The Two Deadly Sins of Phil: The Second Sin

The second thing that the cabinet shop owner Mark was mad at Phil for was an incident involving Mark's son, whose name I think was Derek. Derek was a source of conflict for the guys because Mark loved to lavish him with dirt bikes, a new truck, and other luxury items for a kid who was still in high school. So every time we had to work on Saturday morning, which always sucked, Phil or Mike would wait until Mark went in the house and would say, "We just made another payment on Derek's truck."

Mike told us there was one time when Mark said, "Hey, Mike. I want to show you something." So they rode in Mark's golf cart out to where Derek was riding his dirt bike and jumping off of ramps. That sat watching in silence for some time. Then Mark turned to Mike and said, "Isn't that awesome?" When Mike told us this story, I said, "Why does Mark need a golf cart?" Without hesitation Phil said, "He likes to ride around, eat peanuts, and jack off."

One Friday long ago, Phil and Mike spent the afternoon cleaning the shop. Messes in the shop were another point of contention. Mark, being a slob, never cared and never wanted to spend the time to clean up. Mike and Phil, however, got pissed every time they tripped over something, couldn't find something, etc. They left Friday feeling like they would return to a nice, clean shop to start work on Monday. That weekend, Derek, who was probably 15 or 16 at the time, decided to make Mark a birthday present. When Mike walked in the shop Monday morning, it was a disaster. Scraps lying about, tools laying on work tables throughout the shop, and piles of sawdust at each station. On the work table by the door was a stool with a sign on it that said, "Happy birthday, Dad."

Mike usually got to the shop first because he couldn't sleep past 5 am. So he would get up, drink coffee, read the newspaper, and just wait until it was time to go to work. Phil would get there next. And when Phil walked in the door that day, Mike just watched and waited for his reaction. Phil looked around the shop, his bald head getting redder and redder, and then his eyes fixed on the stool. In a rage, Phil grabbed the stool and smashed it into pieces. Then he threw the pieces into the fire in the coal stove that heated the shop.

Mark usually waited until ten or fifteen minutes after we were supposed to start working. Then he would roll out of bed, throw on a flannel shirt, and wander over to the shop rubbing his eyes. That day when he walked in, Mike was strangely silent. And Phil was standing by the coal stove, rubbing his hands together, and warming himself. Mark said, "I heard my son left me something."

Mike looked at Phil. Phil looked at Mike. Then Phil said quite matter-of-factly, "Yeah, it's keeping me warm right now." Mark looked puzzled, and it slowly dawned on him what Phil meant. Mike turned and walked out the door of the shop. He said they exploded into yelling and screaming for several minutes.

And so on it went, working at the cabinet shop. Long periods of tension that would occasionally break out into open conflict. A final note, when they told me this story, I was initially a bit shocked. They laughed heartily, and I thought it sounded very cruel. But the longer I knew Mark, the funnier it got.

The Two Deadly Sins of Phil: Sin Number 1

I've been taking part in David's homoerotic fantasy football league for the past two weeks. Lots of buggering jokes. Maybe that's what got me thinking about something that happened with my old buddies at the kitchen cabinet shop.

I worked at the shop for several months about five years ago. It was a strange little world that a guy named Mark created in his garage. He populated this little world with a table saw, planer, router stations, and two humans. Then he tried to see how far he could push the humans, Mike and Phil, with jabs and minor insults before they would snap and want to kill him. Phil had a particularly short temper. Phil shaved his head all the time, and we always joked about how you could see how angry he was by how red his bald head was.

Mark hired me to do all sorts of grunt work -- sanding, lifting, routing grooves, assembling drawers, and more sanding. Mike and Phil gradually informed me about the ongoing war between them and Mark. They told me that every year there was a cease fire at Christmas. For the Christmas party, the three of them would get drunk right there in the shop (aka Mark's detached garage). They told me that one year Mark told Phil that Phil had only ever done two things that were really wrong.

One time, long ago, they were doing an installation. This meant that they loaded all the cabinets in the truck, unloaded them into a house, and spent the rest of the day trying to level the cabinets, cussing up a storm about old houses, and crawling around putting shims under the base cabinets. Once level, they screwed the cabinets to the wall. With the base cabinets, you would have to basically crawl into the cabinet, which was very awkward.

So there was Mark, bent over, head in the base cabinet, trying to get a screw to go into a stud, and evidently he was having some trouble locating the stud. Phil was standing behind Mark and was suddenly inspired to pantomime like he was having anal intercourse with Mark.

