My Million-Dollar Donkey (26 page)

Building a million dollar house hadn’t totally satisfied my husband’s newfound passion for wood. As we took long walks, he’d point out the difference between oak and walnut, pine and cherry. He would gasp and swoon over twisted branches filled with burls and knots the way other men would gasp and swoon over a Playboy bunny centerfold. He’d slam on the brakes when he saw a felled tree in someone’s yard, speculating on whether or not they’d let him drag home huge chunks of the tree trunk, then spend half an hour pondering how to get the heavy wood into his truck without a tractor. Plenty of days he arrived home with his truck bed laden with gnarled tree trunks he picked up, bought, or cut down himself. Lord knows how he finagled them into his vehicle because it always took three of us to get them out.

He would arrive home late for dinner, explaining he’d seen some wild laurel growing by the road, so of course he had to pull over and cut the branches down. Sure enough, his truck would be overflowing with sticks that he’d show off like another man might display his prize tickets to the Super Bowl. The metal building next to his workshop became filled to the rafters with wood for future projects. He continued enrolling in classes to learn how to make things with his new glut of tools and materials. He still didn’t venture into his workshop to work independently ever, but the vacation-like ambience of courses that gave him opportunity to craft with friends meant he had company to share the experience with, and that seemed to be the key to his productivity. Mark never could work alone.

Wood became Mark’s favorite topic of conversation and like a good, dutiful wife, I nodded, responding with supportive comments like, “Yeah, that gnarly tree, split down the center by a bolt of lightning, is definitely something I wish I had in the living room,” or “Yeah, it sure would be great if you could chainsaw the neighbor’s tree down in the middle of the night...but, um, in the interest of remaining friends, perhaps you could make do with the other three hundred tree stumps you have piling up at the workshop?”

He had formed a friendship with a local woman wood turner and taken up wood turning; he now spent his free time with her, making a few huge wooden bowls from tree trunks and stumps, sometimes leaving bark edge on the rims so the vessels looked as primitive and artful as pieces from an otherworldly table in a fantasy movie. My husband liked to do things in a big way, and his wood turning projects, like his house, were no exception. Oiled to bring out the streaks of color and subtle shades in the wood, I was offered one huge bowl after another for popcorn, apples, or anything else I might want to pile into a bowl bigger than a kitchen sink.

“How about you make some smaller bowls, for salad and such?” I’d suggest, only to be handed a bigger bowl the next day, something that could easily serve as a fishpond if wood were designed to hold water (wood bowls are not, unfortunately).

Showcasing bowls became a high priority in our decorating scheme, that is, until the bowls gave way to rustic furniture and the house began to fill with homemade chairs sporting legs made of twisted branches with the bark still clinging on the edges, and coffee tables that looked like they belonged in Fred Flintstone’s house, with huge slab tops resting on a base of woven sticks, deer antlers, and logs. The furniture was all beautiful, looking like a cross between something you’d see in the Museum of Natural History and simple items under a tent at a craft fair. Each addition brought us further away from our former Rooms to Go world and closer to a Thoreau-inspired lifestyle where nature rested not just at our fingertips, but under our butts when we sat down to dinner.

When there wasn’t a surface left on his rustic tables that wasn’t buckling under the weight of an oversized bowl, he moved on to making antler baskets, a tightly woven basket that is anchored to a deer antler serving as a handle. Antler baskets became the container of choice for washcloths, knickknacks, and as a center piece on tables and mantles. He next began creating baskets from other natural materials, his deft hands mastering a variety of complex patterns to braid reed, rope, and vine into homemade country crafts he deemed ‘art.’ I loved his talented projects, but his obsession with crafting felt threatening. There were dozens of people, mostly retirees enjoying crafts as a hobby or uneducated county residents who threw together stick furniture because it brought the family some money on the side as vacation cabin owners gobbled them up, all kicking out folk crafts for festivals and to fill the little county shops, but few of them called themselves artists, or acted as though every project belonged in a museum as my husband seemed to feel about his pursuits.

Baskets, while more versatile than huge bowls, can fill a house quickly, too, so Mark moved on to brooms. Of course, my husband wasn’t one to make the standard broom on a stick that comes to mind when you think of a broom. His brooms were fastened to antlers, twisted branches, metal rods hand-hammered in a blacksmith shop, or found objects. The broom corn heads whisked and swirled, joined together with more creativity than the most elaborate hairstyle seen at a high school prom.

The walls were now dripping in art brooms, and I crossed my fingers in hopes that he’d move on to something new, perhaps an obsession for making something less crafty and more utilitarian. Handcrafting was great for the soul and tons of fun for an individual, but I was still waiting for a suitable dining room table, and for all that I was impressed by and adored his talent, country crafts were not going to support a family driven to the brink of bankruptcy.

“I wish I could make this stuff for a living,” he said wistfully.

Mark’s obsession with building had slowly but surely emptied our coffers. His unwillingness to deny himself any artistic indulgence made each exciting new dream he pursued a fresh nightmare of financial strain. Throughout our marriage, he had stretched our resources beyond comfort or toleration with endless hobby art projects, crafting, and fanciful remodeling of our Florida home and studios. In Georgia his obsession with design began with a small cabin, then a monster log home, my barn, and two workshops for himself, each and every undertaking coming in way over budget and beyond our means. At the close of each project, he fell into depression with his heart aching to begin something new.

“Well, this sucks,” Mark said one day as we stood together on our porch overlooking the ducks gently swimming on the pond, their path making ripples in the vibrant reflection of autumn that graced the water.

“I really believe the house will sell if we lower the price,” I ventured.

“We can’t afford to retire with less.”

“We no longer can afford to retire at all.”

