? Like adding Greek columns to an old row house and turning it into a bed and breakfast.
It reminds me of the first time I drove back by the house I grew up in and saw that the new owner buried wagon wheels at the end of the driveway/ Like they rolled up from after some long journey, wrapped in gingham and a dream, and dug the foundation themselves, when all they did was buy a 40 year old ranch style house and paint over all the memories in western kitsch. The unknowns and barely knowns have been painted over with a new, thick paint of certainty. The color is a colorless gray, and reflects nothing.
Underneath, all the old memories rest on the drywall and frame, preserved like fossils against elements and the passage of time.
[Day book 2026 / Spring 3.21.26
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Poet. Essayist. Fictioner. Steamboat fireman. Bit of a grackle.
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I realized that Porch Bee hadn’t really had any warning; how does one give a demolition notice to a carpenter bee? Should I have pinned a notice to the porch? Should I have tried to find an email address? Certified mail?
The old steps, unearthed. I’d forgotten they were painted blue.
Sometimes Porch Bee would be the first to greet me when I got home from work. Little bug would just hang by the front door, waiting. I knew a cat like that once; as a kitten it got caught up in a car engine and as a result lived with a permanent splint on one of her front paws. That cat lived with my first ex-wife and her parents when we were both in (separate) high schools. They lived in the country, in a small trailer, and my then girlfriend was highly allergic to cats. Country cats have hard lives, and that cat was no exception; but she would wait for me to come back (I was told) when I left and was always happy to see me when I showed up. While it’s difficult to tell precisely what the emotional state of a carpenter bee is, clearly it wasn’t disturbed by our comings and goings.
The front porch was added on in 2012; this was before I moved in. The hand rail on the cement steps had gotten increasingly theoretical and dangerous, and Amanda’s dad offered to have a new porch built. The idea was to let the wood season for a year and then treat it. After I moved in, I should have made sure we did that. I didn’t, and it got away from us. I’d replace a wood screw from time to time, keep them clear. Salt during winter snow didn’t help. Over the last eight or ten months, severe weather and time made the steps increasingly unsafe.
If it were just a matter of one board, I could probably manage that. I say probably because while I’ve gotten pretty decent at plumbing and I’m more comfortable with electrical work than I used to be. Wood work is… complicated. Or maybe not.
My grandpa, my mom’s dad, was a carpenter. His name was Clay Dunn. When he and my grandma moved from the house on S. Charity Street to Bantam, outside of Bethel, Ohio, he built his wood shop off the back of the garage. The other grandchildren — my brother and my three cousins — were allowed in the wood shop. I wasn’t. Sickly with weak lungs, the prevailing wisdom dictated that wood dust would kill me, as would the second hand smoke from the menthol cigarettes he smoked. Sometimes I would sneak into the wood shop when he wasn’t working. It was an organized space that smelled of wood shavings, cigarettes, with a hint of oil from the equipment. He had a wood burning stove that he would light to keep warm in the winter. But the prohibition to participate in projects, to learn anything about his world except to see the end result of his labors, was a hard line that no one crossed.
Porch Bee stopped by while I was taking down one side of the banister. He landed on a baluster I was removing a wood screw from. I realized that Porch Bee hadn’t really had any warning; how does one give a demolition notice to a carpenter bee? Should I have pinned a notice to the porch? Should I have tried to find an email address? Certified mail? Porch Bee lingered several seconds, then flew off. I thought I detected some sadness in the flight pattern.
I’d decided to try and salvage some of the wood, which meant this wasn’t just a crowbar and hammer job. I also decided to try and save the wood screws that could be saved. I started out making two piles of wood… one with pieces too far gone to keep, the other wood that could potentially be salvaged. This added to the amount of time I’d allowed to tear down the porch, but the price of lumber isn’t much improved and you never know when you will need a wood screw, right?
Getting down to the wood stair frame made me think about Grandpa. He’d once built a staircase in the home of a girl I went to school with, Nancy Hauserman. This was my 7th grade year, and once she found out the guy working on her house was my grandpa, we had something to talk about. It did and didn’t help that she was the prettiest girl in our grade, and basically a nice person. Of course, I couldn’t count on Grandpa NOT to share embarrassing stories about me, in particular the one about my not being allowed in the wood shop. I was about as mortified as a 7th grader can get, which for me meant I was unable to look her in the eye or maintain even a passable conversation. Ah, teenage hormones. What a motherfucker.
The last part of the deck frame ended up being cut with a reciprocating saw. The builder had screwed the back board into the posts before setting them, and it was almost 5 o’clock. I’d been working on deconstructing the deck since around 10 in the morning. I found myself enjoying the process. The decision to salvage the some of the wood and screws meant having to take it apart in a particular way — trying to work what I imagine was almost backwards. Amanda and I decided to leave the box around the cement stairs and use them as planters — for a season or two, anyway. And I left part of one of the rails up to work as a temporary banister until I sink a more permanent one or until we build, or have built, another porch. I also need to either trim down or dig up the unnecessary posts.
I’m probably going to go ahead and paint the steps before winter, just to brighten them up and to help protect the cement. Interestingly enough, the cement steps you see in the pictures were built on top of another set of older cements steps. I showed this to Amanda and she shrugged. “And someday, there’ll be a ziggurat here.”
