Finny

With age comes experience. On the other hand, experience ages.

There is a camp that I volunteered, mostly in my 20s and 30s, which is called Lake Retreat.  It was during a time in my life when I needed to escape to someplace where my soul and mind could settle, and I could find some peace. There I was able to work with older men whom I admired as mentors. They have all long since passed on, but they showed me what a steadfast man should look like. One even taught me that even if you don’t know what you are doing, bluff.

Lake Retreat Camp

Lake Retreat Camp is in Ravensdale, Washington on the shores of the 51-acre lake of the same name. The camp owns 56 acres of property and 28 buildings with their 2000 feet of waterfront. Around the perimeter of the lake is a mile long road which gives access to the side-by-side elegant private homes which line the lake. The camp takes great care to be a good neighbor, thereby avoiding angry phone calls from those around the lake.

Since its purchase in 1946, Lake Retreat has been transforming itself from a camp made up of Army tents, surplus tables, and cots, to the modern campus of cabins, lodges, dining room, chapel, and recreation areas. Most of the transformations made through years were from volunteer labor.

During one of my weeks as a volunteer laborer on the maintenance crew, I was paired with a retired gentleman named Finny Tagenfelt. I believe that I got the honor because none of the other volunteers wanted him around. Finny claimed to be experienced in many fields but proved again and again to be a liar.

You must first paint an image in your mind of what Finny looked like to appreciate him. Because he was the first into the dining hall for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the last one out, he had the ability to maintain his rather bulbous figure. Imagine a python who has swallowed a pig. Finny would sit by himself at every meal, lost in his own little world, talking to his plates of food.

Finny constantly wore overalls which had brass buttons up the front. Because of his girth, his brass buttons strained to hold the coveralls together. Occasionally, one would pop, fly across his table and break a saltshaker or stick into the sheetrock wall. It was common knowledge that if you dined at Finny’s table, it would be in your best interest to wear safety glasses.

Finny was headstrong in his belief that he could handle any project given to him. He didn’t ask for or accept any advice from other volunteers who were perhaps more skilled in the jobs we were about to start.

It should also be mentioned that besides his odd shape, Finny was extremely nearsighted and always wore pop-bottle safety glasses. I suspect that he wore them because he was also worried about his brass buttons. He was bald and chose to wear a florescent orange hard hat when the other men wore baseball caps.

Our first job was to build a deck. The lumber package and the precise plans were left on the backside of one of the lodges. Upon arriving at the site, Finny began cutting the banding straps and tossing the lumber into different piles.

“Get me my Skill Saw,” he barked.

I watched him hold a tape measure up to the side of the building. He then took a twelve-foot pressure treated 2×8 and cut it into sections.

“Here are the plans, Finny. Do you want to look at them?” I asked.

He glared at me with his magnified eyeballs through the pop-bottle lenses.

“Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? I’ve built a million decks,” he yelled.

And so, I helped him build the deck and when he said it was done, we had a large pile of leftover cut ends of 2×4s, 2×8s, and 4×4s. The maintenance supervisor walked over to see our deck. He may have set a record for leaping from calm to rage.

“Arrrgh, Finny you moron!” the supervisor screamed. “That was a $4000.00 lumber package. This looks nothing like the deck in the plans. Did you even look at the plans? Look at all this wasted extra lumber, what were you thinking?”

“Maybe we could use it for steps,” Finny mumbled.

“I can’t believe it!” the super yelled as he stormed off.

I looked at Finny who had a frown on his red face.

“Huh,” he said.

The homeowner’s association called the camp to ask what all the screaming was about.

We were next given the job of trimming branches. This I believe was to keep us away from power tools. We used the camp Ford tractor and a wagon. Driving around the camp we would cut back overhanging branches along the camp roads and trails. Each time the wagon filled we would take it to the ball field and toss the branches into a pile. Throughout the day the pile got higher and wider in diameter. Finally at dinner time, we were done.

That night, sitting at his table alone, except for his plates of food, he motioned me over.

“I heard that some of the campers want a bonfire. We’ll light off our branch pile tonight,” he said while spitting food from his mouth.

“Should we ask the manager?” I asked him.

