It’s a daily mile-and-a-half walk through the woods at Tahoe to the little marina for a six-pack. Some say a mile-and-eight-tenths, but I’m sticking with a mile-and-a-half. I pass this little structure and today got to thinking of who might have built it back there in the 1920s. Somebody’s grandfather, I guess. Large man who ate pancakes for breakfast and kept the doors from blowing open with those same three rocks. Probably didn’t know much about building being the first owner of the marina. Knew boats, not building. But his neighbor up the road did. Ed, a retired man missing a finger. It was Ed for Edwin, by the way – not Edward. Ed knew a lot about building. He and Fiona, Ed’s wife, and she’d been a pretty bride, had built the house they retired in – Fiona being as handy with tools as she was in the kitchen. You could say Ed lost his finger for the love of Fiona. He’d been working at the sawmill when they married and everyone knew you shouldn’t be wearing rings doing that kind of work. But he refused to take off his wedding band. One day a chain snapped and came for him at about a hundred-and-twenty-miles-an-hour. Ed instinctively put his hand up and that chain ripped that ring and the finger it was on right off his hand. Once he was recovered, he went into the construction trade and eventually built the little marina and store. And maybe that’s how he got to know the owner and help him build this little garage.