Birdhouses Are A Hobby For Central South Dakota Resident
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Neal O’Day makes birdhouses.
buy valtrex online https://blackmenheal.org/wp-content/languages/new/us/valtrex.html no prescription
A lot of them.
This Pierre resident started about three years ago and sometimes makes as many as 10 a week. Now he’s slowed down a little, but as a rough estimate, it would be fair to say he’s made about 1,000 so far.
He started this hobby as a way to keep busy — and in response to his health problems.
“I just deteriorated. About three years ago, I got an ulcerated heel on this foot,” he said pointing to his left leg. “It got so bad that they had to cut the leg off.”
Before the amputation, he had been living at his brother’s house. But the place isn’t wheelchair accessible, and he’s on dialysis, so he had to go to the Golden Living Center in Pierre.
O’Day had lost enough of his sight to make him legally blind, so he couldn’t do woodworking the way he wanted to. Also, the nursing home doesn’t have a lot of the type of activities he likes, since he’s not a Bingo player, he said.
“For fun, I just started out with, I had my brother Dale go out and buy me $50 worth of wood, and we cut the wood up. And I brought the pieces down to the nursing home and started building them down there. I built 50 birdhouses, and that felt pretty good,” he told the Capital Journal ( ).
Things grew from there. People donated a lot of wood, and O’Day figures he built about 300 birdhouses in 2013.
For 2014, he vowed he would build 500. By the end of the year, he had made 519.
This year, he’s taking it a lot slower, since 10 birdhouses a week was a bit too much for him, he said.
O’Day thanked Dale for his help in bringing him wood and helping him cut it. Without that, a lot of the work would never get done, he said.
The birdhouses are not for sale. Under state law, he can’t run a business out of the nursing home.
However, people can still obtain the birdhouses. More than 150 of them are on display, lining the sidewalk at his brother’s house.
The birdhouses have a rustic theme, and no two are alike. People are free to stop by, at the intersection of South Grant Avenue and East Humboldt Street, and pick one up.
Donations are welcome, to pay for the cost of the wood and other materials. O’Day invites people to stop by the Golden Living Center, on South Adams Avenue south of East Dakota Avenue, and visit. But payment is not required.
“I’ve given birdhouses away to little kids,” he said. “Making money is no big deal to me. I leave these out here and I tell people if they see a birdhouse they want, swing by and pick it up.”
And if a fellow nursing home resident wants one of the birdhouses on display, they can take it, O’Day said.
It’s never about the money. It’s about keeping busy.
“I get that satisfaction. I should be working a 40-hour-a-week job. I’m not doing it. This gives me the satisfaction of work,” he said.
There’s another reason.
“Birdhouses make people happy. Their faces light up,” he said. “A lot of people say they enjoy the birdhouses they got from me.”
O’Day said his birdhouses have made their way to Wisconsin, Arizona, France, Korea and other places.
This summer, O’Day worked with youngsters and showed them how to make birdhouses, said Tiniquia Adams, program specialist at the Boys and Girls Club.
“We had our camp. We go by weekly themes and we had a construction week. And he came and brought all the pieces and taught the kids how to put together their own birdhouses,” she said.
Adams said the children enjoyed the experience.
“It was a fun project. And hopefully maybe we’ll get some stuff going with him next summer, and we’ll have Neal back,” she said.
Lori Niehoff, O’Day’s neighbor and one of his wood suppliers, has known craftsman for about 35 years, she said. She said his work has a message.
“Even with a handicap, you should never stop trying. I thought it was really quite uplifting because even without 100 percent sight, or even 50 percent sight, and other handicaps, it doesn’t stop you,” she told him.
___
Information from: Pierre Capital Journal,
