The Story of the Dog Park; Ties that Bind

[manchowder]

bridge.jpg

I'm driving down Highway 61 with a load of stolen wood sticking out the back of my F-150. The sun hangs heavy in the sky, Chevelle rolls over to track one, my speed peaks at 73 mph. Callused from years of construction, my hands do not tremble, my eyes do not shift to the rearview, neither is my conscience nagging; I don't know what the statute of limitations is on hot railroad ties, but these were pilfered long ago on a warm summer night.

Now, ironically, I'm returning them to the citizenry.

#

My 20's were an industrious decade, and toward the end I found myself building a massive addition onto my house. Although we mudded the walls flat, the ceiling I thought to pattern. I didn't have a texturing tool, but knew my dad had access to one. I can't tell you what percentage my motive was parsed into for seldom requesting his help; not wanting to burden him, my quality control and his lack-there-of, sheer independence, or something else. By this juncture in our lives, I'd been making more money than him (probably for some time), and ? right or wrong ? I think there was a part of me that thought, ?I should be helping him?.

He made the trip down without complaint.

Although we had an identical sense of humor, we engaged in the arena of work from different angles. I looked at everything as a challenge to overcome, a project to complete; my dad looked at it as simply a means to an end.

"I'll buy lunch," I mentioned, once we had finished spraying the last of the master bedroom. "What sounds good?"
"Oh, I don't need anything," he said.
"How about Hungry Hobo?" I countered.
"Well, sure," he replied. "Just something simple, and make it a small."

I remember the two of us sitting on the unfinished wooden stairwell, and wondering how such a pittance of food could sustain a man. Since his triple bypass, he'd drastically changed his diet; only seeing him on family get-togethers, I guess it was just easy to forget.

I devoured my sandwich ? finishing first despite inhaling twice the amount. When my dad was done, he crumpled his wrapper into a ball and rose slowly, like a man 10 years his senior. He wore a ratty old cap, and the lines around his eyes sagged like his gray sweatshirt from the weight loss over the years; when it's the last project you ever work on together, I guess the details are just easy to recall.

#

The first bridge was built out of a stairwell riser in my basement the following year.

Purchased from Menards, the risers for the deck ? the grand finale to the addition - weren't so warped when they arrived, but to my great frustration decided to twist and dry after we cut them. They sat in a corner on the freshly bricked patio for some time before an idea struck.

I returned to the store, picked up some decking and screws, laid out the risers on saw-horses and quickly fastened together an 18? span bridge.

At the time, a group of friends and I had started hacking a bike trail in a nearby woodland owned by the city, and although we hadn't been given the official blessing, after numerous calls and messages and no pushback, we moved forward under a naturally deduced ?they clearly don't care? arrangement. The area ? about 15 acres ? was cut in half by a shallow creek with steep, impassible embankments. We had built one trail already, and were chomping at the bit to start second, on the other side.

How does one haul an 18? bridge down the road? Why, you shove it in the back of your pickup and swindle your idiot friends into sitting on the beast to keep it from tipping out.

We pulled into the grassy knoll like a bunch of rednecks rolling up to a backwoods kegger, where now a chain-link fence spans the perimeter of a dog park and a paved sidewalk leads to a bench and drinking fountain. We hopped out and shouldered the behemoth between the seven of us, dragging it through the tall grass and weeds and stopping only once to machete our way through one section like the Donner Party lost along the Oregon Trail. Breathing heavily, we halted at the foot of the creek. After a few minutes rest and contemplation (and Peabody losing a bout with a hive of undocumented mud bees), we planted the bridge into the embankment, pounded in a few stakes and gave it a test.

It held.

#

The parks department tore it down the following spring.

A neighbor had wandered through the trails that we built, beheld the mountain bike features, the logs and dirt, the makeshift bridge. She contacted the local news with a falsely assumed narrative; that a bunch of teenagers were out destroying the woods.

In retrospect, what other choice did the city have?

I remember standing over the wreckage; splintered wood, orange cones and caution tape where our bridge once spanned, like the sad hangover on Bourbon Street the day after Mardi Gras. There's a line in The Lord of the Rings, when King Theoden is holed up inside Helm's Deep, and as the forces of darkness are pounding on the gates, threatening to break in and destroy all, he asks in bitter defeat, ?What can men do against such reckless hate??

I don't recall thinking about my dad, my son, or anyone else whose names have been etched into stone; not my employees or my customers or any other weight of business hanging around my neck like a noose; not my wife or my daughters or the things in life that really matter; only that something lay before me ? a project to complete, a challenge to overcome.

I decided to rebuild.

In retrospect, what other choice did I have?

[Story continued below(text too long)...]

[manchowder]

#

The shed door rolled up with minimal effort, sunlight spilling onto a stash of treated lumber piled against the wall, partially buried under an array of unused vinyl siding. Dust kicked up and swirled in the sunlight as I stepped across the floor and examined the material.

It’s three months after the bridge was dismantled – seven months after my dad was laid low. What was originally a fun little side project had spiraled into a monumental undertaking. We assembled a team and a gameplan, joined up with the local mountain bike club and were slogging through the bureaucratic nightmare that is local government. Assuming we would inevitably acquire city approval, we pressed on, stockpiling the material we would eventually need.

