In my early twenties, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I tried all sorts of things. There was this big conflict, I had all this knowledge and interest in computers and technology but I hated working indoors. I was raised a farmer, with dust on my work boots, irrigation water staining my Levis and heavy work sweat soaking my white t-shirts. Breathing air-conditioned air in a sterile little cubicle on the 20th floor of a city office building wasn’t my idea of a life. I had to be rough and ready out in the open air and the elements, slamming nails or chopping down a tree on the mountain side. “Sedate” wasn’t a big word in my vocabulary in those days. I was flying around on hot motorcycles or hopped up Volkswagens, with the blazing wind in my hair and splattered bugs in my teeth. The thought of being pent-up in commute traffic half the day just to get to some boring office job simply made me shudder.
At one point, I tried my hand at landscaping, me thinking that this would be a way to have a creative outlet, as in designing yards, while keeping myself in the great out-of-doors and using my muscles to do things. I knew a couple of guys who had started several fairly successful landscaping businesses and I’d help them out on their projects to get a feel for the business but I never got into it one hundred per cent. Basically, I was pulling weeds, digging ditches and learning how to put together plastic pipe for irrigation systems and lawn sprinklers. My body was telling me I needed something just a lot more substantive, like framing up a house.
I came up with a design for the back yard which was this home owner’s highest priority. He had a passel of young kids that needed a secure and kid proof place to . . .
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