Old Measure

Some birdhouses get their names pretty quickly. Others take a while.

This one sat in the shop for a bit before I came up with anything.

I kept looking at it, trying to figure out what it reminded me of. Maybe it was the deep red paint or the simple A-frame roof. I don't know. There was just something familiar about it. It reminded me of the kind of things people have been making for years without seeing much reason to change them.

But the more I looked at it, the more I got to thinking about old tools and workbenches. Things that have been around forever and still do what they're supposed to do.

Then I noticed an old wooden folding carpenter's rule sitting on a shelf in the shop. It had belonged to my father-in-law.

I got to thinking about all the things he'd probably measured and built with that old ruler. There wasn't anything fancy about it. It was just what it was.

Then I looked over at the birdhouse. Four walls, a pitched roof, and a hole in the front. Nothing fancy about it either.

That's when Old Measure came to mind.

The birdhouse wasn't old, but something about that simple design, along with seeing his old ruler on the shelf, made the name seem right.