A Hard Man

After all the trunks were piled up Jess went into his tool belt and took out a tape measure. He then went into the house for a moment and came back outside. Jess began measuring the trees and marking dimensions with a hatchet. From time to time he sat down and looked at the trunks while he thought. Finally it got too dark to work any longer. While it was still dusk Jess picked up his soap and towel and went to the stream for another bath. Angel followed as she felt dirty too after the work they had done. Once again the two lovers made a short stop on the blanket beside the stream. It was fully dark before their lust was once again satisfied and they stumbled naked back to the trailer for a night's sleep.

This was the first night Angel did not make her bed in the front of the trailer. Instead when they entered the trailer she followed Jess to his bed in the back of the trailer. He was surprised but said nothing when she crawled into bed with him and snuggled against his body. They exchanged a gentle kiss and drifted rapidly off to sleep.

The next morning Angel was already up and outside when Jess woke. He put on his shorts and walked outside. He could see Angel working in the garden. He knew he should go help her but his project was calling. Guiltily he turned toward his garage and the project instead of helping Angel. He worked several minutes before Angel came looking for him. She stood looking at his work a moment then said, "Breakfast is ready Honey."

As soon as he finished eating Jess returned to his work. From time to time when she took a break from the garden work or later when she was cleaning the vegetables Angel went to see what Jess was doing. He had the tree trunks cut into several different lengths and had cut notches in some of them. He drilled holes in several of the trunks as well.

Finally just before Angel called Jess for the evening meal he yelled at her. "Honey can you come help me for a minute please?"

Angel walked rapidly toward the plastic garage. When she got there she stopped in shock. Jess was sitting on a native cedar love seat he had built. He grinned and said, "Would you help me move our new furniture out front please?"

Angela grinned and moved toward Jess. He stood and started to move toward one end of the love seat sized bench to pick it up. Angel stopped him and pulled him into a kiss. She stepped back and said, "It looks nice honey. I'm afraid those sticks in the seat will be awfully hard to sit on for long though."

"Yeah but I think we can find some old couch cushions in the dumpster behind one of the furniture stores to put over them then we'll have a nice comfy padded seat. I'm going to make us a table next too then we can eat at a table outside."

Over the course of the next month Jess made several pieces of outdoor furniture from small trees. He made two chairs, a table and a rack to use when cooking over the fire. During one of his trips to town to collect for their work Jess mentioned his furniture to the owner of a small campground they mowed the yard for. They spent nearly thirty minutes talking about the rough furniture and how Jess made it.

Howard, the campground owner, said, "Jess I need to replace some of the furniture back behind in my picnic area. Could you let me see what you built? It sounds like something I might like to put out there. I've seen some of that kind of furniture for sale from time to time and thought it looked nice. Besides Rustic Furniture is a fad right now and I think it would be good advertising to show it in my pictures on the net and in the brochures I send out."

"Sure, I don't mind but it's sort of heavy. I don't think I want to haul it over for you to look at though. Could you come out to my place to see it?"

"Oh hell yeah I can come to your place. You don't need to haul it in. I can come to your place and look at it if you don't mind showing it to me."

Howard had nothing he needed to do that afternoon so he followed Jess to his place. Jess and Angel had become used to running around naked if they could safely do so. When he stopped to unlock the gate Jess walked up to Howard's car and said, "Uh Mr. Sprague my girlfriend lives with me. Could I ask you to wait here for a moment while I let her know I'm bringing someone out so we don't surprise her? I'll honk when it's ok for you to come on down if you don't mind."

As he expected when he got to the clearing Jess found Angel working in the garden naked. He watched her in admiration for a moment then walked toward her. He told her she needed to dress because Howard was there to look at their furniture.

After Angel was inside Jess honked and Howard came down the trail. Howard was impressed with the furniture. He sat in the chairs and love seat with and without the pads. Angel brought the two men a cold beer then sat in a chair while they visited. To Jess's and Angel's surprise Howard offered to purchase some furniture if Jess would make it. He did say he wanted smooth lumber used for the seat and table tops though. He didn't want to bother with caring for cushions. He even wanted some of the racks and tables to place beside the BBQ grills.

Howard ordered four tables, four racks, 16 chairs and four of the love seats. To Jess and Angela he offered an indecent amount of money for the furniture also. He was willing to pay $250 each for the love seats, $50 each for the chairs and $200 each for the tables. The racks were only $100 each however. Jess agreed to use bolts to hold the furniture together instead of the wood pegs he used in his and to purchase native cedar boards for the seat and table tops.

It took Jess and Angel almost six weeks to make all the furniture working evenings on it after mowing yards all day. After the job was completed they made a profit of almost $2500.00. Jess and Angel thought they were rolling in money. Two weeks after they finished the furniture for Howard the owner of a flea market came to Jess and asked if he would make some of the furniture for him to sell in his shop. Of course Jess agreed immediately.

By now it was getting cooler and the firewood business was picking up. Jess and Angel began cutting and delivering more wood so had less time to work on the furniture. Of course the furniture building took a back seat to that. It wasn't that big a deal however because the prime tourist season was almost over. There was a little surge during the holidays but by far the majority of the flea market's sales were in the summer.

