Bob's Shed(Part 1)

Dateline: 19 November 2016

Bob and his wife, Jodi.

Bob was in my class in high school (class of '76). We didn't run in the same circles back then, but it was a small graduating class (less than 100) and I have always considered every person in the class to be an old and special friend. 

Bob lives in Moravia, NY, the rural township where we went to school. He has lived there his whole life. Moravia is only 6 miles from my Upland location. I consider it my hometown. Ruth Green (Major General Thomas H. Green's widow) used to refer to Moravia as "a quaint little anglo-saxon village."

Bob has had his share of health problems in life. If I recall correctly, he had open heart surgery a few years after high school. Then, some years later, he was brushing aluminum roof coating on the Grange Hall, and he fell off the roof. He broke both of his legs. These days, Bob gets around slowly with a cane (he refuses to use a walker) and he deals with a lot of pain. 

To understand this story of Bob's shed, you need to know a few more things...

Our town has an unofficial Facebook group. It's called the Moravia Dump. It is a closed group with over 4,000 members. Bob actually started the Moravia Dump, and he gets help monitoring it from a couple other Moravia Class of '76 friends. 

The Dump is a remarkable community resource. When someone loses their dog, or a cow gets loose, they post it on the Dump, and before long it's found. All sorts of questions are posted on the dump, and they almost always get an answer. All community events are posted on the Dump. Local news stories are on the Dump. Local benefits and GoFundMe campaigns get posted to the Dump. Obituaries get posted to the Dump. Everything of local interest gets posted on the Dump by people who are members of the group. 

And if someone needs help with something, it gets posted on the Dump. I remember a woman once posted that she was downtown and her car wouldn't start. Her battery needed a jump. Almost immediately, a man responded that he would be right there to help. That sort of thing happens frequently.

A few weeks ago, Bob posted a somewhat cryptic and alarming message to the Dump. It indicated that he was feeling depressed. A lot of people, myself included, responded with encouraging words. 

Then, a couple days later, Bob posted a message that he had bought an old shed in the trailer park outside town and he wanted to move it to his back yard. He wanted a shed so his wife wouldn't have to haul things down into the basement for winter storage. But the shed he bought was falling apart on him as he tried to work on it. He was discouraged because he was physically unable to deal with the shed. He asked if someone could help him get the shed together so it could be moved. 

I read the message shortly after he posted it and thought about it for about 60 seconds before volunteering to help. A woman named Beth also quickly volunteered. A lengthy discussion about the shed played itself out on the Dump.

Long story short... 

The shed was too tall and too poorly constructed to be moved. It was decided that the shed needed to be disassembled. A local man named Steve brought a whole crew of guys (and his young daughter) to help take the shed apart, and he had a trailer to transport it to Bob's house. 

In addition to Steve's crew, me and Beth, and another Moravia class of '76 friend (Ben) showed up to help take the shed apart.

If I recall correctly, Bob posted his plea for help on a Saturday. We disassembled and transported it to his house on the following Monday evening. When Steve and his crew showed up, I handed my camera to Beth and she took the following pictures...

Me, Steve, Beth and Ben decided to meet the following Saturday at Bob's house to take the old shed apart and reuse what we could to make a "new" shed. 

I posted an update (with the pictures above) to the Moravia Dump Facebook group. I invited anyone in town who wanted to help with the project to show up at Bob's house on Saturday. This little project was generating a lot of local interest and encouragement on the Dump.

In my next post, I'll show you pictures from our day building Bob's shed.