B is for Block

When my family talks about "that time the basement flooded," that phrase has to be finished with a year or specific event. It has flooded from a broken water pipe (more than once). It has flooded from a broken sewer pipe (that was REALLY not pretty). It has flooded from heavy rains. And it shouldn't take anyone in our family by surprise that this happens, but it never fails that there were boxes of books or old clothes or Christmas decorations, or MY favorite, cherished old toys that were on the basement floor, none of which were enhanced with the addition of flood waters.

About three years ago, there was a doozy of a flood caused by endless, torrential rainfall. My dad was temporarily in a nursing home, receiving rehab for a knee replacement. I had been sandbagging the lake house because of the very real risk that it would flood from rising lake water, and while this was going on, the basement of my dad's house was quietly collecting water. We didn't find this out until I took him home from his 3 week stint at rehab and was met with the delightful odor of wet basement and ruined memories.

The good news about the Great Flood of 2017 was that it caused us (me) to clean out the basement and throw out a lot of stuff that should have been disposed of years ago. I bagged it all up in huge contractor bags, and my dad had a guy take it all to the dump. It also made the basement more navigable, and once my dad could go up and down the basement stairs safely (which apparently happened right after I left), he began poking around down there and finding interesting items he had forgotten he even owned. This is the very long, dull introduction to the very short story about one of those items.

My grandpa was a pilot. He got his pilot's license in the very early 1930s and joked that it was signed by Orville and Wilbur Wright (it wasn't). He was a commercial pilot and also "flew the hump" during World War II (flying supplies over the Himalayas). The family had to move all over the country, depending on what airport he was flying out of. 

When my dad was in junior high, my grandpa worked for Slick Airlines and was based in Denver. It wasn't unusual no matter where they lived for pilot friends of my grandpa's who were on layovers to stop at their house, either for a meal or to spend the night. 

One such fellow who stopped to visit hailed from the west coast, in redwood country. My dad, always interested in puttering around and working with wood, mentioned that he had heard that redwood had pretty swirls in the grain and he sure would like a piece of it some time. 

About a month after the man's visit, my grandpa came home from the airport with a block of redwood with a shipping label and handwritten note glued directly onto it. It was addressed to "Young Vinyard" and had instructions written on it to hold it at the field for my grandpa to pick up. It was signed by the visiting pilot.

After 65 or so years of being moved from house to house and then stowed away in our basement, and thanks to yet another basement flood, my dad found his block of redwood tucked away in the basement. (Terrifying side note: my dad was planning to CUT THIS APART until I caught wind of his plan and vetoed it.)

Finn checking out the block.

The block is 10"x7"x5" and weighs
almost 10 pounds

The note has deteriorated a great deal,
no doubt from all the humidity in the basement.