Roy Berendsohn of ‘Popular Mechanics’ helps Ralph Gardner Jr. build raised beds and learn to shovel
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ENLARGEBy RALPH GARDNER JR.
June 5, 2016 7:42 p.m. ET
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While I didn’t flunk shop, I didn’t excel at it either.
In fact, I still marvel that I had any desire to become a writer after the 500-word punishment essays my shop teacher handed out as casually as he did hammer and nails. If anything can turn a person off the essay form, it’s repeatedly having to come up with variations on the theme of “Why I Shouldn’t Talk in Class.”
My skill with carpentry tools was hardly better than it was with a Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencil. So when my family recently began to consider a raised-bed garden, I took the liberty of enlisting the help of Roy Berendsohn, “Popular Mechanics” magazine’s “Ask Roy” columnist.
Why raised beds instead of a conventional garden? I’m not sure except that our Hudson Valley property is terrible for growing anything but poison ivy. There’s approximately 2 inches of topsoil. And from there to the center of the earth it’s solid rock.
Per Mr. Berendsohn’s instructions, I purchased wood, nails and a truckload of topsoil before his arrival at our home. All he had to do was show me how to measure, saw and nail together a few boards. Or preferably do so himself why I feigned taking notes.
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But first I was curious to learn a bit of Mr. Berendsohn’s biography; he’s been at “Popular Mechanics” for 27 years. Specifically, did he excel in shop class as a kid?
Impressively modest, Mr. Berendsohn, 56 years old, denied any special talent recognized at an early age for hammering a nail straight.
“I did not have a mechanical gift,” he insisted. “I’ve learned the hard way with anything I’ve done. I tell people if I can do this, you can do this.”
That was before he met me.
He also had excellent role models. There’s a touching interview in June’s “Things My Father Taught Me” issue of Popular Mechanics where both Mr. Berendsohn and his 91-year-old father Oscar are interviewed.
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Oscar, who fled the Nazis, got an engineering degree from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now the NYU Tandon School of Engineering) and started working on spy satellites. His workbench, shown in the story, is a thing of organizational beauty.
Roy also learned a trick or two working construction in western Connecticut as a teenager. He still uses the solid steel Estwing hammer a boss gave him back then.
“It’s the hammer that put me through college,” he said.
I couldn’t help asking about mishaps, as Mr. Berendsohn pulled sawhorses and a circular saw from the back seat of his 2001 Chevy Malibu. My attitude being that the safest home improvement projects are those you hire others to perform.
“When I was 17, I got a finish nail in my right eye,” he explained. “It bounced off concrete. I never do this work without some form of eye protection.”
The accident caused no permanent damage. Mr. Berendsohn blinked reflexively at the incoming projectile and trapped it with his eyelid.
Fortunately, there were no mishaps as he sawed the 10-foot planks I’d purchased into 6-foot and 4-foot sections to make the sides for the raised beds.
I took command of the circular saw only briefly, mostly to say I had.
But I also solicited tips about some of the genteel chores I find myself occasionally tempted to accomplish: such as how to hammer a nail into a wall or piece of wood without bending it.
“You put your shoulder over the nail,” he explained as he did just that, nailing two sections of the board together. “Start with a couple of taps and drive it in.”
Mr. Berendsohn also coached me on proper wheelbarrow shoveling technique.
“Get as close to it as possible,” he explained. “Align the long access with the direction you’re shoveling. You want to avoid shoveling from the side.”
He’d already lost me.
But it turns out I’m pretty good at pushing a wheelbarrow downhill, if not the advanced math Mr. Berendsohn employed to mark off the wood.
However, the most complicated chore yet awaits—figuring how to mount fence posts in solid rock. Whatever we grow in the beds will have to be protected from the woodchucks, which are approximately the size and ravenousness of black bears.
Mr. Berendsohn’s initial suggestions included setting fence posts inside concrete blocks and stapling chicken wire to the wood, or jackhammering.
He’s working on additional solutions.
— ralph.gardner@wsj.com