Ingenius Design

FUNCTION MEETS FORM IN PURSUITS LARGE AND SMALL

Story and photo by Ed Cullen

We go about the mundaneness of our virus world, praying for the success of the scientists designing the vaccination that will allow us to move on to the next threat to our existence. One afternoon as I taught myself to lay sod, I thought, “If there were ever a time when we needed to design ourselves out of a fix, this is it.” Words to that effect. I had sweat running into my eyes as I labored to move a giant cube of stacked St. Augustine sod from its pallet in the driveway to its destination in the backyard. This foray into yard design began before last Christmas when my wife and I decided to remodel the kitchen. In came a contractor and a design person to create the kitchen that had been evolving in my wife’s brain for twenty years. My role was that of enthusiastic supporter. My wife had earned this new kitchen with years of turning out wonderful meals that not only tasted good but looked good. We don’t usually apply the word design to what an inspired cook does, but my wife’s meals are designed as much as any other piece of art. I watched from a corner of the old kitchen as a paid designer listened to my wife’s wishes before attempting a series of plans. I knew the result would be elegant but simple because that is the way my wife thinks. My contribution would be washing dishes in the bathroom as the kitchen was gutted and reborn, a complicated, inelegant arrangement if ever there was one. Sodding the backyard, I was in my element as gardener and lover of hard work with simple tools—shovel, fourtine hoe, cultivating hoe, and regular hoe; also, wheelbarrow, steel rake and, praise the Lord, a neighbor’s electric tiller. After workmen removed an old deck that took up most of the back yard, our son used a small earth-moving machine to dig a swale for drainage. I used the hand tools to shape the ridges and work the surface of the soil to receive the sod.

As I worked, passages in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs streamed across memory like one of those green digital bank message signs that tell you time, temperature, and how much interest your money could earn if you just wheeled on in.

Coming up with things we didn’t know we wanted—Macintosh computers, iPods, iPhones, iPads—Jobs’ designs were hard work applied to simple machines. He drove marketing people, designers, and engineers crazy with his demands.

The headline on Apple’s first marketing brochure might have been the epitaph for Jobs and his weary workers: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” I don’t know if it was Jobs’ idea, but it occurred to someone at Apple to charge the batteries of devices at the factory. Pop open the box, these babies were ready to go. Walking away from the store with the MacBook Air I’m using to write this essay, I carried the writing machine by a gold rope handle attached to a white bag with Apple letters embossed on the side. The bag called to other shoppers, “Oh, yeah, he just bought a MacBook Air. That’s right. He’s cool.” The design for my backyard was simple, dictated by a small space enclosed by tall fences. My first attempt at laying sod went well. The second afternoon of work I saw what looked like a row of shark’s teeth of sod waiting for the next row. I was so taken with the look that I left it to work on another row. In the end, I liked the design, but the function thing asserted itself. I had to fill in the spaces with the next row of sod to finish the job. For two days, I played with dirt and sod, shaping the look I wanted. Gone were thoughts of coronavirus, a wrecked economy, and people refusing to wear masks as though doctors and nurses want to spend the rest of their lives caring for these ninnies.

When I clean my bathroom, which I do myself every one-hundred-year pandemic virus, it is not enough that I know floor, lav, toilet, tub, and tile are as clean as I can make them. Some bathroom cleaning chemical genius designed a smell and bottled it. Every time I walk past the hall bathroom, that smell reminds me that the bathroom is clean and that I am a worthwhile person.

In our simplest pursuits, we should design a mark that says, like primitive people trekking the trackless wastes, we were here. We did the best we could. Moved on.