I built a very crude handrail for my neighbor this morning:
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The railing is not impressive, I know. However, the backstory is pretty interesting, so I thought I'd share it here. My neighbor is 85 years old, and in the last year, he's gone from virile to fragile very quickly due to health issues, and he's having a hard time dealing with that. You see, he lives rural like I do, but unlike me, or 99.999% of current Americans, his is a primitive lifestyle. He's very self-sufficient, which is good because he never married and has no immediate family. He was an old-school computer programmer (assembly language) for decades, but about 30 years ago, he quit his job and moved to his current property.
The property is literally one side of a very steep hill with a small flat valley below it, and he selected the property for that reason. He carved a cave up in the side of the hill (we live on limestone rock in this area), put a façade on, and moved in (over a few years). For a living, he started buying army surplus items at auction and selling them to wholesalers. Most of what he uses in day-to-day life is surplus equipment. Including his power supply. You see, he doesn't have running water or traditional electric power, or communication lines, on his property. He collects rainwater for his water source, and for lights in his house, he has an ex-army solar power system - 24V DC only!
So, back to the railing made this morning. Those stairs (ex-army, of course!) are on the path that runs from his house up above to his shop, which is down on the flat valley below. He has no means of cooking in the house, so he cooks his meals in his self-made camp trailer/Jeep hauler, which requires walking up and down those stairs to cook his meals.
Jeep hauler? Yes, he's a lifelong Jeeper! When I met him fifteen years ago, he was running a very well-built CJ-6. He sold it a few years back because it was just too much physical effort to maintain it. He bought a built JK from a Jeeper friend because it requires less maintenance, and he now runs that. He spends about six weeks every summer in Colorado, holding court for the dozens of old Jeeping friends who come and camp with him for a week or a weekend at a time. He spends summers in Colorado to avoid the Texas heat - he has no cooling in his house, and he burns wood in a wood stove for heat.
Anyway, my friend Johnny is a helluva feller that I'm proud to call my friend, and I, along with one other neighbor, try to do what we can to keep him living that lifestyle, which is not an easy way to live. He's having a hard time asking for help because he prides himself on his self-sufficiency. He had a stroke a few months back, and he came out of it pretty well, but that has set him into a downward health spiral a bit. He's fallen several times since than due to persistent dizziness that came with the stroke, but he doesn't share many details of those falls because he's embarrassed by it.
Since his stroke, the other neighbor and I have set up a routine where Johnny texts us in the morning and again in the evening so we know all is well. This morning, when he texted, he asked if I would help him replace a 24V ceiling fan in his house. Yes, they make 24V ceiling fans - crazy, huh? I said I'd be happy to do so, and headed over to his place (it's about a mile from my place). After replacing the fan, we were chatting, and he told me more details about his most recent fall - on those stairs. When he showed me where he landed, I noticed several dangerous items, besides the four-foot drop. If you look at the picture I posted, you'll see a roll of razor wire on the right edge of the photo, along with a bow rake head on the ground (there were actually two of them). I said he was lucky he didn't cut himself and bleed out. He said, "oh, I did bleed a bit - my hand fell onto the razor wire!"
I thought about moving that stuff, but that wouldn't help with the vertical drop, so I proposed putting some type of railing there. He said that he'd have already done it, but he's just not got the stamina. I volunteered my services right then. He insisted we do it from whatever we could find in his scrap piles (he has lots and lots of them). We settled on two T-posts and an old galvanized gate post.
I took the T-posts and gate post home to the shop to cut them to length. The gate post also needed some pieces cut off and a bit of weld repair. After doing that, I went to town and got some U-bolts to attach the gate post railing to the T-posts, along with some rubber T-post covers to prevent him falling on one and putting a T-shaped hole in himself. I then headed over to his place with my big hammer drill with a 1-3/8" concrete drill bit on it. I used his generator to power it. The only way to drive T-posts in this country is to drill the limestone first.
So that was today's project, and my good deed for the week. Well, is it really a good deed if you were promised a stiff bourbon and good conversation this weekend as payment?