During the winter when it was bitterly cold Jess and Angel didn't cut much wood. They hauled what had been cut and stacked in reserve and stayed inside as much as they could. One day after they delivered a load of wood they decided to spend some time fooling around on Branson Landing. It got old sitting in their small trailer passing time. The two young people went into several of the shops that were open and, of course, spent a lot of time in Bass Pro. One of the shops they looked into was a clock shop. Jess was intrigued by some of the more rustic designs he saw there. Later that afternoon after they got home Jess went into the plastic garage and another product was born. He found some smaller pieces of wood and one of the boards left over from furniture making. He fooled around with it and made a clock face. He sanded it smooth and found some small pictures depicting rustic rural America in an old magazine. He put a coat of varnish on the wood then stuck pictures on the varnish and covered the pictures with another coat of varnish. When he finished he had a clock face with beautiful pictures on it. He was so into the project he even went into town and purchased a cheap battery powered clock to get some works from for his home made clock.

Later that spring Jess took the clock to his friends in town and they loved it. It was put in the flea market on consignment and sold for $75.00. Jess doubled his investment money on the clock.

That spring a tornado passed through Branson. Jess and Angela made several dollars helping clean up the mess. Perhaps more useful to them than the money they made cleaning up the mess though was all the material they salvaged from their efforts. When they took a job they wrote into the contract that they were allowed to keep any material they wished. All they guaranteed to do was remove the debris and clean the lot to the owner's satisfaction. One of the jobs they got was cleaning up a small business that was damaged beyond repair. They salvaged several steel roof trusses and pieces of sheet metal roofing and siding. Additionally they salvaged many of the metal building studs.

After much of the clean up was completed Jess had the electric coop run lines to his place and install a meter. He and Angel began building a new shop near his little trailer. They debated for several days whether or not to use a concrete floor or just build a pole building and leave the floor dirt. One day Angel made a telling argument from Jess's point of view. She said, "Jess Honey we're doing ok now and we are both getting tired of living in that little trailer. If we put a concrete floor in the shop we can turn one end of it into a small apartment for us to live in and still have a lot of room to work in and store your tools.

Jess and Angel looked over their plunder from the storm and decided they had enough trusses and almost enough studs to build a 30 X 24 foot building from the 30 X 40 store they salvaged. They would have to purchase windows and doors in addition to the concrete. They would also have to purchase the insulation and interior wall coverings and finishing for the apartment but Jess thought they could swing the cost if they did the work themselves. The finish work didn't have to be completed all at once.

Jess went to town the next day and rented a small tractor with a back hoe attachment to level the floor and dig the footings for the buildings pad. After the footings were dug he used the tractor's front loader to run back and forth to the small stream and haul gravel up to place underneath the concrete. Three days later they were ready to pour the concrete. Jess priced out doing it himself mixing the concrete from scratch, buying redi mix or contracting the work. Contracting cost so much for labor he decided against that almost immediately after he got the first bid. Finally he decided to purchase the redi mix and do the footing and floor himself in one days pour. It took them all of one day to build the forms and place the rebar and rewire. He called the redi mix company and ordered the concrete for delivery first thing the next morning.

Angel and Jess decided after doing the concrete that NEVER AGAIN. That was extremely hard and exhausting work. To his pride Jess not only remembered to place bolts for the walls in the concrete he remembered to place drains and piping in the floor for future addition of water and a toilet. That was one of the things he and Angel were most tired of doing without—running water and an inside toilet. Jess even got the bolt pattern correct in three of the four corners for the main steel building studs. On the corner that was off only one of the bolts was out of position. He managed to drill the hole in the metal larger to make the fit.

When they got finished they had a 24 X 16 apartment in one end of the building and a 24 X 14 size enclosed shop in the other. They even had enough material left over to make a covered porch over the entry door and a covered 14 foot wide shed on each long side. The building was NOT pretty by any means using as it was made out of scrap salvaged from many other buildings but it WAS much better than they had. Even nicer they had electricity inside and Jess bought a used wood stove to heat with in the winter.

On Labor Day that summer Jess proposed marriage to Angel and she accepted. They were married two weeks later in the local Judge's chambers.

Shortly after their wedding one of the shops in Branson that sold antiques and rustic furniture came to Jess. They wanted him to make some rustic furniture for them to stock. They specifically wanted bed head and foot boards, night stands and even some coffee tables in addition to the rougher things he made for outside use.

Jess and Angel discussed the request that evening while they were eating supper. They still used the outside table from the first furniture Jess built. It was a much rougher job than they now turned out but still very sturdy and functional.

When Jess told Angel about the offer she excitedly said, "Oh, Jess! That's wonderful! You told them you would do it didn't you? I'm so excited for you." She stopped talking for a moment then she looked worried. She continued talking, "But where would we work and where would we store the completed items? How could we do it?"

Jess looked around their little clearing then turned back to Angel. He said, "That was the big thing I thought about. Another thing that bothers me is the time it would take to build the furniture. We don't have any spare time now to do anything else. We work almost all day in the summer doing yard work and in the fall and winter we cut and deliver wood almost all day. I don't know how we could do more. I guess we could work Saturday afternoons and Sundays but we would totally burn ourselves out working seven days a week all year long."