Porch Bee stopped by one more time, clearly displeased with this turn of events. I was working on getting that last bit of deck framing loose. Porch Bee buzzed in a far less friendly manner. But I simply apologized, said it couldn’t be helped. One bee’s condo is another city code enforcement stooge’s code violation. Gentrifying assholes.
Now, to get rid of the wood. Sorry again, Porch Bee. I really am.
The knock on the screen door was so light Gypsi, our 12-year-old blue heeler that barks at leaves blowing down the sidewalk across the street and was lying on the mat in front of the door, didn’t react. I might not have even heard it, except I was looking for my coffee cup or something. We have three dogs, all of whom react to noises with varying degrees. Nala, the 8-year-old FOMO husky mix, pretty much barks whenever Gypsi barks, except for when she spies one of the neighborhood cats when she’s outside. She mostly stairs out the window the way I remember my grandma watching soap operas in the afternoon on television. Barley, the 12-year-old aussie shepherd mix, only barks at Something. He’s always had the knack of knowing when something ought to be barked at, though I’ve noticed him slipping a bit in the last year. He’s a good old son, though, and I give him the grace earned by a working dog in semi-retirement.
But when Barley didn’t bark, I took notice.
Our doorbell doesn’t work and as far as Amanda knows, has never worked. I’ve thought off and on about fixing it… or at least seeing if it’s the button or some wiring issue I don’t feel like digging out. But we have the dogs. And doorbells are generally more intrusive than they are useful.
Amanda was sitting on the toilet with the bathroom door open, talking to me about something. I think I was about to ask her if she remembered where I set my coffee cup or whatever it was I was looking for. The knock at the door was so light she didn’t hear it, either.
“There was a knock at the door,” I said, looking through the peephole. A standard issue dude bro, dressed in white down to his air-cushioned kicks with the prerequisite baseball cap turned backward, was standing on my porch. He was intentionally standing within view of the eyehole. A salesman, I thought. I briefly debated ignoring him. I couldn’t be sure he didn’t register my voice through the door or take note of my shadow through the spy lens. These new generation dude bros… what my 5-year-old granddaughter calls brahs might have heightened senses, especially the salesman models.
“What?”
“There was a knock on the door,” I repeated. I moved to open the door. In our small house, the bathroom is in eyeline of the front door. I ask my wife if she could please close the bathroom door so I could open the front door, and she obliges. I opened the door to find a blond, chisel-chinned dude brahstanding there with a tablet. I almost miss when they carried clipboards, I thought. A soundworm of Ronald Reagan on The Tonight Show echoed in my ear. They show up carrying a clipboard and say ‘Hi I’m with the government and I’m here to help.’ Thundering laughter and applause at the joke we were all supposed to get. The name of a home security company was emblazoned on the dude brah’s fitted polo. There was an accompanying company ID hanging from a careless lanyard around his neck. I opened, stepped through, closed the front door behind me and opened the screen door.
His approach was flawless and his dedication to the script was admirable. He reached out his hand, which I didn’t take, and told me his name, which I don’t remember. “I’m just out here upgrading our customers out here,” he said, nodding to the street, “and I thought I’d stop by and see if you were interested in protecting your home.”
Not bad. I wondered if he practiced. He asked me my name, and I didn’t tell him. He went on to tell me that he was offering to set me up with a camera doorbell… “That’s why I PUNKED you,” he added, “because I noticed your doorbell didn’t work.” Genius. I wondered if he registered my eyeroll. He went on to try and sell me a free month of service, during which his company would be watching 24 hours a day.
“Now I know,” he tried to hide a slight lip twitch, the kind people make when they step near fresh dog shit, “I know this is a safe neighborhood. In fact, your friends and neighbors tell me the biggest issue here is porch poachers.”
Friends and neighbors, I thought. Does he mean the guy next door who lives with his parents and sells drugs or the meth heads a few houses down that burn plastic in the giant firepit out back?
I tell him I’m not interested and move to go back inside. He says he understands, then asks me my name again. Again, I don’t tell him. Undeterred, he points to the tablet, explaining that because his company will be watching 24 hours a day, if some dreaded porch poacher tries to take an Amazon package off my porch that the I-spy-little eye doorbell camera will say “Hey,” which naturally, will scare off any potential poachers.
Porch Poachers. Sure, we’ve had some packages taken. Is it inconvenient to reorder? Mildly. It doesn’t happen that often and we don’t order any high ticket items like that. Does it piss me off when it happens? Yes. I thought about telling the dude brah about taking all the smart lights and speakers out of our house. The Faceless Woman, as Amanda took to calling it, would listen at odd times and was starting not to listen at all when it was supposed to. The smart device experiment had been my idea. It was also my idea to rip it all out. I didn’t say that to the dude brah. I also didn’t tell him what I thought of the new police program to use residential cameras for random surveillance.
Again, with a little more edge in my voice, I tell the dude brah that I’m not interested. Then he smiles — bleach white teeth that have never met a cup of coffee or a cigarette, with vaguely sharp incisors — and asks, trying to hide that slight lip curl, am I really not interested in protecting my home.
“I have three dogs and a shotgun,” I said, being sure to look him straight in his dead eyes like he’s a paper target.
“Hell yeah!” he proclaimed.
I nod. “I don’t have problems like that.”
I must have stumbled on the correct turn of phrase or tone that turned the if/then command in the dude brah’s brainbox. He stuck a hand out again and asked me my name. This time I shook it, still looking him dead in the eyes.
“Ozymandias,” I told him. He repeated it, curiously and without comment, then walked away.