He glared at me with his magnified eyeballs through the pop-bottle lenses.

“It’s my pile of branches,” he sneered. “I can burn it when I want.”

We did indeed go down to the branch pile that evening in the dark. It was a rather large pile of green branches.

“Okay,” I said. “Shall we take branches off our big pile and feed them onto a burn pile?”

He looked at me like I was stupid.

“They want a bonfire! Bon is French for “Big.” Grab that diesel can and splash it around the pile.”

We gave the campers the bonfire they wanted that night. The camp-end of the lake was so bright from the fire and the flashing lights of the fire trucks that most of the homeowners on the lake called the camp. There were also noise complaints from someone screaming, “Finny, you moron!”

Just after midnight, I stood in the field with Finny. Both of us were smeared with soot.

“Huh,” he mumbled.

It was on Friday of that week the day before our volunteering was over. Finny and I were walking the grounds picking up gum wrappers. The camp manager and the maintenance supervisor were not taking any more chances of possible screw-ups from the Finny team.

After lunch we were walking the ball field surveying the scorched ground and surrounding trees when a tree caught Finny’s eye. It was dead and leaning toward the road.

“See that tree?” he said pointing. “It’s a liability to the camp. If it falls toward the road, it will knock down the power lines and may hit a car. The camp could get sued. We need to cut it down.”

“I don’t think the manager, or the supervisor want us to help anymore. Besides, the tool shop is off limits to us,” I reminded him.

“Nonsense! We are doing the camp a favor. I have a chainsaw in my truck. You go get the tractor.”

“Wait,” I stopped him. “Are you experienced in falling trees?”

He glared at me with his magnified eyeballs through the pop-bottle lenses.

“I am a Tagenfelt! I come from a long line of woodsmen, or fishermen, I can’t remember. I don’t keep a chainsaw in my truck because I don’t know how to use it!”

At the time, it made sense.

I walked to the shop and got the tractor. As I drove by the camp office, I saw the manager jump out of his chair and run to the window. He seemed to be screaming something. I waved.

Back at the ball field, Finny was filling the fuel tank on the chainsaw.

“Okay, you drive the tractor out onto the road, raise the bucket up and push it into the tree trunk while I cut a notch out of the trunk.”

I did as I was told. Finny cut a large notch out of the trunk on the side of the tree facing the ball field.

“Okay, now let me up on the tractor and you get out of the way and make sure no campers get close to the drop zone. This is going to take an accurate push,” he said, and he climbed onto the tractor seat.

It is interesting how so many points of the universe can come together at just the right moment and collide.

Finny pushed on the tall tree with the tractor bucket. Each time the tractor came forward, the trunk could be heard to crack. Finally, the tree broke free and began to fall, not toward the ball field, but toward the road. Coincidently, at the same moment the camp manager and the maintenance supervisor crested the top of the hill, running and waving their arms.

The tree fell onto the tractor bucket which was in the full up position. The weight of the tree pushed the bucket rapidly to the ground which then shot Finny out of his seat like a circus stunt man being shot from a cannon  . . . except without a net to catch him. As he sailed through the air, his eyes looked larger than normal through his pop-bottle lenses. He landed solidly on his back, and he stayed conscious long enough to hear the tree fall across the powerlines and land on the road.

Luckily, he had passed out before he heard the anguished screams of the two camp staffers, “Finny, you moron!”

Had it not been for the ever-present hard hat, he may have been injured worse. As it was, Finny had a bruised body and a bruised pride.

The tree fell across and brought down the main powerline to Lake Retreat, which included the camp and all the homes around the lake. It also stopped traffic for an hour while the tree was being removed.

Finny and I sat on the hillside over the ball field and watched the repairs.

“Huh,” was all I heard him say.

Each year the camp hosts a BBQ for the residents around the lake. It’s their way of staying in good graces with their neighbors. That year was an extra generous BBQ.

Finny was barred from volunteering at the camp ever again and I, by guilt from association, was asked to come back when I gained a trade.

Since that week in my 20s, I now understand that with age comes a lot of experience, although those terrifying experiences have also really made me age.

** All Lake Retreat photos are from their web site.

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