A Tale of a Tomless Dock

One of the things that happens here on the lake every time winter goes into remission and we catch a dose of springtime is that we have to cobble together some sort of a dock. Having a dock gives us a way to walk out to the boat all summer without getting our flip-flops wet.

For the past fifteen years my main dock-slinging sidekick has been my friend Tom. Over this past winter Tom decided to desert the Ann Arbor area and move to Arizona, since it offers better weather, more employment opportunities, and the right to carry a handgun without a permit - or any conceivable reason. And the only down side is that, since he's from England, he will have to have his papers in his pocket at all times, or he could wind up enjoying the weather in Tijuana.

So Tom's departure left building the dock pretty much up to my son Pat and I. We chose a weekend not long after the thaw, our theory being that as we worked our way through the project the lake would be cold enough that we could use it to ice down our beer - along with any contusions, abrasions, burns, or minor fractures that might crop up.

My son, who up until the time he moved away from home had never so much as picked up a screwdriver, now works for a company that designs and makes power tools. This means that he showed up on Dock Day armed with an assortment of laser-guided levels and other space-age gadgets. And he knew right where the power switches were on every one.

One of the tools he brought along is called a "Hammerhead." This battery-operated Hammer of the Future can easily drive a nail that would require about 3 good swats with a regular hammer, only it does it in less than 5 seconds at 35 strikes per second. This means that you get something like 175 ear-splitting bangs out of every nail.

In other words, this is the coolest tool I have ever seen!

Since the dock is mostly put together with screws, nuts, and bolts, we couldn't find much use for the Hammerhead there. So after we used up the charge on the battery blasting the bejesus out of any loose nails we could find around the house, we reluctantly put it aside and spent the rest of the morning playing with all the other tools.

After lunch, we ran down the battery in the Hammerhead again, then diligently tucked right into the dock. We got two sections placed and leveled before we realized that there was no way to connect any of the other sections to them.

You see, after the fifteen years Tom and I spent tinkering that dock together, at this point it is pretty much a jigsaw puzzle that you tie your boat to; if even one bit is out of place, it screws up everything else so that it never quite looks like the picture of a cute little white kitten in a laundry basket that's on the cover of the box. Plus, you can't tie your boat to it.

After spending an hour or so standing around wearing waders and frowns, I remembered that Tom had, in a moment of inspired madness, shot a picture of the entire finished dock and labeled each section. I dug out the photo and we started over, following that picture like the blueprints for an F18.

We eventually got the dock all put together, and managed to do it with hardly any life-threatening injuries or frostbite. Although, I'm pretty sure that toward the end there we had the gain turned up a little high on the laser level, and sank a fishing boat.

So Tom, I'm glad you're enjoying Phoenix, and you'll be happy to know what we're muddling through pretty well back here. But we do miss you, Mate.

Copyright © 2010, Michael Ball

Mike Ball is the Erma Bombeck Award-winning author of "What I've Learned So Far..." and the book What I've Learned So Far... Part I: Bikes, Docks & Slush Nuggets.