His jaw tightened. “I have faith my house will sell, even at my price. The thing is, we’re going to need a place to live then. I’m going to have to build a house on the other side of the land, one we can afford.”

“If this house sells...”

“Actually, I’ve been working on some house plans. I’m going to start building a new house for us next week so we’ll have a place to move to when the time comes.”

I looked out at the ducks thoughtfully. Had we built a reasonable home from the start, we’d enjoy this striking view forever. This life forever. Happiness forever. Impracticality was tearing our dreams down piece by piece. The madness had to stop.

“We need to conserve every cent we have to survive until this house sells. We can’t get a mortgage for a second house since we don’t own the land separately from our current mortgage.”

“Actually, I
have
worked out a mortgage, a temporary solution. We can pay the debt off when the house sells. The bank is going to release everything outside of the twelve acres listed with the main house. Ronnie and I are going to build a new house for us on the other side of the land, which we will own outright. We’ve decided to start the project this week.”

“Why would the bank release property if they already have it to secure our debt? That doesn’t make sense.”

“A new loan is all arranged and in a few weeks we will sign the papers. In the meantime, I’ll use what’s left of our cash to get the project started.”

“Oh, Mark, you can’t.”

He didn’t take his eyes off the ducks swimming in the lake. “I’ve got a guy coming to grade the lot tomorrow.”

My eyes swelled with tears.

Disgusted, he left the porch.

Within days, my husband was again lost in his next building project, happily purchasing doors, bathtubs, fireplaces, and beams. In the evenings, he invited me to take a walk to the new house site to admire his work. He talked animatedly of his brilliant creative plans to finish off the house ‘someday’ while I listened, mute.

Of course, just as I expected, the bank refused to give us a loan for a home on land they already had as security for our original loan. Mark reported the news like a child who had just been told he couldn’t go to his best friend’s party.

“It isn’t fair,” he claimed.

“You told me the loan was assured. A done deal.”

“Well, I
thought
they’d give it to me.”

“You have to stop this project,” I implored. “We have to put a freeze on all the spending and hunker down with our last resources to hold out for as long as we can. Maybe the house will sell before we are totally broke.”

“I can’t stop now. We will lose the thirty grand I’ve invested in grading the lot.”

“The foundation won’t be lost. The concrete is there, and the materials will save. Things will be fine until we can afford to continue building. We will only lose a little on the wood frame, which you’ve only just started. But we will lose more if we continue! Perhaps everything!”
Perhaps each other
, I thought.

“You have no vision and no faith,” he snarled.

In the next month Mark spent two hundred thousand dollars more on half a house situated on land belonging to the bank. The last of our money had been wiped out in one last thrill ride on the building merry-go-round.

With only a small reserve for mortgage payments or living expenses, the months clicked by in an unbearable limbo of stress. We discussed opening a rustic art gallery or a coffee shop with rustic home décor in a showroom out front. This way Mark could make crafts for a living, while I was expected to get up at 5 AM to work the coffee bar and register. The problem was a new business requires investment capital, and we no longer had cash for a life reinvention.

Mark told me not to worry. He had arranged a bank loan to finance our new business. A sure thing. In good faith I spent days once again putting my bachelor’s degree in business management to work, creating a business plan for the loan he assured me was already approved. We had always been successful working together as a team, so I believed this project,
any
new project, was key to saving our marriage and getting life back on track. I was excited and ready to dig in and working on a project as a couple.

Since Mark adamantly insisted we had a foolproof loan from a bank, we decided to pay what was left of our cash to purchase outright the commercial lot he wanted to build on.

“Doesn’t that have to be a part of the loan for cash flow purposes?” I asked, consider all I learned from our previous business financial experiences. “They don’t give out business loans if you are not investing some cash of your own.”

“It’s covered,” he said. “The bank assured me they will refund what we spend in advance for the project.”

“I’ve never heard of that being done.”

“Trust me.”

He began enthusiastically making plans to build his next project, a log cabin art gallery. His new rustic coffee shop included striking details and would be unlike anything else in the area. Mark’s coffee shop had a projected price tag of over a million dollars.

“You want us to take out another million dollar loan?” I asked. “For a coffee shop with a storefront to sell homemade crafts in a little run-down town?”

“A building like this will be an investment that will make us rich years from now.” He showed me his plans, which included a 20 foot tree rising through the center and out the ceiling in Disney-esque magnificence as the central focus of the decor. His vision included balconies, stained glass windows, and rustic details worthy of a million dollar cup of coffee should someone in the middle of a repressed, tiny town have a taste for one. His gorgeous coffee shop was going to regenerate the town and put Macaysville on the map, he explained.

I couldn’t deny the plan was magnificent in theory. The problem was, the scale was impractical. And the bank thought so, too.

After spending the last of our cash on the lot, our bank account now had less than three months of living expenses to cover the family. Mark sat me down to confess the coffee shop loan was not forthcoming. We were now stuck with a useless lot and more debt than ever before. He blamed our predicament on the bank, of course.

Perhaps Mark could still do what he loved for a living, I thought, fighting ever-growing panic, yet still believing our saving grace would be to make him happy once and for all. I researched the cost of booths at art festivals and considered what would be involved in putting his crafts in local rustic furniture stores, but no matter how we crunched the numbers, creating crafts was a labor of love that, in the end, wouldn’t provide much more than minimum wage to the artist, if that.

A meager, art-driven income would have been enough if we were an older, retired couple who just needed a little extra to pad their social security checks and lifetime savings, but wouldn’t cut the mustard for our family, facing the financial responsibilities of college tuitions, childrens’ weddings, and saving for our own retirement. Had Mark wanted to make handcrafts for a living, the choice would have had to have been made when we first moved here with enough money to make long term investments and to purchase a home outright.