Over the weekend I raided the dumpster of a local electrical
place for a cache of wooden spools I had found. I have no idea
why I have been fascinated by spools as of late. I do not know if
it is the solid wood they are made of
or the geometrical
simplicity of the spool form that appeals to me. Regardless
it
has amused me to hoard them up for various projects.
I have already made a rocking chair out of a large spool
and I plan to make more of them in the future. However the spools
I snagged this weekend were not the proper size. They were much
smaller
no more than a couple of feet tall. One of them is
definitely going to become a footstool for one of the chairs
However I am not sure yet what I am going to do with the others.
The idea of making some child-sized chairs entered my mind
but
after I stacked a couple of them on top of each other I decided I
liked the wooden column they produced. Perhaps I will make a
garden door or use them as pillar legs in some sort of table.
I'll just have to wait for spool-inspiration to take me.
Meanwhile the neighbors can mutter about the odd guy at the end
of the road who has been hoarding spools.
Last night for dinner I was making some chicken teriyaki in
the frying pan. As I was liberally dosing large quantities of
teriyaki sauce into the pan
I noticed a blurb on the side of the
bottle. 'Win $5
000!' it gleefully proclaimed to me. That or some
massive flat screen television. I decided I liked the sound of
that and read on further. Apparently I needed to go to a website
and punch in the computer generated code found on the bottle.
While the chicken was simmering away
I hopped on the web and
pulled up the address. Much to my disappointment there was a
blurb on the website telling me that the contest was over. Not
only was it over
but apparently it had been over for sometime. I
suddenly wondered how long that bottle of teriyaki sauce had been
sitting in my fridge. Not in recent memory had I recalled either
using it or buying a new bottle. I had a sudden horrible image
of me digesting some ancient teriyaki sauce and having something
horrible happen to my body. Like waking up the next morning to
take a shit only to realize I had passed me spleen out into the
toilet. However
I peeked at the side of the bottle and was
relived to see it was mostly made out of MSG. That sauce would
probably last longer than I would. In fact alien archeologist in
the far distant future might dig up that bottle and used it to
make some teriyaki Hyperlizards
or whatever creatures might be
running around in the distant future.
My uncle came into town over the weekend. I spent Saturday
morning with my family at my sisters house helping her paint it.
With five people working on it we got the vast majority of it
done in a little under two hours. While I was there my uncle told
me a story about how he and his buddy used to dig graves for
spare cash when they were younger. My grandfather was a priest
(polish catholic) and oversaw the funerals in that community. The
gravedigger charged three hundred dollars to dig a grave. This
was back in the early sixties
so that was quite a chunk of
change. So my grandfather paid my uncle and his buddy twenty
bucks to go out and dig the graves. They were happy to do it
it
was easy money.
Now that I think about it I wonder if my grandfather still
charged the family three hundred bucks for digging a hole
and
pocketed the change. I'll have to ask about that.
I have no idea what I want done with my body once I pass
away. I really can not imagine taking up a little piece of real
estate until the end of time. I suppose they would bury me
and
a hundred or more years would go buy until my tombstone got
defaced and knocked over by beer drinking teens. Then people
would eventually forget there was a grave there and would build a
hyperlizard fast food joint over my grave. The tub filled with
little colored balls that parents throw their children in to burn
off the sugar from their breakfast cereal would be right over my
grave
and I would have to suffer through a decade of screeches
and puddles of urine until the restaurant finally gets shut down
due to cruelty to hyperlizards.
Perhaps I should just be embalmed in teriyaki sauce.
Or buried in a spool.
2026 Update
Dialing the time machine to February 2006, where Ed raided dumpsters for spools and maybe ate ancient sauce.
Twenty years on, the spool economy has collapsed: cable now comes on plastic reels that snap, and if you try to build furniture from them it just looks like a recycling bin. Your dumpster-diving aesthetic has been replaced by flat-pack boxes delivered to doorsteps, and the only thing people hoard now is subscriptions. The teriyaki contest code is the truly dated artifact: in 2026 you'd scan a QR code that leads to a “limited time offer” that is also expired, but the bottle would be full of unsweetened vinegar and the date would be stamped in tiny font. The grave economy also shifted: a three-hundred-dollar hole in 1960 now costs a great deal more, plus an extra fee for “green burial,” and families are increasingly choosing to scatter ashes or hide someone in a minimalist urn shaped like a vape pen. And I still don’t know what a hyperlizard is, but I suspect it’s the dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget of the future you so eagerly predicted.
“2006 Ed, did you ever confront your grandfather about the probable $280 markup on those graves, or did you just keep the twenty and let the dead finance your spool habit?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Beelzebubba, I’ll be honest, I never worked up the nerve to ask Granddad about the three hundred bucks. He was a priest, Polish Catholic, and he had that look that could peel paint, so I figured the twenty was my share and the dead could finance my spool habit without me asking too many questions. Besides, what was I going to do, march up and say, “Hey, you pocketing two-eighty per hole?” I’d rather dig a few graves myself than have him give me that disappointed sigh. And now I’ve got all these little spools stacked up like a wooden column in my yard, and the neighbors are already muttering, so I don’t need any family drama on top of it. If the dead are paying for my future footstools, I’ll take it. Granddad’s probably up there counting his change and laughing.