"As for where we would build the furniture though I have an idea. I can enclose one of the covered sheds on the side of the building and we can do some of the work in the new room and store the completed furniture there until we deliver it."

Angel sat for a moment and slumped in defeat. She couldn't think of a way for them to expand the furniture business either. Sadly she looked at Jess and said, "I guess you'll have to tell them we can't do it then. Damn. I really enjoyed building the furniture too but I am so exhausted now I don't see how we can work seven days a week."

Jess leaned back in his seat and looked around their place. Most of the clearing was stacked full of wood waiting to be sold that winter or was in use in some other way. He looked around at the forest he could see from where he sat. Finally he looked back at Angel and said, "You know Angel we've cut almost all the dead trees and downed limbs from the woods. We could cut live trees and probably could cut wood for as long as we wanted. Wood cutting is damn hard work though even using the hydraulic splitter. Building the furniture isn't a whole lot easier but it is easier and we could do that inside in bad weather. I would have to buy some wood working tools to make things easier but if we stopped selling firewood we would have time to do the furniture. We even make better profits on the furniture. Until we saw if we could make it on the furniture we could just cut back on the amount of wood we cut and sold.

I think we could do the furniture in the apartment and shop building and the enclosed shed if we had another place to live. We could use the apartment for the finishing room. We have almost $9,000.00 in the bank now. Why don't we go to town and see if we can buy a cheap used trailer to move down here?"

Angel looked at Jess and smiled. "Ok. That sounds like a great idea honey. Do you think we can afford something like that though? What if one of us gets sick or we have to buy a new machine or have a large repair bill?"

"We all have to gamble sometime Angel. I'll buy some medical insurance if I can find an inexpensive policy. If we do well we can make a lot more on the furniture unless the fad ends and we can't sell it any longer. If that happens we can always go back to cutting more firewood. I have some other ideas about things we can make also. Maybe we can make some shelves for displaying souvenirs or jewelry boxes or flag display cases. I have seen some beautiful display cases for soldier's medals and keepsake display we might make also. Let's see if we can do this."

Jess and Angel lucked out finding a trailer home to live in. They went to one of the larger sales lots in Springfield and found a 40 X 14 foot unit that was previously used as office space for construction sites. It had two rooms that could be used for bedrooms a small bathroom and a larger main room that could be made into a kitchen and living area. The large room had a few cabinets installed with a sink and two burner stove and microwave that had been used by the crews to heat their lunches and fix coffee and snacks. Perhaps the best thing about it was the price. The company that owned it had gone bankrupt and they were able to purchase it for only $5,000.00. That was more than they wanted to spend but they both felt like this was a good deal. The trailer had been built for the north and had 2 X 6 wall studs so was much better insulated than most. It also came with free delivery and installation including insulated skirting. They spent the money and excitedly returned home to pick out the perfect location for their new home. Jess even decided to spend the money to rent a backhoe once again. This time he dug a pit and laterals to install a septic system. Once again Jess did the work himself. They would still not have running water in their home but they would have indoor plumbing from then on. They still had to bring potable water from town and would carry water from the stream to flush the toilet.

Finally the day arrived when their new home was delivered. They set it near the small camping trailer they lived in for over two years. It had a better view of the lake and was slightly closer to their swimming hole. Angel almost fucked Jess into an early grave the first night they spent in their new home. They owned almost no furniture but that did not matter to her. She had a real home now. She was a very happy woman.

As soon as they moved their few items of furniture and preserved food into their new home Jess turned the old apartment into a finishing area for their furniture. He and Angel began building the furniture already ordered. Three weeks after the first pieces were delivered to the Antique store and flea market Jess received a phone call from another retailer wanting to know if he would make some items for them to stock. Jess and Angel worked ten to twelve hour days most of the winter making and delivering their furniture and a few other smaller items Jess built from scrap lumber. Even selling much of their furniture wholesale Jess and Angel made more money than if they sold firewood. Another plus was the work was easier and they got to work inside where it was warmer.

They did not make as much per piece of furniture as they did at first using trees Jess cut from their land. They had cut almost all the smaller trees that were fit to build his rustic furniture with so they had to purchase a lot of the material now. Jess and Angel did still cut some of the wood they used however. Many of the contractors in the area hired them to clear brush from land they were going to build on and they were able to cut smaller trees on neighbors land also. Some paid them to clear the land, some charged them for cutting the small trees but they still got them. It was the lumber, bolts, fastenings, varnish, sand paper and so forth that ran the cost up now. Their volume was such that they still made great money however. They averaged 65% profit on the sale price of a piece of furniture and even more on the smaller items they built. Many of their clocks and decorator items were made from scrap wood or even driftwood and root balls they picked up around the lake.

In the spring of the third year Angel and Jess were together they decided to have a child. It was the happiest day of her life when Angel was able to tell Jess he was going to be a father. Unfortunately her pregnancy and later the care for the child slowed down their production drastically. Finally their order backlog was so great Jess decided to hire help.