Anything involving water, steel, wood, concrete, and people who had underestimated what water could do to all four.
Mercer Marine Works was not much of a company in the beginning.
Dad had one truck.
A utility trailer.
A welder that overheated if you asked too much of it.
And a reputation for showing up when other contractors stopped answering the phone.
I grew up inside that business.
At fourteen, I carried lumber.
At sixteen, I learned to grind welds.
At seventeen, I could back a trailer into spaces grown men refused to attempt.
At nineteen, I learned that aluminum edges could cut through gloves if you became careless.
At twenty-five, I could build a basic dock from a sketch.
At thirty-five, Dad had me running crews.
At forty-two, he handed me the company.
Not formally.
Dad never liked ceremonies.
He walked into the shop one morning, tossed a ring of keys onto my workbench, and said, “If you’re going to argue with every decision I make, you might as well make the decisions.”
I looked at the keys.
“Are you retiring?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Working less.”
He worked nearly every day for another five years.
That was Daniel Mercer’s definition of less.
The pines were his idea.
He planted the first row not long after buying the property.
At the time, Mercer Marine Works operated out of a corrugated metal shop and a yard full of materials that shifted constantly depending on the jobs we had underway.
Dad cared about keeping equipment maintained.
He did not care whether it looked attractive from a distance.
One afternoon, I remember a fisherman complaining that our yard made the shoreline look industrial.
Dad stared at the man for several seconds.
Then he looked at me.
“Jack.”
“What?”
“Tomorrow we’re planting trees.”
I thought he was joking.
He was not.
We spent several weekends planting pine seedlings along the western boundary.
Some were barely waist high.