THE PARTHENON OF ROOT CELLARS

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We laid up our storage room's walls by interlocking the eightfoot ties in "crib" style. Having neither electricity nor a large drill motor at the time of conception, I had planned to toenail the chunks of wood together using 40d ring-neck spikes. Later, acquisition of a portable generator and 1/2" drill motor made pegging not only preferable but possible. (Incidentally, the only drill bit for punching deep holes in ties, logs, etc., is the single fluted "ship auger".) Spikes were in fact used in conjunction with the other method, but the pegging halved the quantity of nails required and ensured alignment of the timbers.

Our ties, which had lain out in the central Oregon desert for decades, had developed both longitudinal crowns and humps across their short axes. Therefore, each had to be fitted to its mate beneath. Before lay-up I removed the bulges—by using a chain saw as a super-rasp—to eliminate the rocking of one beam upon the other. The long crown was compensated for by "cut and try" fitting. This meant that more than half the ties had to be handled several times (moved from one side to another until a fit was found). Timbers too twisted or crowned for the walls were set aside for the roof.

Horsing 125-pound ties, I should mention, is not an ideal oneman job. It can be done, but a guy tends to get armweary . . . especially as the walls grow higher.

As the sides of our cellar crept upward, we prepared for backfilling by stuffing the cracks and unavoidable spaces between the ties with lambs' wool (courtesy of a neighboring rancher). The backfill was then liberally wet down into a mud slurry and tamped with a 2 X 4. Very little seeped through the caulking and, after drying, the walls became—for want of a better expression-selfgrouted. Above grade we stapled tar paper to the outside of the storage room before banking earth to the eaves.

(At this point Joanie, one eye on the slow progress and the other on the burgeoning garden, announced, "Look, all I wanted was a root cellar, not the Taj Mahal!" Visualizing the ultimate roofline, I asked, "Would you settle for the Parthenon?")

By early frost in September the roof was ready to go on . . . but first shelves had to be built and a couple of loads of river gravel brought up for flooring. We'd considered a Buckboard floor of 2 X 4's until a neighbor pointed out what an ideal home that would make for black widow spiders. Besides, the gravel was free. I made the shelves of 3/4" particleboard seconds at $1.50 a sheet (to beat the almost prohibitive cost of pine or plywood).

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