STONE HUT ( 7 ) ~

Bob unloading a jeep load of field stone for the stone hut

24

On Susan’s birthday, July 29th, I was nearing the six-foot mark on the hut walls, laying in the last woven pattern connecting the outer wall with the inner wall course and selecting the right flat stone to top off the wall where it met the underside of the 6" x 6" beam. By August 1st the lower building of the hut was completed. A square shape of stone. I could walk inside and look out the open window frames and begin to feel a territorial sense that something was now in place. The windows, door, and stone floor would all be worked in last. No sense to damage the windows while tossing stone around. The door would only hang in the way walking in and out of the hut stepping the wall courses together. The stone floor would be a special hunt of locating the best large stone, and very flat. I had my eye on a stone wall further up the woodlot hill. The river at one time provided flat stone, but two years of dredging stone out of it for two terraces had about depleted my source. I would wait awhile for new stone to roll down in the current. Hours were spent in the river with high rubber boots drawing stone out and piling them on the shore. The real work was lugging the stone up a fifteen-foot bank to the road and loading them into a vehicle and bringing them home. Some years that vehicle ranged from a wheelbarrow or my arms, to a VW squareback and the Willys. Put a bow in that VW rear end. Sometimes Susan would help with the work in the river. One summer, a fellow we met earlier that year on a cross-country train trip came to visit from the West Coast, and by the second day of his visit was itching for something to do. He joined me lugging stone up the bank. No complaints, but I think he was bewildered at the primitive logic to the work. It would probably be the last time he wore bermuda shorts if he ever did this type of work again. Wading in the cool river while searching for stone a kingfisher many times could be heard streaking up and down the slow summer water with his chatter. The stone floor for the hut would be found away from the river, up in the woods with an iron bar prying stone away from stone. Flipping the stone down the hill to the Willys parked close to the hill which lowered the truck bed. Two planks were used to support the weight of each stone — and save my back — getting the stone from the ground into the truck. Especially when the stone weighed more than me. Turning them end over end up the plank, or pushing them up— no good flat stone for the job was ever left behind— they were rare enough.

The Stone hut spruce 4 x 4 rafters are up and the purlins
 are on for the cedar shingle roof

25

I ordered 4" x 4" rough spruce for the hut rafters from Smead Lumber in Vernon, Vermont. A good lumberyard with smart drivers who know how to unload lumber and pile it straight. Russell’s sawmill didn’t have the spruce, and I wasn’t willing to deal with green hemlock — tough lumber, but a headache to handsaw rafter angles when green, never mind lift all that weight into place. It was only twelve pieces of 4" x 4" and I cut them out during the next two evenings after supper. A good change from the stonework. The sawed off ends of the spruce were used in the cookstove the rest of the week, that’s how dry the lumber was. I would find out over the weekend, when I planned to lift the rafters for the roof, how far out of whack the outside walls were from the front of the hut to the rear. The ridgepole was centered. The pitch of the roof was a basic snow-shedding 45° angle. Each rafter was sawed the same length from a pattern rafter. The hut was built by eye and it looked good by eye and the top plate 6" x 6" beams were resting sound on the stone walls. Saturday morning, with Carson asleep in his carriage near the sawhorses, we lifted all the rafters. I nailed while Susan steadied the lower end of each rafter…and sometimes she had to jump down off the step ladder and rock the carriage if Carson stirred. The rafters didn’t pattern out perfectly, but almost. A half-inch difference from the front to the rear — that was easy to live with and it certainly wouldn’t show to the eye. I was building with the trust of the eye, and when I stepped back to look at the rafters I saw the dream and dimension of the hut rise into the air.

Carson!

Bob working the hut gable end

                                         

