A lady “commissioned” me to build her one of my “cattails.” Since this was my first “commission” job, i.e. someone was actually paying me to build something, I jumped on it.

For those of you who don’t know what my “cattails” are, I take those old window weights, the kind that used to be inside the old-fashioned window frames, weld them onto rebar, add some rusty leaves, and voila, a truer-than-life cattail.

I did this on one of those 100-degree days. The sweat was forming rivers down my back and stinging my eyes, but men like to sweat. It cleanses the body from the inside.