Steven Howell Wilson's Blog, page 10

The Colonel’s Plan – Setting the Tables

April 25, 2018

Dear Daddy—

I cleaned the basement for about two hours last night—not that you’d really notice. It takes a long time to make a visible dent in rooms where so much storage has occurred. I worked on the room with the train tables. Remember the train tables? 

The train tables… Today.

It’s difficult to define rooms in the basement. There are nominally five. The cinderblock walls define four—two end rooms, about 24′ x 29′, and two long, middle rooms, each about 15′ x 44′. You added...

The Colonel’s Plan – The Old Hunt Club

April 18th, 2018

Dear Daddy –

I still have a house, too. I’ve talked so much about yours, you might have forgotten that I don’t live in your house. I’m just there a lot. And it’s not your house anymore, in a legal sense, is it? Legally, it’s Mother’s. Spiritually, you gave up on it long ago, and I’m renewing it now. So I guess there are two houses in my life—our house, yours, Mother’s, the family’s and mine, and my house, mine and Renee’s, anyway.

My house is 148 years old this year. It was 1...

The Colonel’s Plan – Plumbing the House’s Guts

April 11th, 2018

Dear Daddy –

I resolved one bathroom ago that I was never going to use all the tile you bought. You had planned what are now called “vintage” bathrooms, in many of which the soap dishes, toothbrush holders, toilet paper dispensers and towel racks were permanently mounted with, and made of the same color porcelain as, all the other fixtures. The pink bathroom will go in as you planned it. It’s a pink bathroom. It can’t be anything but what it is.

We didn’t go that hardcore wit...

The Colonel’s Plan – “Do Not Hit or SET On”

April 4th, 2018

Dear Daddy – 

A year ago today, you came home from your last visit to the hospital. You came in an ambulance, because you were too weak to even get in and out of a car. You had a foley catheter, because you couldn’t tend to your own needs in that area any longer. Gilchrist Hospice Services had brought you a hospital bed and a portable toilet. You refused to use that. You also refused to use a wheelchair, even though your doctor had told you it was shortening your life to walk...

$666 – An Ill Omen

Damien!!!!!

I admit it, I love the original version of The Omen. I loved the sequel as well–Damien: Omen II. From the moment Damien appears, seen walking with fire before him, until Lee Grant shrieks his name devotedly as she dies at his hand, the story of the literal son of Satan hooks me.

But I’m not going to talk about that. I’m going to talk about a Kickstarter I’m running that’s stuck at the number of the beast, the number of a man, the number Damien has tatooed on his scalp…

Six-Hundr...

The Colonel’s Plan – Close One Wall, Open… the Same Wall

March 27th, 2018

Dear Daddy – 

Aside from doing the joints and painting the walls, the blue bathroom is finished. All the plumbing and electrical are in place and working. I had a little snag this weekend, as I finished the electrical work. I once again had it rubbed in my face to check line voltage before putting in drywall. I think I get it now. Hopefully I won’t have to be reminded a third time. 

You had left two wires dangling down from the attic, inside the wall on which the sinks were t...

Avoiding an Excess of Virtue – Lost Horizon

I’ve written about Lost Horizon before. The 1937 film is one of my favorite movies. Recently, more than one person has commented to me that they love the film too, and then they’ve ruminated on how adorably dashing Michael York was in the 1970s. 

Well, agreed, Michael York was adorably dashing in the 1970s. But Michael York, who was born in 1942, was understandably not involved in the 1937 Frank Capra adaptation of James Hilton’s bestseller, Lost Horizon. A lot of people my age were first exp...

The Colonel’s Plan – The Thing Outside the Library Window – Part Two of Two

Sometime while I was in college, I believe, the dreaded metal cabinets arrived. These were, of course, surplus. They’re a blue-gray in color, with light gray doors and dusty orange shelves. Only they’re not shelves, they’re cross-bars designed so that wire brackets could be fastened into them, sitting upright. The cabinets were designed to hold reels of magnetic tape and were used for data storage in IBM Mainframe computers in days gone by. We have a few dozen of them, and I’m pretty sure we...

The Colonel’s Plan – The Thing Outside the Library Window – Part One of Two

March 7, 2018

Dear Daddy —

Two weeks ago, I wrote about The Thing out in the yard by the basement door. Last week I actually had hazmat experts come out and test it. I had asked a couple of people—our eCyclers, my friend Bob who runs a computer museum, the CEO of the National Electronics Musuem—what The Thing might be. They didn’t believe Phillips’s claim that it was a condenser that only held water. They were pretty sure it contained PCBs. Some of us also vaguely remembered that the reason y...

The Colonel’s Plan – The Thing Outside the Library Window

March 7, 2018

Dear Daddy —

Two weeks ago, I wrote about The Thing out in the yard by the basement door. Last week I actually had hazmat experts come out and test it. I had asked a couple of people—our eCyclers, my friend Bob who runs a computer museum, the CEO of the National Electronics Musuem—what The Thing might be. They didn’t believe Phillips’s claim that it was a condenser that only held water. They were pretty sure it contained PCBs. Some of us also vaguely remembered that the reason y...