Old Friends

I was belt-sanding the kitchen floor the other day, when a whole passel of old friends started surfacing, friends whose existence I had forgotten about. The flooring I was working on is two-by-six, tongue and groove pine, installed originally in the summer of 1981, and the reason old friends were dropping by, was because I was grinding down through three decades of foot traffic.

Seeing the grain of the wood reemerge after years of having the intricate designs cleverly concealed by the ravages of time, not to mention the clod-hoppers of three sons, makes me shake my head in wonder once again, about the inexorable changes over time.

When I took the pine down to the grain the first time, it was only a year or two since I had helped nail it into place, so I never lost sight of the complex designs. I didn’t know enough about anything at the time the cabin was built, to express an opinion about what kind of floor I should have.

The brothers said pine was the way to go and that was grand enough for me. I love the simplicity of a kitchen floor made of wood. I sealed it the first time with an oil-based varnish, Varathane. Now the same product is water-based, and dries a lot quicker, but the effect is identical: The glossy finish provides an aesthetically pleasing look, and makes keeping it clean abundantly easier.

To be honest I did not realize that my old buddies had all disappeared, one by one, or maybe as a unit-it’s hard to tell. It’s not as though I stopped mopping the floor, but gradually over time the Polyurethane wore down, the mud and dirt got ground down into the wood, and the art work that the pine came stock with, faded from view.

As I reflect on this occurrence, I am reminded that other friends of mine have also faded from view. I left my childhood, high school and Cal Poly, Pomona friends behind, when I was drafted into the military, and then again when I relocated from SoCal to the Bay Area after being released.

I left my United Auto and San Jose State friends behind eight years later, when I made the move up to Bell Springs Road in 1982. I made friends in the trades when I was building houses from 1982-1989, and I made many more when I taught in the local school district, from 1990 until 2005. Like the grain of the pine, many have faded from my memory. 

Recently, I have had the opportunity to reunite with some friends from old walks of life because of the internet, and specifically, face/book. I guess it’s more or less the same thing: old friends resurfacing after years, regardless of how it comes about.

I have immensely enjoyed these encounters, and why not? Face/booking is a lot easier on the back than belt-sanding.