The Tool House has been a continual source of wonderment and
fear. It’s become a bit of a game to
extract at least one odd object from the Tool House every time we make a run to
the dump. But the Tool House has always
been a little bit scary—it’s definitely a place that makes you double check
that your tetanus shots are current.
This year we ventured into the Tool House, determined to
clean out enough space to store the windows and siding that were this year’s
project. For this job, we outfitted
ourselves in long sleeves, long pants, and sturdy gloves. Safety glasses and respirators would not have
been overkill, but that didn’t become apparent until later.
I have marveled at the many uses for shelf paper in the
cabin, but in cleaning the Tool House, we may have found the ultimate
application of shelf paper. As I pulled
out a bunch of scrap wood, I noticed one plank that was probably once part of a
bookshelf. It looked slightly strange,
and as I brushed the dust and mice droppings off it, I realized why: this
perfectly fine plank had been covered in—wait for it—wood grained shelf paper!
Why cover wood with an artificial material made to look like wood? Out of curiosity, I pulled the shelf paper
off, and sure enough, the wood underneath it was just fine. Clearly, shelf paper was the miracle product
of the modern midcentury.
But the Tool House held other wonders of a bygone day. When we dug deep enough to find the old
workbench, we of course found a dozen glass jars full of rusty nails and
screws, most of which conformed to no modern standards in either the metric or
American measurement systems. But there,
nestled amongst former peanut butter and jelly jars, was a bottle of actual
DDT.
Apparently the Diazinon is just as toxic and offensive to
the average environmentalist. We thought
briefly of calling the EPA and asking how to properly dispose of these items,
but we quickly concluded the neighbors wouldn’t appreciate living next to a
Superfund site. And as it turns out,
White Earth Sanitation has a system for disposing of hazardous materials. Later, more than one person suggested that we
lost an opportunity to make some money on eBay or Craigslist, where DDT is in
high demand. I’ll pass on that opportunity any day.
By the end of the afternoon, we’d filled the trailer with
junk and created a great space to store our siding and windows. It will be interesting to see what the mice
think of our efforts. Many mouse homes
were destroyed in the reclamation of the Tool House. Hopefully the mice can go back in the forest
where they belong.
