On My Knees

I spent Thursday on my knees.

No, not praying.

I crawled around the outside walls of our house on my knees with a trowel and a bucket dabbing thick black tar on the lower edges of wall boards near the ground. This tar coating provides a sealant so that when rain water splashes back from the ground, it should not seep up underneath the edges of the wood causing wood rot.

Remember the Southern folk tale of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby?

The Tar Baby — that’s me.

Tar sticks.

Because some carpenter of the 1950s when our house was built nailed unpainted lumber within an eighth of an inch from the bare dirt, to get the sealant up underneath behind the wood, I had to crawl on my knees, and to see what I was doing, I had to press my ear to the ground and peek…

Tar dribbles.

Globs of tar stuck in my hair, beneath my fingernails, on my hands, on my shoes…What’s that spot on my glasses?

Did you know tar tastes salty?

Years ago Ginny and I visited the La Brea Tar Pits where Pleistocene animals got stuck in the tar and their fossil bones are still there.

Years from now, when paleontologists excavate the Jacksonville Tar Pits they will find this big lump and exclaim, “We didn’t know they were so fat and ugly”!

Yes, I can see a museum exhibit in my future.

I want to type more about the spiritual implications of being stuck in tar, but a lightening storm with tornado threats approaches and I need to shut down my computer.

Besides that, for some reason my fingers keep sticking to the keyboard.