26

Dressed hemlock 1" x 4" strapping was also ordered with the rafters. It was delivered together and I piled the strapping to one side while working with the spruce rafters. The rafters were nailed two-foot-on-center while the roof strapping was tacked down with any free time I had during the following week. I would have loved a slate roof, but I had no resource to obtain it at a good price, and asphalt shingles would look pathetic on a stone hut. It has to be either slate or wood shingle. I bought four squares of white cedar shingle, clear grain, from Russell’s sawmill. He bought it from a mill in Maine and it cost me $80. I’d end up using a bundle over three squares. The roof scaffold was nailed in place after I finished with the strapping, allowing a seven-inch space between each length of strapping. I ordered fourteen-foot strapping and let it run past the rear edge of the roof where I could stand on the ledge with ease, snap a chalkline, and saw the strapping for a six-inch overhang. I started slipping shingles on the roof that first week of August. Taking my time, enjoying the view, smelling the cedar as I pounded nails. On the eastern side of the roof — when halfway up the side — I built in a four-pointed star design; it was a design I once saw in a magazine and had carried it around in my head to someday do. Now was my chance. Each shingle for the star was cut with a sixteen-point finish saw; the idea was to achieve a sharp edge to the design and also be subtle, and it shouldn’t leak. So the widest shingles for the star were chosen, they provided the most cover, fewer openings. A chalkline was used for a few of the shingle rows, allowing five inches to the weather. I had a large bucket of galvanized nails from another job I could spare for this roof. It went smoothly. The thing about wood shingle work is once you start you never want to stop. That is one reason I saved the work for the evening hours, around the late bird calls, tree frogs, and one bullfrog in the pond that made a companion of me all summer. By the end of the week I cut a hole out for the stovepipe — nailed down the chimney flashing — and flashed the entire ridge, where a 1" x 10" ridgecap built of dressed pine was set over the flashing. The roof was done. In a few years its light color would bleach closer to the look of stone. Now I would wait for the next rainfall to see how the shingles watered.

Bob setting-up a three story chimney at a house he's building
circa 1980

27

The cathedral builders of medieval Europe were famous for their development of religious architecture — eighty cathedrals, 10,000 parish churches and hundreds of great churches were built, stone-cut, sculptured between the 11th and 13th centuries. More stone was quarried in France during this time than all of ancient Egypt. The stonecutter that became a sculptor stepped up the ladder into the intellectual world. He learned from theologians, studied the abbey’s manuscripts and his horizons broadened. His work, carvings, outlook benefited both materially and spiritually. He saw what it was to observe and think. His mind worked as his hands labored, they were inseparable. Knut Hamsun writes about the same thing in his own life when as a young man he worked with illiterates in the ditches of Norway. Dug all day. He wrote that it gave him the opportunity for his mind to think — write in his head — while becoming one with his hand labor. No stuffy intellectual chatter in those ditches; it was sharing a lunch, smelling one another, working in dirt and water. He brought all of that into his writing, filled books, and you can feel that muscle and thought in the books. I don’t think about poems or writing or books when I’m laying stone; the mind is sharpening to balance with the stone, it’s a rhythm of the work that is picked up. That rhythm returns to the writing, speaks in the poems. Stone balanced over stone might become line balanced over line.

Carson will build this studio with me when he is 17 years old
and 17 years later it is doing beautifully

all photographs by Susan Arnold

Stone Hut
a builder's notebook
Bob Arnold
1988, 2013

GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY ~

BLIND WILLIE McTELL (BARB JUNGR) ~

PEGGY LEE ~

SING A SONG OF BASIE ~

KAY STARR ~

JO STAFFORD ~

CLIFFORD BURKE ~

Clifford and I have been exchanging gifts and poetry hardware

for decades now. He is one of my small press heroes

going back to the beauties he printed

from the Cranium Press.

I have his broadside Star Treatise by Janine Pommy Vega

in our kitchen library.

JIMMY STEWART ~

JOHN LEE HOOKER ~

TED KOOSER ~

March 20

                            The Vernal Equinox

How important it must be

to someone

that I am alive, and walking,

and that I have written

these poems.

This morning the sun stood

right at the end of the road

and waited for me.

Copper Canyon Press

2018

STONE HUT ( 6 ) ~

A front yard retaining wall and stairway I built at a home one mile down river from us

20

A friend asked how long it took to build the stone hut. At a guess I answered 500 hours, and a third of that time was spent in the woods finding the stone to build. We don’t have great stone in this valley, it is old country rock, random rubble, odd shapes of chunk, or smooth river stone. Some call it trash stone. I work with it and make something of it because it is all I have, and it blends back into the rural landscape. I know someone who bought all the stone for a large retaining wall he wanted built, and every stone was delivered in dump trucks — loads of flat, wonderful stone, with at least two good faces on the stone. It was a breeze to set up this wall with a crew of workers, but when finished it showed only uniform structure and no character in the overall expression of the wall. There were no quirks in the stone arrangement, no wisdom of perfect stone meshing with oddball rock. It was boring to look at. It works as a retaining wall, so the money is well spent, but there is no soul. The stone in this valley has a rough look, it takes patience to work and occasionally you turn up the surprise of a flat stone, with even one good face, and save that for a corner stone in the hut, or a stone pad under the windows. I did find quite a few long flat stones that were used in the hut as tie stone: the length of the stone turned inward joining one section of a wall with another. These stones are essential. Though some stonemasons will use the full length of the stone to show off its beauty, this is okay if you have enough to spare, I didn’t. I used all as tie stone and continued to hunt for good face stone. I usually took the Willys into the woods for a few hours in the late afternoon and loaded stone and delivered them back to the hut site. After six deliveries enough stone was gathered for a full day’s work. The stone was spread on the ground — piling shim stones into one heap, saving the face stone in another stack, and basic stone being the largest pile. I would lay the face stone for the outer section of the walls, saving a few for the interior wall, and filling in-between both walls with rubble rock. Each course had many tie stones weaving outer wall with inner wall. I shimmed with the smallest stone as I went along, concentrating on fine shim work at the end of the day…filling gaps, providing extra strength with a two-inch stone. There would be gaps showing daylight, but no gaps in the stonework. There has to be an understanding with the material. It wasn’t the best stone, but it would build, and by the end of the week, mid-July, the hut walls were over four feet high. Gaining.