Mark must have tried to look as unkempt and uncouth as possible. He was 6' 4", around 280 lbs, and rarely bathed. He had one of those beards that didn't really have a starting point or ending point. It just kind of grew up his cheeks and down to his chest in jagged lines. He looked a lot like Bluto of Popeye fame. And he never brushed his hair, and he smelled.

Mark's appearance and hygeine made Phil's decision to pretend buttfuck him even funnier. Now Phil could have gone a couple of ways with it. Maybe a business-like screwing: mechanical, disinterested, just getting the job done. Or he could have done an angry and forceful humping, furrowed brow, like he was really giving it to him good.

Instead, Phil went for ecstasy. He did some gentle pumping, dropped his arms to his sides, and threw back his head with an expression on his face that said that nothing had ever felt so good in his life. He shut his eyes and formed his mouth formed into a silent, "Ohhhhhh." I know that's what he did because both Phil and Mike re-enacted what Phil had done that day.

Evidently, Mark caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, scrambled out of the cabinet, and said, "What the hell are you doing?!!"

Even though there was no music playing, Phil said that he was dancing. Mark stared at Phil, and then said nothing...until years later at the Christmas party when, drunk, he finally admitted that he knew what Phil had been up to that day--pretending to hump him. And he didn't like it one bit.

I had forgotten about this for a long time until Krista recently did the same thing to me in homage to the cabinet guys.

Next time: the other thing Phil did that pissed Mark off.

Hillbillies of Daisytown of 2007

We were recently honored by the township supervisors by being named the "Hillbillies of Daisytown" for 2007. I have been grooming the lawn all summer. I seeded it early in the spring and watered it for a couple of months until it towered above all the other lawns despite draught conditions in mid-summer. We also placed several objects around the yard: a bucket laying on its side, a cat litter box filled with rain water, our old kitchen sink leaning against a stone wall. We disregarded the township "burn days" of Wednesday and Saturday, and instead burned trash on Sunday morning. And of course, having chickens roaming around and crowing helped out as well.

But I think the crowning achievement was the upright piano on our porch. Some people think couch or recliner, but we decided to go bigger. I think that got a lot of attention and put us over the top.

But all good things must come to an end, and so I finally cut the grass. And I decided to get rid of the piano. First, I asked one of the garbage men when they came to pick up the trash. The guy told me if I could get it down to the road, he had a cable that he could attach to the piano and hoist it up into the garbage truck, which was a regular looking garbage truck. He said that he wouldn't tell the company anything about it if I didn't. I really wanted to see that, but I didn't know how I could get it all the way down the steps by myself. The only way would be to just shove it and hope it didn't crack the concrete of the steps or the sidewalk.

I decided on plan B. Haul it to the dump myself. So, as all trips to the dump begin, I called my uncle to borrow his truck, drove into my yard, and backed up to the porch.

Pushing the piano to the edge of the porch wasn't too difficult once I got its wheels pointing the right direction. I was a little bit worried about the first push off the porch until I realized that the piano would immediately grind to a halt as its wood base hit the edge of the porch. The wheels would not touch the steps at all. Once the first wheel was off the porch, I had to shove it from behind--wood on wood--until enough of the weight was hanging off the porch for the piano to tip down to the tailgate. Then I put my homemade dolly under the front edge and pushed.

This was the moment when I realized that this could be my greatest victory or my most humiliating defeat. If the piano ended up in the yard, the good news would be a virtual lock on the 2008 Hillbillies of Daisytown. The bad news would be that the piano would be virtually impossible to remove once it was down there. Only one way to find out...I pried the wheels up out of the depression at the back of the tailgate and shoved.

The piano went off balance and started to fall backwards. I tried to control its fall a little bit without ending up back in physical therapy. As luck would have it, the truck bed was high enough to prevent it from falling into the yard, but now it was impossible for me to get it back into an upright position. So instead I rotated it until it was on its back sideways in the truck bed.

The truck appears to be leaning to the right, but the angle of the photo exaggerates how much it was actually leaning. The piano actually only stuck out about a foot from the side and hardly shifted at all on the way to the dump where a kindly sanitation worker helped me shove it onto Mount Trashmore. The woman at the check out shack told me they never do that. Having been weighed when I entered and when I left, I found out that I had single-handedly moved a piano weighing 600 pounds. Perhaps my greatest accomplishment to date.