Howdy, folks. Glen Blamstead here. I lost my tape measure last week. It's a long story. About twenty-five feet, give or take, depending on how hard you pull.
Now, a tape measure is not a thing a man in this business just loses. It's like losing your left hand, or your truck keys, or your opinion about the Vikings. You always know where it is. It lives on your belt, or on the dash, or in that one pocket of your jacket that's got a hole in the corner, which, in hindsight, may have been a warning sign.
We were out on a site north of Mora, staking out a new pole barn for a nice couple who want a place to keep a boat, a tractor, and, as the wife put it, "whatever he buys at auction next." Good people. Clear plans. Flat ground. The kind of morning where the frost is just coming off the grass and you think, well, this is going to be an easy one.
I pulled my tape out to check a corner. I checked the corner. I remember checking the corner. The corner was square, which I was proud of. And then, at some point between that corner and the next one, my tape measure left my life without so much as a goodbye.
I did what any reasonable person would do. I patted all my pockets. Then I patted them again, harder, like the tape might be hiding in there out of spite. Then I patted the crew's pockets, which they did not appreciate. One of the young guys asked if I'd checked my hand. I had. It was empty. He seemed disappointed in me, and frankly, so was I.
The Search Party
Pretty soon the whole crew had stopped work to look. That's the thing about losing a tape measure on a job site. It becomes a community event. Everybody has a theory. The foreman thought I'd left it on the truck. I had not. One of the guys thought a crow took it, which I admit I considered longer than I should have, because we do have a crow out there with a real attitude problem. The homeowner's husband came out and asked what we were looking for, and when I told him, he said, "Want to borrow mine?"
I did not want to borrow his. That's a matter of pride. A man doesn't borrow another man's tape measure unless he's truly given up, the way you don't borrow somebody's reading glasses unless you're about to sign something important.
So we kept looking. We looked in the grass. We looked under the truck. We looked in the stake bundle. We looked in the post holes, which I'd like to point out were dug to proper frost depth, so if my tape had fallen in one, it would at least have been well protected from the winter.
The dog belonging to the homeowners, a large, friendly, deeply unhelpful golden retriever, followed me around the entire time with the confident look of an animal who knew exactly where it was and had decided not to get involved.
Where It Actually Was
After about fifteen minutes, I sat down on the tailgate to collect my thoughts and have a sip of coffee. That's when I heard it. A little clunk. From inside my own boot.
Now, I don't know how a full-size tape measure gets inside a man's boot without him noticing. I've given it a lot of thought. My best guess is it slid out of the pocket with the hole, dropped down my pant leg, and settled into my boot like it was moving into a new apartment. I'd been walking on it for fifteen minutes. I thought I just had a sore ankle. Turns out I had a tape measure.
The crew has not let this go. One of them now calls it my "boot tape." Another one asked if I measure my feet in inches or in feet, which I thought was a pretty good line, and I told him so, and then I told him to get back to work.
The dog, for the record, looked satisfied. I believe she knew all along.
The Lesson
If there's a moral here, it's that sometimes the thing you're looking for is closer than you think. Sometimes it's right under your feet. Sometimes it's literally under your feet. And sometimes you should just go ahead and sew up the hole in your jacket pocket instead of telling yourself you'll get to it next weekend, which I have been telling myself since roughly the Clinton administration.
We got the building staked by lunch. Every corner square, every post where it belonged, and every measurement taken with a tape measure that had recently lived in my boot. The couple is going to have a great barn. Plenty of room for the boat, the tractor, and whatever he buys at auction next.
If you've got a building rattling around in your head, stop by Sherman in Mora or holler at us. We'll measure twice, cut once, and I'll check my boots first.