Years later, still grubby at stone work

21

Maybe it is the work, but stonemasons seem an independent bunch. Most, like myself, work alone. The work requires it — unlike carpentry where a 2" x 4" is used in an obvious job location, nothing is too obvious with stone. It always boils down to a reliance on balance, at what will work and what won’t. There is much picking up of stone, tossing it back down if it doesn’t feel right in the hands, then picking up another stone. Some days everything fits. Work runs smooth. The hands, the eye, the feeling of stone is all netted to a coordination. Nothing feels better on those days. I’ve heard from others that John Regan was an independent Scot stonemason. He lived in southern New Hampshire but did a fair share of his work over in Vermont. I’ve worked at different places and seen his work, both brick and stone. The basic uniform of the brick work never caught my eye but the stonework always had a flavor that stuck. He was a fine dry wall stonemason. Worked the flat and round and oddball stone together into a mosaic of his skill. A retired doctor I once did treework for was still talking about the merits of John Regan ten years after Regan had done work for him. He told me of different places in the area where I could see Regan’s stonework: a chapel he built for another doctor, stone walls, and terraces. I searched the places out and continue to return for longer looks, enjoying new detail in the work at every visit. His style has the charm and strength and body that is built by a man. No tell-tale signature of any heavy machinery at work, and being man-made allowed my appreciation to light all over the work, never tire, really marvel. When I heard about John Regan he was already retired and into his seventies. By now he might not even be around. When workers and customers remember him they recall a tough man of principles — he’d walk off a job if anything crossed the grain of his ideas and all you have to do is visit his work to see the principles are everlasting. John Regan left us that. Awhile back a barn was torched by vandals and it burned to the ground. What was left in the smoking lot was the library of a stone foundation. John Regan was hired to move that stone to the roadside and build a long stone wall two feet thick, with gateways. The property owners were wealthy enough to afford the monumental effort. It was done. I won’t tell you where this happened…driving the backroads of southern Vermont sometime you might see this wall. It isn’t classy work, it’s rugged beauty. Stone talking to stone. I drive by the wall from time to time and always study it closely. That’s John Regan’s signature.

Susan and Carson having a visit at the stone hut work site

22

Five feet high with the front wall of the stone hut I stopped at the end of the work day and jumped up and grabbed the 6" x 6" beam over the doorway and let my body hang, for two minutes. When I dropped back into a stance my back felt better, at least for awhile. I would do the same thing again, this time inside the house hanging from one of the kitchen beams. The back is abused in stonework. It can’t be helped unless you are fortunate to have a pliable frame. Fingers can be busted, thumb nails blackened, toes crushed. I can wear gloves loading stone onto the Willys and then unloading, but often I have to feel the stone I am working with and gloves get in the way. I had two bouts of back trouble while building the hut, but nothing that was serious, I could still work. Both times happened from working too long and stretching the possibilities of the back. And I only blackened one thumb when a stone I was loading onto the Willys broke apart; it dropped my hand down between another stone and the broken stone met it all. Luckily I got away with only a bleeding thumb nail. Of course I wasn’t wearing gloves — not that the gloves would have helped much — but I put them back on. I used that broken stone and know right where it is in the hut, buried between the outer and inner walls. Wrenching the back — and that’s how you feel when it happens — is all part of the work. Since the back is essential for stonework it is best to be conscious of the body that goes into the work. Five hours of hard paced stonework, especially when working alone — performing the pick up of stone and laying down — is almost enough for one day. A good deal is accomplished, the back isn’t beat on, and you can work seven days a week with that treatment. Eight hours a day doesn’t accomplish much more — it abuses the body. Somewhere in those hours, one to two hours is wasted on coffee breaks, talking, and the exhausted pattern of being driven by the work. I would rather work with the work. Enjoy the work with good health and that enjoyment will show up in the finished job. With a driven voice the worker that tells me he works a twelve hour day tells me nothing except that he is stupid, or unlucky. He no longer owns himself, the job owns him. The stone builder should feel the stone on his hands during the day, then other things: someone he loves, firewood to split, music that comes to his ears. Life has to be allowed. All that life returns to the stone he lifts, and with inspirations he has picked up elsewhere, he sets that stone down.

