Dad’s Martin Houses Go Back Up

Saturday Morning

Saturday came up bright and still and cool, the kind of April morning in central Oklahoma where the redbuds are just finishing and the grass is that new green that almost hurts to look at.

We loaded the houses at seven, wrapped in old bedsheets so the paint would not scuff. Ozzie met us at the lake. He had brought a thermos of coffee and three foam cups.

The lake was flat as a plate. A couple of men were fishing off the bank near the ramp, and one older fellow named Hobart had his pickup and trailer in the lot already, and he raised his hand at Dad when we pulled in.

Dad got his folding chair out of the truck bed and set it up under the first pole, in the same patch of grass where he has set it for eleven springs. He zipped up his tan windbreaker. He sat down.

“Go ahead, Rosetta,” he said. “I’ll supervise.”

I clipped my hair up off my neck. I had worn my old chambray shirt because it was already ruined with paint from Friday.

These winch poles are simple if you know them. The house hangs from a steel cable that runs up over a pulley at the top of the pole and back down to the winch. You crank the handle and the house rises. The winch has a brake that clicks with every turn, so if you let go, it holds.

Ozzie and I hooked the first house onto the cable and slid the pins through the mounting holes. Dad checked the pins from his chair. He made me pull one out and put it in again so the cotter key faced the right way.

Then I started cranking.

Sixteen feet is a lot of turns. The winch clicks, and clicks, and clicks. The handle gets heavier as your arm gets tired, even though it does not really get heavier at all. The white house rose up past my face, past the top of my head, past the reach of Ozzie’s arms, up into the bright morning.

When it reached the top, the cable stopped, and the house sat there against the blue sky, white and clean, exactly where it had been for fifty years.

I let go of the crank. The brake held.

Dad was sitting in his chair with one hand up, shading his eyes. He did not say a word.

For about five minutes, nothing happened. The martins were somewhere out over the lake, hunting bugs. Ozzie poured coffee. I rubbed my shoulder.

Then one bird came in low over the water, flying fast and straight. It swept up past the dock, past the pole, and turned a tight circle around the new house.

“There’s my scout,” Dad whispered.

The bird landed on the porch rail of the top floor. It stood there, looking in at the rooms. It made that low chirp.

Then it went inside.