A series of trucks rum­bled up to our house in the last few days, deliv­er­ing gal­lons of epoxy and marine-grade ply­wood. This week­end the boat-building project com­menced, which means I won’t see Alan for a few months, but that’s OK, he’ll just be in the garage, build­ing his drift­boat.

Sun­day he spent much of the day sand­ing two 8-foot sec­tions of ply­wood so that they can be glued together to make the bot­tom of this craft, a process I’m told is called “scarf­ing.” “How’s the scarf­ing going, hon?” I asked this after­noon when Alan emerged from the garage look­ing like the abom­inable saw­dust man. Just fine.

While Alan is an excel­lent, painstak­ing ama­teur crafts­man, he is fairly slow about it. (Motto: Mea­sure 14 times, reread the plans, cut once.) I won­dered what the tar­get date for com­ple­tion of this puppy is; he said late June, but that was prob­a­bly opti­mistic. After years of mar­riage to a seri­ous fly angler, I rec­og­nize late June as the win­dow for the northern-Michigan hex hatch.

All things con­sid­ered, this is much prefer­able to a guy who obsesses over col­lege bas­ket­ball, if you ask me.

It was as good a week­end for boat-building as any­thing else, as we had another cold snap. The wind has some teeth in it, and if I’m read­ing the weather map cor­rectly, we’re in for some pink stuff in an hour or two, pink stuff being weather-map code for the mete­o­ro­log­i­cal hell known as “win­try mix.” Two to four inches of win­try mix, in fact, which irri­tates me might­ily. For more on this, enough to bring a teary mix to the eyes, see the archives.

On sec­ond thought, don’t bother.

Blog­gage: I know Amy loves her, I know she’s flat­tered might­ily by the atten­tion paid by her, but if you ask me, Peggy Noonan’s a lit­tle goofy. To test my the­ory, ask your­self this ques­tion: Is Michael Kelly’s death a) a tragedy for sev­eral fam­i­lies and all who loved the man; b) a loss to Amer­i­can jour­nal­ism; or c) a sin against the order of the world?

If you answered C, wel­come to Peggy’s world. “A sin against the order of the world” — I guess you have to be a seri­ous Catholic like Peggy to write stuff like that, because I’m about as Catholic as Billy Crys­tal these days, and even I was offended by that one. Of course, Peggy has extra­or­di­nary access to the Almighty — he’s offered her some incred­i­ble scoops lately — so I guess she feels con­fi­dent mak­ing sweep­ing pro­nounce­ments like that.

If Kelly was a tenth as hum­ble as his friends say he was, he must be squirm­ing in the after­life over Noonan’s over­heated trib­ute, which quoted a friend of Kelly’s who was dev­as­tated at his death but didn’t want to be quoted by name say­ing so, as though mourn­ing a friend is some­thing you don’t want oth­ers to pin on you. (Maybe some­one will take a memo from him on the sub­ject, like Peggy did with Paul Well­stone.) But she really saves her­self for the big finish:

His remains will come home now soon enough, and I hope what comes home is met with an honor guard, for he has earned it, and a flag, for he loved his coun­try, and a snapped salute, for that is one way to show respect. And maybe it would be good if this son of Wash­ing­ton – born there, edu­cated there, drawn to its great indus­try, pol­i­tics and the report­ing of it – were to find his final rest nearby, among those who fought with dis­tinc­tion for Amer­ica. Michael Kelly went at great peril to be with U.S. troops, and he fell among US troops, while try­ing to tell the story of U.S. troops. So per­haps his final rest should be with U.S. troops, in Arling­ton, where we put so many heroes.

A civil­ian reporter in Arling­ton National Ceme­tery? Maybe he can be laid next to David Bloom. What does Peggy think about that?

For a far less wacky, but no less heart­felt, trib­ute to Kelly, try Jack Shafer’s, in Slate. Or Mau­reen Dowd’s (love that detail about the chaise lounge!). Andrew Sul­li­van offered this: Notice that he noticed things. And wrote about them clearly. His repor­to­r­ial skill was that sim­ple but that good. Some descrip­tions still stick in my head; he once called a small spring of water “gin-clear.” I never for­got it. (Andrew: Come to my house. Read the stacks of fish­ing mag­a­zines on every toi­let tank and beside every chair. Pre­pare to be dis­il­lu­sioned. Kelly was not the first to use the phrase “gin-clear.”)

Deb was inspired by last week’s account of license-branch wool­gath­er­ing. We’re going to let her go on and on about it, because Deb is a writer who notices detail, too, and that stuff about bologna fresh off the slicer trumps “gin-clear,” if you ask me:

here’s a story i’m sure i never told you. i used to work in a license-plate branch in ohio.

i use the term “branch” very loosely, because the branches back in the early ‘70s were noth­ing more than sea­sonal store­front oper­a­tions – lit­er­ally, in my case. this branch was run by my best friend cheryl’s mother, who was some sort of big shot in county demo­c­ra­tic pol­i­tics. cheryl’s fam­ily had owned a lit­tle gro­cery store in the sticks – store in front, fam­ily liv­ing quar­ters in back. i loved going to cheryl’s after school. my grand­par­ents owned a rural gro­cery store, too, two houses down from my own, but it was always fun to make sand­wiches of bologna fresh off the slicer, washed down with a soda from the cooler, from some­body ELSE’s store.

in those days, every small burg had its own license plate branch. by the time i got in on the action, the store had been closed for years and was being used for stor­age. the “license branch” con­sisted of the front 20x10 feet or so of the store, blocked off from the stor­age area by a flimsy wall. the front doors looked smack out over a busy u.s. high­way, with just enough space the two for a car to park on the gravel berm.

cheryl and i worked at a bat­tered wooden old desk, made change from a metal cash box, and plucked the plates from card­board boxes. framed pho­tos of big jim rhodes (for­mer Ohio gov­er­nor — ed.) hung behind us, loom­ing as large as ele­men­tary school­room class­room por­traits of george washington.

it was a short-term sum­mer gig, and we’d leave the front doors open to let in the breeze. our desk was so close to the high­way that we could feel the rush of wind when a semi blew past. we knew most of our cus­tomers, or would real­ize upon see­ing their names that we knew some­one related to them, so a fair amount of social­iz­ing took place. there was never much of a line, but when there was, nobody bitched about it – they just vis­ited. we espe­cially enjoyed flirt­ing with the old farm­ers who tried to con­vince us to paw through the boxes until they found a plate num­ber they liked.

you could tell where some­body lived by just look­ing at their plates, because each com­mu­nity had its own two-letter suf­fix. mt. orab had two – “GZ” and “HB” – and most peo­ple pre­ferred one over the other. try to give a diehard GZ per­son an HB plate and you’d hear about it. we caught on fast and learned to look at the suf­fix on the old plate (they had to turn them in to get new ones), then go to the box with the same suf­fix. i don’t remem­ber any­body pay­ing with a check, and nobody had credit cards.

i loved that job. i got to sit on my butt, chat up my neigh­bors, feel the sum­mer breeze on my bare legs, smell the field corn from den­ver hughes’ farm across the road, and per­form a pub­lic ser­vice all at the same time. i have no idea what cheryl’s mother’s cut of this was, nor do i recall what i was paid. it was fun; i prob­a­bly would’ve done it for free.

As for me, I’ll see you here tomorrow.