Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

[Note:  I felt really bad this morning until about noon, but am feeling better now.  Several of you have emailed me and sent pictures and I really appreciate it, but haven't had a chance to write back.  But, I will.

In the meantime, I want to share with you today one of my "Wind Vane" stories that means a whole lot to me.  It tells about how I came to have my wind vane, that is the subject of this blog.  I hope you enjoy it and will leave me comments, please, because it is one of my highly edited non-fiction pieces of work that I plan to enter into a local writing contest that the Picayune Writers' Group is sponsoring.  I want to get y'all's unbiased opinion of the value of the work and to know whether or not you think I should enter it into the contest and how you think I'll do.

Thanks!  And much love,  Dee.]

Acquisition - July 4, 1995 

 It seemed an odd way to celebrate the Fourth of July.  But then, again, maybe not.

   My dad and I spent it working on a project following a serendipitous discovery a few days before, springing from meandering conversations I cannot now recall. The ceaseless, infernal West Texas wind blasted a fiery furnace of dry air across the yard, so we sought relief in his open garage, facing south against the wind, to begin our work.   

   At first sight, the wind vane held little promise, although my frail, worn dad had been excited to have finally found it.   Here it is,  he had called out, rummaging beneath countless stacks of stuff stored in a steaming metal shed.  He cradled it tenderly; to him, it was the best of the trove of treasures he had obviously stored a long time.  To me, it looked like a piece of junk, but I said nothing.  Not after all the effort he had gone to retrieving it.  I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. 

   I knew it was here, somewhere,  his raspy, husky voice said excitedly, as he handed me the dusty, dirty-white, paint-gobbed pieces of an ancient vane.  The vague, grimy silhouette of a bearded man driving a buggy behind an even grubbier horse emerged, all mounted on a large, stylized arrow. I recognized a square mount piece with the pole in the center, but it was hard to see how the N-S piece, E-W piece fitted together, or with the rest, to make a complete wind vane - much less one I might want.  It had long since ceased serving its purpose tracking the endless Texas wind.  Dad had saved it for who knows what.  Now, it seemed that it must have been just for me that he’d saved it.  I felt that, anyway, when I saw how happy he was for me to have it.

  I had long wanted a wind vane, but hadn’t envisioned this.  I had no idea what I would do with it, either.  My desire to have one had been more whimsical than anything, without me ever stopping to think why.  Where I lived in lowland Louisiana, there was barely a breeze, much less decent wind.  Now, though, I felt my whim to possess a vane had propelled me directly toward this moment, so this kindly, gracious man would be so happy to find me his - even if it was such a mess.  That proved to be the first of innumerable reasons the vane proved valuable; reasons taking as long to discover as it had taken him to uncover the vane in the first place.  But those reasons were as nebulous to me then as the true shape and form of the vane in my hands.

  The next day, Dad let me drive his old car as we took his “shortcut”down the alley behind his house to the hardware store two blocks away.  If you counted time wasted going over speed bumps in the apartment complex alley in the next block, it wasn’t much of a time saver.  And apparently, he had picked up several nails in the past, flattening more than one tire.  But he was proud to share his secret trail, so I expressed the proper response at his sharing.  After all, he had found the wind vane, hadn’t he?

At the store, he read every line of fine print on every label on every can of paint stripping gunk before making his selection; then followed the same routine for the necessary tools and equipment.  He managed to save a few cents off a sum not much to begin with and was pleased once again.  He was more pleased that we were working together, as was I.

 The slow process continued, once more.  Now, to set up and create the “proper” conditions for work in the garage; necessary conditions, according to Dad’s endlessly active engineer’s mind, for any actual restoration to begin.  He sought the right table, chairs, fans, scrapers, screwdrivers, flat chisels, fat and fine wire brushes and WD40.  The list of essentials seemed endless to me, who becomes antsy at any project taking more than an hour or two from start to finish.  We had been working on this one now for three days!  Nor could I yet tell whether this shoddy vane was going to clean up at all, much less be worth the effort.  But I turned my attention to Dad and shoved squirming impatience into the far back corner of my mind, disciplined for the moment, until another time.  It was the least I could do after all of his trouble.

Besides, we had not worked on such projects for a long time.  I had not even seen him for over a year.  And never like this - so thin and drawn and fragile.  He was the same, but not.  Not the father I remembered from long ago, or as recent as the year before.  My heart felt swollen up to my eyes, which ached so from the pressure, I felt they could not keep from spilling tears.  But, I could not cry or let him see anything other than my happy, smiling face and laughing ways he looked for.  He loved for me to laugh and fuss over him whenever I could.  So I did.

