Published: September 30, 2009 05:38 pm      

FROM THE VALLEY: This story is on the level

I took a trip — the final one of the year, I hope — to our cottage on the river. (I say “hope” because another trip this year would mean there’s a problem).

The mission was to close and winterize the place. I went by myself because my wife, a teacher, is back at school trying to convince the kids that it’s not really the end of the world ... it’s much worse. The 250-mile drive to our getaway on the St. Lawrence River was a melancholy one as I realized that summer was coming to an end.

The trees will soon lose their leaves as they willingly give them up for a chance to survive the merciless winter winds. And the river — lower than its summer level — will lose control of the way its waves frolic in the warm breeze as the onslaught of frigid temperatures take over and freeze the surface. And even worse yet, I’ll lose the availability of a running toilet.

Things started ominously the moment I arrived. The dirt road leading to the camp ripped a hole in my truck’s muffler system. You’ve heard of speed bumps? This road has speed canyons. Someone once pulled down the road, by mistake — never to be seen or heard from again.

Naturally, I always take more supplies than I need. I take them with me for the couple of days I’m there, never use them and haul them back home. I guess I do it just so that I can carry them up and down the 61 steps to the cottage. I should have known better than to take three bowling balls and an upright piano this trip. My bad.

The first task on my agenda was to try (“try” being the operative word) to jack the camp up and bring it to some semblance of levelness. (My brother-in-law, Bill, is well-versed when it comes to river-oriented projects such as this. His advice, usually, is to take the level you’re using and remove the bubble. In other words, I was faced with something called futility. But I was going to give it a shot, anyway.)

Apparently, I didn’t have all the equipment necessitated for jacking the building up. How was I to know that I needed a jack? Brother-in-law Bill to the rescue. I knew he’d have one. So, I meandered over to his place, a couple doors down.

“What size do you need?” Bill asked, like I would have a clue.

“What size? What, am I ordering a pizza or borrowing a jack?”

Bill just stared at me. He didn’t actually say anything aloud, but being an accomplished mind reader I knew that deep inside he was screaming, “You’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever seen in my life!” I know this because he had the same look on his face that people have when they actually come out and say it.

“Bill,” I said, “you’re talking to a guy who doesn’t even know how to use a jack. How would I know what size I need. I dunno ... let’s try a size 36 long. Is that a size? Would that work?”

“Tonnage! How much tonnage? Five, 10, 20-ton. How big?” he explained.

“Bill, how the hell am I going to carry a five-ton, let alone a 20-ton, jack over to my place?”

Cutting to the chase: The reason for jacking the camp up is because the front end of the building rests on stone-filled cribs that sit in the water. And, as those cribs sink (slightly) into the river bed, adjustments are occasionally called for.

Finding what I deemed an appropriate spot to place the jack, I went to work. After four or five hours (I was advised to go “slow and easy”), I could see that the jack had expanded almost five inches. I shimmed the gap and cautiously crawled from underneath the building to take a proud look at my handiwork. Working alone, I had no one to share the glory.

It didn’t matter — there was no glory. At first, I thought maybe I was standing too close to notice the almost half-foot of correction that I’d made. I backed all the way up to Bill’s place. No difference.

I had Bill come outside and look.

“Are you ready to throw the bubble out of your level, yet?” he asked, with the look of a veteran camp owner.

“What happened,” he went on to explain, “is that you didn’t lift the camp, you drove the cribs further into the riverbed.”

“I’ll bet it was because of your 20-ton jack.”

Can you say futility? Join me next week as I milk this puppy one final time this year (I promise) in (possibly): Bruising down the river.

And that’s the way it looks from the Valley

Tom Valley is a Medina resident. His column runs every Thursday. Write to Tvalley@rochester.rr.com.