This is a sad story.
My father-in-law bought a couple hundred acres in rural Tennessee. He carved a road with a tractor, cut down a lot of trees, milled a whole lot of wood, and built a house. Damn, that's a manly man. Ron Swanson had nothing on Kendall Patterson.
One time, about a decade after he finished the house, I helped him re-stain the outside of his house. It was the least I could do considering his help with so many other things over the years. And, after all, I always try to do the least I can do. :)
Into his 60's and his "retirement" by then, he just did the job, whatever the job was.
His home started the ranch house out as a small one-room affair, then he added on one room at a time, as the lumber cured and his day job of building engines for cars at Saturn allowed. After a few years, he had a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home that smelled like a cedar chest. Oh, did I fail to mention the trees were all cedars? Yeah, the smell those first few years sort of slapped you in the face when you walked in. It mellowed over the time.
We moved to Tennessee to be close to him. That's actually a decent story too.
We had a fairly small "starter home" which sounded like an insult when someone told us that's what it was. It totally was, of course. So when we were ready to expand our family, we needed a clever way to both convert the guest room into a nursery and simultaneously not lose the ability to host guests. Being a clever guy, I designed some bunkbeds. We only had the one kid, so the extra bed...
...with a trundle would provide sleeping for a pair of guests.
Because space was tight, the stairs needed to be dresser drawers too.
But building that design seemed intimidating since I had no wood working skills whatsoever. Hm...if only I knew someone who'd, I don't know, built his own house out of wood? Like, this guy...
He embraced the concept of the project and cut some more trees down from his property...
...and milled the wood according to my specs...
...and then we spent a day planing the wood, which resulted in me being covered to my waist in wood shavings--no exaggeration, and I wish I had a photo of that. I don't have a lot of regrets in this life, but no photo of me in their parking deck waist deep in a sea of cedar shavings is actually one of them. We took the newly planed/sized wood and got to work building some beds.
It took us a week or so of me driving 45 minutes one way down to their ranch outside of Hohenwald to work all day, but we built a bunk bed...
...with drawer stairs.
The bed is an heirloom, and I appreciate the set every time I walk into my boy's room. My older son and younger have swapped rooms, so the little guy is currently sleeping on Dad and Papa's bunkbed. It's one of my most prized possessions, and I hope to give it to my grandkids one day. Now for the sad part.
We lost Kendall in 2015. He was no saint. He was snarky, wily, and did whatever TF he felt like doing. He was a home body and a hard worker. He used to piss me off to no end--always sneaking the kids candy and cokes. But he also loved the boys fiercely, and would do literally anything we asked of him. He called me on my birthday at 6AM sharp (which used to be "early" but isn't so much anymore) so he could be the first to wish me HB. He went to Disney just before the end, and seeing him willing to leave the farm, much less willingly visit the Mouse, was--well, frankly--disorienting.
When his brother with mental health problems--who he'd not heard from in years--called from what seemed like his deathbed in the hospital in 2013, Kendall quite literally took him into his home and nursed him back to life. That bastard shot him in a bout of insanity in 2015.
I miss Kendall every single day. He was a persnickity son of a bitch. He also earned my respect and love. I see him in my wife all the time, and she's the better for it.
"Greater love has no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends." - John 15:13
This is Bible verse stands out in my mind whenever I think of him. Heather read it at his funeral, and it sums up Kendall Patterson as well as any single sentence can. He chose family over fear, every time. May we all have such courage to live true to ourselves.