"Tick-tock"

23

The days away building the Hauptman house were long days. The twelve hour day kind, but I loved it. Nine hours of carpentry and travel between locations, then stonework in the evening when back home. Between the carpentry and stonework I would swim in the river with Susan and Carson, which was icing on the cake for a long day. The river has been for many years our summer bath. We would carry Carson down in a small plastic tub and wade one arm of the river that shallowed to our knees to reach the main flow of the current where it was deeper and private and the sun lasted until late in the day. Carson was now over a month old. We would prop him up in the tub left on the shore while we swam, and he watched us with a steady eye. Nothing got by him. The third day of his life, upstairs in our bedroom where he slept with us, his eyes were already following the upper wall of the room, above the bed, where dark green stencilling trim was laced. I had painted that on three winters ago never thinking a child would be with us to enjoy it. After supper, walking to the stone hut with Carson in my arms, he would open his eyes to the singing robin, and as weeks went by he eventually found that robin and stared up at it, studied it for awhile, then laughed. He was finding things. Other parents warned us he wouldn’t distinguish things for weeks. Whenever he smiled, and he did on his second day, it was chalked up to gas. For some reason people won’t allow anything to follow its own course — everything that happened to them has to happen to you. I stopped reading the childhood guide books the first week of birth. It brought back the enjoyment of learning with Carson, watching him; allowed the delight of surprise to return. Susan read one helpful book on nursing to get the hang of it. Otherwise, it was paying attention to the child and listening to a few friends who realize the commitment to trusting yourself. A plank swing in the backyard, hung from a low apple branch by two chains, something put up awhile back. One evening of Carson’s first week of birth I sat in the swing and moved him gently to sleep. I was learning. Resources around you are the best tools. A swing.

all photographs by Susan Arnold

Stone Hut
a builder's notebook
Bob Arnold
1988, 2013

HOT TUNA ~

JOHN COLTRANE & JOHNNY HARTMAN ~

DONALD HALL ~

Donald Hall is gone and he will not be replaced —

trust me. I came for a visit at his home a few years before his

passing and he came to the kitchen door, slowly, on two canes,

and my visit was unexpected, and he brought me in with a smile.

He wrote until the very end and this book of many dozens

of short essays will show forth. His generosity was of

another century.

R E V I E W

Houghton Mifflin

 2018

LOUIS ARMSTRONG MEETS OSCAR PETERSON ~

BEAT ATTITUDE ~

A strong collection of Beat Women Poets

with some surprises: Denise Levertov

is at the front of the parade; finally

someone recognizes Mary Norbert Korte,

and all the other poets are dear

essentials: ruth weiss, Anne Waldman,

Janine Pommy Vega, Joanne Kyger,

Lenore Kandel, Hettie Jones, 

Diane di Prima, Elise Cowen

all for you in French

and English.

Pretty cover.

[ BA ]

R E A D     M O R E

KEITH LAMPE ~

Building a new woods hut under the ash trees and white pines

each day, every day, I thought of Keith Lampe, a troubadour

for Mother Earth heralding back to the 1960s.

K E I T H      L A M P E

( Ponderosa Pine )

RAMON LOPEZ VELARDE ~

The Purple Stain


Day after day I inflict upon myself

the grievous penance of not seeing you, so when finally

my eyes behold you they are flooded with you essence,

as if drowning in an ocean of purple,

of music, of deep passion.



Monday passes, Tuesday, Wednesday . . . I suffer from

the eclipse of my sun, but as I mourn

the desire to see you rises up like

a prophecy, it opens like a slowly parted

veil, it grows pure, like honey, precious

like the heart of a stone,

it is honed like the key

to the cell of love in a ruined monastery.



You cannot know the exquisite bliss

I find in fleeing from you, the furtive gratification

of furtively adoring you, of paying court to you

beyond the shadow, of once a week removing

the blindfold and exposing my eyes,

for a deceptive moment,

to the purple stain of your fascination.



In the forest of love, I am a stealthy hunter.

I stalk you through dense, dormant foliage

as I would hunt a brilliant bird, and from these forays

among the thickets, I bring back to my isolation

the most brilliant of all plumage:

the purple plumage of your fascination.




————————————————

SONG OF THE HEART
Ramon Lopez Velarde
(1888-1921)
translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
U Texas Press

JOHN BERGER ON ARTISTS ~

Now in a large softcover edition

M O R E !