Three Years of Kudzu

Three years ago this month The Spartanburg Journal was launched, and The Kudzu Telegraph was in it. The KT has appeared every week since but one.

I'm glad the third year anniversary has arrived. Three is a magic number. Of course there's the Trinity. And there are three beans in "Jack and the Beanstalk," and of course there's "Goldilocks and Three Bears," and you always get three wishes.  If Three Dog Night was right and "one is the loneliest number," then three is maybe the most mysterious and exciting.

Sometimes during the last three years I got up Monday morning and the column I wanted to write was ready to spill out on the page like a mountain waterfall.  Those weeks one story, one issue, or one image was all I needed to get started.
Other weeks I had no idea what I'd write about until I sat down, and then suddenly the title would appear.

Some mornings, like this one, inspiration was harder to narrow down. I make the coffee. I walk the dog. I read the paper. I do all this, and finally the idea for a column arises. This morning there's the post-industrial Japanese gate I built last week with the help of my friends Steve and Fred.

When we built our house we had a problem-visitors preferred to walk down our concrete driveway rather than the mulch path to the front door.  It took us five years to solve it. On our vacation this spring we noticed that all the houses in Inverness, California had Asian-inspired gates leading people to the front doors.  Often they were traditional Torii gates-the Japanese gates found at the entry to Shinto temples consisting of two uprights and two cross bars.

I wanted to simplify the form. On a napkin I drew a gate made of cedar beams with one lintel crossbar at the top set at the angle of the roof of our house. What I drew looked a little like the mathematical symbol for pi.

I needed two holes three feet deep, so I hired Russell, home from college, to dig them. I told my friend Steve about what I wanted, and he came over and calculated the angle we needed for the crosspiece. Then my friend Fred followed in a few days to help set the posts, cut the angles, and assist with the heavy lifting.

The idea was to construct a gate that would reflect the house beyond. It couldn't be too fancy, as our house is contemporary and casual. We fought hard not to add any traditional or formal elements in the design phase. We wanted to lead our guests in. We wanted to create a portal.

We had to keep the holes free of critters for a week before we started construction. The evening we began work there were three toads, an anole, and a dehydrated mouse in the holes. I used the post hole diggers to scoop them out and set them free.

When Fred arrived with his tools I knew the gate would become a reality. He cut the angles, and we measured the posts to make sure the crossbeam would sit snugly on top.

And the post-industrial part? To hold the crossbeam to the support beams I had four big steel plates manufactured. They were drilled with eight big screw holes.  I painted them a shade of ochre preferred by Frank Lloyd Wright, called Cherokee Red.

Once the posts were in the ground and plum with gravel to hold them, we attached the cross beam with big headed silver lag screws. The gate looked industrial to me, like the joining of big timbers in the old cotton mills around the county. We stepped back. It floated among the dogwoods at the entrance to our path.

Will it work? Will our friends and neighbors come down our front path rather than down the driveway? Only time, as they say, will tell. But it's up and operating, emitting whatever vibes a good gate does.

They say that the Japanese gates could have been designed as fancy bird perches, as birds were the messengers of the Shinto gods. All I know is I like the shape, and like pi itself, the meaning of its expression is infinite.