Thor's Boards

Inspirational prototype

It was late afternoon. I had just finished shooting some pictures of a new project. I was sitting in my favourite chair, taking a break from disassembling the diorama, and thinking about whether I had enough fixer around to develop the pictures. I was too lazy to go look and took another sip of coffee instead. I wonder if coffee can be used as fixer?

Cal had dropped by to chew the fat and have coffee. He was sitting in a chair by the front windows. I had opened all the windows in the house and a gentle breeze was blowing in. It was unusually quiet outside. I could almost hear the waves in the distance.

I leaned back a bit in my chair by the disappearing diorama, thought about the silence, sipped a little coffee, and asked Cal, "Did Ma ever tell you about our cousin Thor?"

Cal sat bolt upright and looked me straight in the eye.

"We have a cousin named Thor?"

"Yeap, didn't Ma tell you?"

"Like the Greek god Thor?"

"Like the Norse god Thor."

"Ok, not like the Greek one, like the Norse one."

"There's no Greek one. Where'd you go to school?"

This was going down the wrong track, so I decided to switch before there was a major derailment.

"Thor Tanngrisnir Tanngnjostr are his given names. He was sorta famous awhile ago. Thor's looking to settle down and start a business. He wrote me a letter asking to design and make him a building."

Cal settled back in his chair. I got up and went to the coffee pot to see if there was any left. There wasn't, so I got busy making some while I continued to fill Cal in on our new project.

Another inspirational prototype

"Back in the '40s cousin Thor had this idea that our family's ancestors came here by way of a balsa wood raft. Being a man-of-action, he built a full-size replica and sailed it across the ocean to prove it could be done. Are you sure you've never heard of him? There was a bestseller and movie about it."

Call seemed to give it some thought and replied, "No, nothing comes to mind."

"Anyway, he's getting into the balsa surfboard business and needs a place to make the boards."

"Sorta like Speedy Andrew's Surf Shop?"

"No, something a lot bigger. He needs a place where carloads of balsa trunks can be dropped off, a workshop where the balsa can be made into surfboards, and a loading dock where the surfboards can be loaded into boxcars. I've got this idea for a compact little number that sits between two sidings and the whole surfboard building process goes from left to right: from raw trees coming in on the left track, to construction in the centre, to finished boards being loaded onto boxcars on the right track. And it'll be inexpensive and it shouldn't take us too long. We should be done in time for the summer Oom-pah festival."

The coffee was almost done. I went to find my mug. Cal got up and headed for the fresh brew.

"Sounds like fun. When do we start?"

"Right now if you want, but first some coffee."