OCTOBER 17, 2025 – (Cont.) At exactly the appointed time, an older burgundy RAM-Tough pick-up pulling a small trailer pulled up to the cabin. Out stepped a couple of guys from the reservation.
The driver introduced himself as “Timothy,” with whom I’d spoken twice by phone to make arrangements. His handshake exuded confidence and character. His dark eyes and serious countenance conveyed intelligence and confidence. He was maybe 30, large framed, and had thick black hair which, with a fringe of long thin black whiskers, stuck out from the hood of his dark sweatshirt. He wore work boots that suggested he was accustomed to earning his keep.
His passenger was older, weathered and grizzled. An array of loose native bracelets ringed his thick wrists. If he was shorter than his friend, he was much beefier, though much of his frontside was probably fed with beer. Later in our encounter, I noticed two large bottles of Budweiser lying in the front corner on his side of the truck bed, and when the two men returned for their second load, “Steve,” as Timothy called him, had one of the bottles in hand for a few nips.
In any event, however, in the first few moments of observing these two men, I noticed an unusual spark in each of them. They were neither slugs nor dolts, but quite sharp and curious. When I pulled the tarp off the big trailer, they began a close inspection of the vehicle, noticing small but important details that less discerning eyes would dismiss or miss altogether.
“Look here,” said Steve, drawing my attention to Dad’s subtle and innovative tailgate latch. “That’s an ingenious use of a chain link.”
Timothy, meanwhile, noticed Dad’s use of the carriage bolts to prevent the 2 x 4s from splitting. Again—a detail that someone less alert would likely overlook. “This is an amazing piece of work,” he said, standing back and gazing at the trailer. Steve joined in, expressing his admiration for Dad’s craftsmanship;. As I stood beside these two gentlemen, I suddenly found myself back in my parents’ driveway peering in at Dad hard at work inside the lit-up garage on a warm summer night, crickets chirping in the background. Transported by this memory, for an instant I felt the same joy that I’d experienced watching Dad work on a project and the satisfaction it always gave him.
And now, all these years later—more than a decade and a half since Dad left this life—there I was in the company of two strangers from the reservation, a world as alien to Dad as his world would’ve been to people of the reservation, the three of us standing in admiration of Dad’s work 60 years ago. The fact that Steve and Timothy were so genuinely impressed elevated my respect for them.
I would soon have greater reason to respect them. “What do you do for a living, Timothy?” I asked.
“I fix engines and equipment,” he said. “Family, friends, other people—whatever they have that’s broken or doesn’t work, I fix.”
Steve proudly showed me the welding that Timothy had done on his truck. “He took a frame that was basically useless,” said Steve, “welded together these supports—see?” He pulled back the fiberglass truck bed to reveal Timothy’s work. “For a total cost of eleven hundred bucks,” he said, “he got himself a whole new pickup. He’s very good doing this sort of thing.” I liked the obvious pride that Steve had in his friend.
I wanted to learn more about these two men, their stories, their challenges. I quizzed Timothy about his mechanical skills—what training he’d had and what experience he’d accumulated. He said his father had been his teacher and mentor—with assistance from YouTube.
“He’d tell me to watch a video about repairing or replacing something on an engine,” said Timothy, “then tell me when to stop the video and try doing on a real engine what I’d just learned on the video. Then he’d continue the video until again he’d tell me ‘Stop’ and to follow what the video showed. He kept at it until I was able to repair an engine totally on my own. It was a great way to learn.”
I agreed.
Just then, I remembered the table saw that had been taking up space in the basement for 25 years or more. Chuck had mentioned that maybe I could “interest the buyer of the garden tractor and the main trailer in taking the saw too—just taking it away to free up space.”
Dad had accepted the table saw as a “gift” from his friend, Randy Rovelstad, the former cabin neighbor next door. Decades ago, Randy was cleaning out his boathouse/workshop, and so he could “free up space,” Randy loaded up the table saw and transported it to Björnholm. There it sat, never to be used. I’m not sure why Dad never used it, though perhaps it was because it lacked any safety features and was ancient and driven by an industrial gauge motor. Besides, Dad owned his own table saw that was manufactured in the second half of the 20th century. For whatever reason, Dad accepted Randy’s “gift” and parked it in the basement. From its original placement, the table saw never moved—nor did the blade ever turn.
When I asked Timothy if I could interest him in a table saw, he said, “Sure!”
He and Steve were as awed by the saw as they had been by the trailer. Once the three of us had maneuvered the table saw outside, we admired it in its full glory. The table portion was made of oak and weighed a ton. The saw blade was fixed in one position, but the tabletop was hinged at one end and could be raised or lowered at the other end and locked in place by tightening wingnuts on two slides—thus allowing for cuts of different thicknesses. Exposed to full daylight, the motor mounted under the table turned out to be enormous. Someone from a time long past had designed and built a “structure” to support the belt-driven saw and motor. The whole contraption was as solid as the heavy-duty workbench Dad built when he was barely 30 and used for the rest of his long life. (Cont.)
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
