The Deck

That old deck we used to have, it was so old and beat up and but together by a couple of amateurs (my dad and my uncle) it was like walking out onto a suburban death trap every time you stepped foot on it. The wood was old and it smeled funny. It got blistereing hot like a brown-gray slab of shale on a burning Ohio summer’s day. It leaned from side to side like an old demented man and moved ever so slightly under your pace. What treasures were hidden beneath its boards in that eternally damp, sun-starved soil formed the dreams of me and my sister. To crawl to the very back of the old deck, to the part that met the wall of the house, was a challenge we laid before us fitting of a heroic epic. I think I only once I managed to make it all the way, and it took every ounce of mental courage I had. Physically, I could crawl around like the best of them, but to put my bare hands in that dead dark soil as the air around me chilled by about 20 degrees. Nearing the edge of hell itself, I touched the cold concrete blocks that formed the base of my house and in a near panic turned around to scramble the hell out of there. But in the challenge came respect. And in the beat down scorched aspect of the boards, a charm. And in the fragility of her leanings, a love. It was so white-trash and I never knew it. Only now do I realize that I grew up with a classic poor white-trash icon in my backyard, a delapidated old deck. But it was the best damn porch I have ever been on in my life. Fancy and my deck laid on extreme opposites of the spectrum. It was spartan, basic, and bare. It was plain and worn and faded like an old thrown away sock with one too many holes. And it was the greatest deck in the world.