OCTOBER 20, 2025 – Over the past several days I’ve made major progress on the Pergola-on-a-Platform. Completion is within sight, though some details, such as touch-ups with a paintbrush and an attractive sign (“Mt. Orray[1] – Elev. 1,391’”) will have to wait till spring. I will miss making mistakes—and the satisfaction I derived from corrections and workarounds. Some made me laugh, many caused despair, and all too many more triggered a burst of expletives that I’m certain kept the local black bear population at a safe distance.
One of my dumbest and funniest “mistakes” occurred yesterday as I was attempting to hammer a galvanized 4D nail through an opening in a joist hanger. I’d fitted a joist hanger under the cut-out I’d made in the underside of each staircase stringer where it joins the pergola platform. For extra stability I wanted to hammer a nail through the nail holes on the sides of each hanger. Given how everything was positioned—platform, staircase, pergola posts, etc.—finding clear access to one of the nails was especially problematic. I tried several angles of approach to find the one that would allow the best leverage with the hammer.
Among the scores of fasteners used in the project (wood screws, deck screws and lag screws of various sizes), a handful of nails have been reserved for the (four) joist hangers. A framing hammer would be overkill on the nails required, and besides, that tool would be too large for the spaces within which it would have to be swung. Also, the building site is over a third of a mile from the Red Cabin and over 100 feet higher in elevation. Since construction started, I’ve made over 100 trips up and back, carrying tools and materials on nearly every one of those climbs. Over time I’ve become more attuned to the weight of my tool baggage and more circumspect about what I haul up to the pergola, and what it will cost me in terms of caloric burn. It reminds me of the pricing on lunch fare at the “summit house” of a ski area: a $10 cup of chili at the base will be $20 at the top, given the added fuel and labor costs of freighting the chili, cups, and food trays.
Accordingly, I left my “real” hammers back at the Red Cabin and took a much lighter tack hammer instead. I’d used this successfully on the front joist hangers several weeks ago and was now ready to redeploy it on the back side hangers. It took me several tries before I found the optimal position for a square smack of the tack hammer on the nail head.
For the life of me, however, I couldn’t get the hammer to land as it should. At first I thought my safety glasses were distorting my vision enough to foul up my eye-hand coordination. I lowered my head to see over the top of the glasses, but the problem persisted. I kept hitting the nail but not squarely and without appreciable effect. “What’s going on?” I said aloud.
What often passes for persistence is stupidity in disguise. After banging away at the dumb nail with the dumb hammer (speaking of stupid) all too long. I decided to try a different angle. As I repositioned myself, I glanced at the hammer . . . and burst out laughing. I’d been trying to drive the nail with the back of the hammer—the wedge-shaped end that narrows to a sharp edge. No wonder I’d been getting nowhere!
After flipping the hammer around in my grasp, I returned to my original angle of attack and in seven square whacks with the correct end of the hammer, the nail was securely lodged in the wood.
As I moved on to the next phase of the project, I felt lucky that no one had seen my demonstration of dumbness. Ironically, now I’ve told you. You could call it your dumb luck that I have.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] A made-up name blended from the first three letters of my parents’ given names (“Orrell” and “Raymond”).
