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4 ~ Wednesday, May 22, 1991 - North Shore News

The power and the glory

of the handyman game

I'M NOT much of a handyman, but I do get the urge

every once in a while.

Urge? Maybe hunger is a better word. This is primeval stuff: the urge to splinter wood and drive spikes into it and lift heavy, awkward objects, all the time risk- ing bloody dismemberment or splayed thumbs.

What drives a man to thus ex- pose himself to danger in his own back yard or garage?

I believe it is nothing less than the desire to recreate reality in a more favorable mode.

A recent article in The Globe reported that the home handyman syndrome has moved in from the obscurity of the fringe to the mainstream. So we are all getting into the game.

Part of the reason, | believe, is the equipment that’s around now. If they can make power saws, with their jagged disk-teeth whirl- ing in a blur of matter-ripping destruction, so idiot-proof that even | can use it without maiming myself, then the world is ready to be built anew by armies of klutzy carpenters with high-tech tools.

I guess what has happened to the of world of home projects is roughly what happened to the act of war, as demonstrated by the laying-to-waste of Iraq and Kuwait.

The equipment is so impressive. It makes the next-tu-impossible task of ousting an entrenched super-army of desert warfare veterans, for instance, « piece of cake.

All you need is enough carpet bombing from safe altitudes with no aerial opposition and a few smart missiles to make sure this happens.

On the home front, a similar quantum leap in technology has taken place.

It used to be, when [ got the handyman urge — ar, probably more often, when I was coaxed into it by an offspring’s mother — the task was bound to be long and bloody.

Being too cheap to buy a whole pile of power tools for ‘‘just one project,’’ [ limited myself to hand saws and hand drills and screwdrivers.

Just cutting a sheet of plywood became an epic chapter in a millenia-long human struggle to escape the merciless grip of an obstinate and implacable nature.

Little wonder, after one of these exquisite painful amateur-home- handyman-with-inadequate-tools experiences, that 1 immediately swore off any more sawing or hammering ever again so long as | lived.

Then, last Christmas, my step-

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father bought me a set of power tools.

Wow!

I know I’m coming upon this discovery rather late in life, but that’s OK because I savor it more this way. At least that’s my ra- tionalization. And rationalizing is one thing I’m definitely good at.

Like, I turn this seven-and-a- quarter-inch circular saw on, for instance, and goodbye two-by- fours, planks, plywood sheets, even treated tie beams. Fram, zing, schreech. It’s done.

Maybe it’s just as well I didn’t discover the ecstasy and glory of power tools until now.

Just in the last four weekends, ! have zanged through several large piles of beams and planks and sheets of various kinds of wooden material.

The back yard has suddenly been populated with dozens of cedar planters, composting boxes, raised gardens and new benches.

None of this is art, you under- stand. But the pieces mainly fit.

introducing the Newly Designed 1982 BMW 325i

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of its first compact sports sedan, the 1602, BMW Canada proudly announces the intro- duction of ihe totally redesigned 325). As with ils predecessors, this third generation 3- Series is an evolution of BMW automotive design. Providing a harmonious balance between spacious

You can climb all over this stuff and it won’t break. You would have to go to a considerable amount of trouble to tear il all apart.

} have probably overbuilt everything by a considerable fac- tor, but this is not the point. Lam allowed by social convention to take guests out into the garden and show them my works.

It’s not quite an attitude of “‘look-upon-my-works-ye- mighty-and-despair."* But close enough.

Guests are allowed to note that the right angles are mostly right angles and in some places the planking actually matches up.

We, the handymen, will allow with a sort chuckle that the back of the raised garden is technically six inches lower than the front, but then, didn’t the Zen masters say you should always leave a flaw in your work to remind us of nature’s unpredictability.

One hates to think that more hydro dams or coal-fired or nu- clear generation stations will have to be built to satisfy my urge to use power tools, or that entire old-growth forests will be deci- mated to satisfy my sudden need for more decking, more fencing, more raised gardens.

That’s what I meant about it being a good thing | didn’t discover power tools until now. Having acquired this sort of tech- nology, I'm really in a jam. It’s like not being able to dis-invent the atomic bomb. The power saw is with us for the rest of time.

1 would like to think that I will move back down to hand tools. Maybe some day I'll be forced to by che price of electricity. But I don’t think Ill be able to kick the habit voluntarily. Not now that I’ve acquired it. .

Fram, zing, schreech. Zang. Maybe I'll rebuild everything!

CEE OS:

=! ne Oe

design, agile handling and dynamic perfor- mance, the 1992 325i continues to set new standards in an auto- motive category it helped launch over a quarter of a century before.

PARK SHORE BMW

1500 FELL AVE. NORTH VANCOUVER

* Saturday May 25th 9:00 am to 6:00 pm only

a * NET OF ALL PROGRAMS - INCLUDES FREIGHT & P.D.1. - Di # 7496

— CrownLife PARTICIPACTION CHALLENGE

Wednesday, May 29 Dp 1991 eaanceacnion a,

Park Shore Motors Introduces

The New BMW 3 Series

Please join us at our showrooms to celebrate this event.

Thursday, May 23, 1991 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Park Shore Motors Ltd. 1500 Fell Avenue North Vancouver

V7P 3E7

985-9344