By noon, he finally had everything in its place for beginning the real work on the vane.  Well, nearly everything.  There were still some tools he just had to have which he could not yet find, and for which he would continue hunting off and on the rest of the day.  He was tired from the morning’s exertion.  His heart, though strong in spirit, failed him physically and he needed to rest.  So we ate lunch, he rested; then began the task in earnest.  
 The stripping gunk worked amazingly fast to sluff off the gobby white paint, revealing black paint beneath, leading to even more amazing finds.  The vane was beautifully detailed cast aluminum with shiny bright copper wire strung through tiny holes in the horse’s bridle running to the man’s hands, where the wire twisted and hung down.  The wheel spokes were well defined; the man’s face and beard revealed the face of a proper gentleman.  The aluminum’s matte finish, now softly marked with steel brush marks, gleamed in the garage’s cool light.  The vane was stunning in its simplicity, in its original form.  Why on earth had anyone ever painted the vane to begin with, I wondered.  

We worked the afternoon away; me sanding, and Dad using ever increasingly smaller wire brushes to carefully reach every nook and crevice of each metal piece to exhume whatever tiny specks of paint remained.  Much fine sanding was required to loosen the last stubborn vestiges.  He began the process of unscrewing the frozen screws holding the top to the arrow and cleaned some more.  Finally, he was ready to begin putting it all together, which included finding just the right grease, in just the right amount, to fill the bottom of the top’s hollow shaft which fit over the smaller pole sticking up from the mount below.  

He carefully oiled the screws, screwed the horse and carriage on top of the wide, flat arrow, tightened the screw anchoring the N-S, E-W pieces to the pole below, and placed the whole apparatus on the square mount at the bottom.  Now he was ready to try it all out - to see if it would turn in the wind.  We went out back into the late afternoon’s westerly sun, into the perennial blowing westerly wind, and carefully set the base of the wind vane on the back yard fence post, letting the arrow turn freely.  To me, it appeared to turn without resistance.  However, the engineer in Dad once again surfaced and he wasn’t satisfied until he had made another thirty minutes or so of adjustments to the greasy pole, with adjustments so fine I could not see them.  

Dad could, though, and that was all that mattered.  It was still his vane, in his mind, until he could present it to me as a perfect gift.  The perfect vane he knew it could be; as only, perhaps, he could see, but there.  A wind vane encompassing all he thought I might have envisioned in my whimsical musings before.  

And, so it was.  The vane was not only much more than I had seen in those pieces of old junk, it was much more than I had imagined, or expected to find.  Especially because his gift to me, in all its splendor, was crafted from all his hard work and effort and offered with love.

In return, in the evening I grilled hibachi steaks on the back patio, also facing south away from the wind - although not completely.  The wind swiftly ignited the coals, blowing sparks in my face, so that I was twice burned - once from the setting sun, then from the fiery coals.  The steaks were a little singed, too, but still good.

He didn’t eat much, of course, but all he wanted.  What he wanted most was for me to stay and visit for a longer time.  But, I had to go.  A day or so later, he packed up the vane for me to take home, in his usual overdone way, using layers and layers of paper, and even more layers of tape and knots and string.  Enough so that it would take impatient me way too long to unwrap when I got home.  He even included a small plastic container with more thick axle grease, bottle carefully labeled with masking tape and marker, so I would have just the right thing to keep the vane turning smoothly on its pedestal.  Although I’ve never used it, I keep it still. 

   As I looked at the vane when home, tears finally flowed because I loved the gift so much  and him even more.  In my heart, I knew that his days ebbed slowly away from some unseen force I could not fathom and could not comprehend.  I resolved to spend as many of those days in his presence as I could, leaving tears of grief behind; bringing only joy to the place he inhabited, for as long as he should live.  That would be my gift to him.  After all, he was my dad.

That is another story, saved for another day.  This day, I spend marveling at how wonderful my wind vane looks and how well it functions; even though it stands sentinel at its post in my den, far from any wind.  It has long since become, in my mind’s eye, the most fitting metaphor for my ongoing search for direction in my life.  It reminds me that what has become heavily encrusted with age and excess, misuse and abuse, to the point that it appears to be useless to most who pass it by, can become once more, through the inner vision of one who takes the time to see and care, and through the application of a patient, tender, remedial touch, a beautiful object to be greatly admired for its grace and form, which so easily marks, as well it should, the paths of the winds it follows.

I often wonder if I would have recognized the wind vane’s value, or would have taken the time and patience to restore it to its proper place.  I’m not sure I would have seen the  possibilities there, or would have so disciplined myself to spend the time and energy necessary to make it whole.  I often think that those were the better gifts I received - how to better see, and more patiently apply the talents that I’ve been given, to everything I do.

The vane may be far from any wind, but it resides in the only place it “properly” belongs - a place where I can gaze upon its splendor every day - to think about how I came to have these  wonderful gifts, and how I spent the most odd, yet splendid, Fourth of July I’ve ever had.

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