A LIFE'S WORK

This summer I applied wood preservative to our large weatherbeaten deck which is on our garage and which juts out into the neighborhood like a ship coming into harbor. It smelled bad, but I assumed that this was temporary and that the smell would dissipate over time.

Well, it didn't; the smell got worse and worse until a horrible chemical stench like a heap of smouldering piss-soaked matteresses filled the nieghborhood. I still hoped it would go away, but it actually increased.

So I scrubbed the whole deck with TSP; did it again; rented a powerwasher and blasted the upper 1/8" of wood off the surface of the deck; washed and scrubbed it repeatedly with deck wash, the toxic runoff of which I had of course to collect in a wheelbarrow and schlep to the house to be poured down the proper drain.

Now the formerly handsome red cedar deck is so white and ravaged-looking it could lure Andrew Wyeth out of his grave and it still smells like roasting gumboots.