I picked through the woodpile; my eyes drawn to several railroad ties buried near the bottom.
Rhonda, a close family friend and owner of the shed, smirked. “Your dad ‘acquired’ those one night from the municipal lot.”
“When was this?”
“Decades ago.”
I snorted a laugh. “And they’ve just been sitting here, all this time?”
She nodded.

Ever the train buff, my dad had longed to somehow, someday, relocate an actual caboose onto the back of his lot. He was an honest man in all his dealings, liked and loved by everyone who knew him; yet I can imagine him looking out from the front porch of the tiny little house he was renting at the time, a drink in one hand and a smoke in the other, glimpsing those old railroad ties sitting there unused day after day after day, and if they happened to go missing, why, who would be there to miss them?

Yet it wasn’t this comical mis-justification or the unfulfilled desire of the caboose that would-never-be that I thought of as I loaded the wood into my truck, but the sheer amazement that my dad could single-handedly toss one of these 8x8 railroad ties over a fence. I told Rhonda as much.

She rolled her eyes – had this been a few months ago, she would have been wiping away the tears. “He may have had a hand from Jack Daniels.”

#

I’m driving down Highway 61 with a load of stolen wood sticking out the back of my F-150. The sun hangs heavy in the sky, Chevelle rolls over to track one, my speed peaks at 73 mph. The boards will come to rest in the corner of my patio – under the stairs, behind the hose reel. While they wait, we will obtain city approval, map out, flag, and cut in three miles of trail. We will build a kiosk, jumps, ramps, berms and boardwalks and other features of dirt and wood. We will sweat under the summer sun, labor in the evenings and on weekends, contest the brutal Iowa winters. We will overcome every kind of obstacle; vandals and punks, volunteer and money shortages, months of rain and land hurricanes and weeds infinity. When it’s all said and done, we’ll have over a thousand hours wrapped up into this ensemble; half of those will come directly from me.

The railroad ties will come from my dad.

I’m standing in the very creek where they cut up our bridge all those years ago, hoisting the old ties over my shoulder and pinning them into place; after a long dormancy on my patio, I at last cut them up and put them to use; re-purposed, reborn.

We haul the 2x12’s that span the footings into place, tack and tie them down, then sheet with decking.

I was just a kid when these railroad ties were taken – young and na?ve and just trying to hold on. Never would I have imagined that they would find a home here, supporting a thing that now supports me. And they’ll support you, too, if you dare to step across them.

We screw in the ramps, mount the 4x4’s with thick lag bolts and fasten together the railings.

People have mentioned to me how remarkable it is what we’ve accomplished; we built an entire mountain bike park on volunteer labor and a shoe-string budget. But they don’t ask, and I don’t tell them, about the secret of moving a ball forward, even when so few are willing to help; when the feet of the men who were there slashing vines and shoveling dirt at its inception have all but moved on, or moved away. It’s not just determination and grit, casting a vision, organizing and follow through and a whole lot of sweat equity; the ability I have to lift my gaze off the ground and look forward is built not simply of my own experience or foresight, but rather how much time I’ve spent looking back.

The sky opens; rain spits down, cleansing the bridge of dust and dirt.

Yet had I known - at its genesis - the entirety of the cost, I would never have started this project.

Perhaps our own limited perception is, at times, a blessing, for it coaxes us out of our shallow comforts and into the frightening realms we once deemed fiction. And just as we can’t foresee all the bumps, neither can we glimpse every downhill; not just the end result – the capstone to an incredible monument – but time well spent with others revitalizing an abandoned, derelict woodland; the friendships that were forged, and this lost ideal of being a part of something bigger than yourself.

As the rain trickles down my truck, my tools, my scarred and callused hands, I take one last glimpse of the bridge. “Well done, good and faithful servants,” I tell my crew.

And head home.

The new bridge is five feet in diameter and spans a 20-foot gap - nearly 40 feet long if you count the ramps. Its footings – 18-inch pillars of concrete - rise out of the creek in triumph, while decorative wooden rails parallel its spine. The completion of this structure is more than just a celebratory milestone; it is a testament to how life comes full circle.

In the days ahead, when I’m riding through the trail, I’ll stop on this bridge and look out across the water. I’ll think about my dad and wonder what he’d have to say, if he were still here. Would he stroll along the creek bed, remove the nub of a cigar from the corner of his mouth and blow a line of smoke as he inspected the foundation? Would he note the care in which it was crafted, and would he remind me of what bridges are for; that they carry us past the impassible - that they connect two things once separated?

Or would he climb the ramp, run his hand along the treated lumber and lean over the railing. Would he pull a flat stone out of his pocket, examine it like it was a gem before launching it out across the creek?

And would I watch it bounce across the water; catch the splash of each droplet, the ripples in the creek, the owl hooting in the distance, the dogs barking in the background, the slow, steady gurgle of water rolling forever onward? Would I count each skip of the stone before it sank below the surface and came to its final resting place?

Or would I simply move on, past every little detail that I had ever missed; the weight of years, the work of many hands – blissfully oblivious to the ties that bind?

~~~

Ties that Bind
By Dan Hankner, Trail Steward to the Dog Park

There's a story behind every trail - and every person - and those stories are worth sharing. If you enjoyed this and would like to read more, I send out a new story every month. You can sign up for (and read more of) these at www.storyunlikely.com