Two Boards and a Nail!

Fences have been a low priority in the post-Hurricane Rita cleanup. Some 46 days after the storm, fences continue to lie in ruins throughout the region, like giant wooden DNA strands along property lines.
Some residents have neatly stacked their fence sections in their front yards, joining the curbside-debris audience of house rubble, lawn bags, logs, limbs and branches. They sit and wait for the parade of cleanup trucks that could take weeks, maybe months, to come through.
Last week, government officials said Rita debris removal had reached only the halfway mark. I might string Christmas lights on my mammoth frontyard debris pile. A nebulous blob of festive colors. Ho ho ho. My wife and I have talked about having our children pose atop the pile and shoot pictures for our Christmas cards this year.
Compared to other fence piles, ours is relatively small. A neighbor's pine trees gouged out fence chunks in two spots. I initially just dragged the damaged fence sections to the curb, but since then, I've grown wise to the ways of fence-mending.
Handyman has never been my middle name, nor my first or last name for that matter. I've had little home-improvement success in the past. A kitchen window I tried to replace months ago remains a gnarly mess, and Rita knocked the whole shooting match out of kilter. Poorly stained shelves are crooked. Toilets leak or require multiple flushings. Water from outdoor sprinkler heads bubbles up like oil in Jed Clampett's hillbilly back yard.
My wife and I have a battle cry when it comes to home-improvement projects that seem easy on the surface but ultimately wind up with myriad complications: "TWO BOARDS AND A NAIL! THAT'S ALL IT TAKES! TWO BOARDS AND A NAIL!"
I think this refers to a conversation we had about building a headboard for a bed, but I can't remember. I just know that "TWO BOARDS AND A NAIL!" now applies to everything from fixing faucets to adding a new wing to the Taj Mahal.
It's a joke, but recently, after learning that my insurance company won't pay for fence repairs, and that lumber costs and labor are sky high in this target-rich environment, I decided to take a hard look and decide whether I was up for the challenge myself. After careful review, I discovered that fence-fixin' indeed demanded little more than TWO BOARDS AND A NAIL! Maybe a few nails. And some more boards. And some cement. And some kite string.
An interesting roundup is taking place throughout the land at this time. As people are realizing the high cost of lumber, they are pulling discarded fence sections out of their debris piles and salvaging the good wood. They're also doing the same thing at their neighbors' houses. Or complete strangers' houses.
Yes, the fence rodeo is on, and I am now a part of it. This past weekend, I decided to attempt to patch one fence section.
My first step was salvaging fence materials from my debris pile, and there was a lot of it worth saving. On the way to the home-improvement store, I spied a pile of perfectly good fence wood and asked the resident if I could have it. I managed to get a half dozen perfectly OK pickets, or planks, or slats, or whatever they're called. They sell for $1.50 to $2 apiece at the home-improvement store.
Score.
At the home-improvement store, I bought the the following (costs are wildly estimated):

1 fence post, 8 feet long ($6.50).
1 box of long "hot galvanized nails" to hammer cross bars to fence posts ($11).
1 box of short "hot galvanized nails" to hammer pickets, or planks, or slats, or whatever they're called, to the cross bars ($8.40).
1 50-pound bag of cement ($6.50).
6 glow-in-the-dark light sticks for the kids ($1.50 and no relevance to fence-building).

The fence post looked way too long, but the customer service woman assured me that a 6-foot-tall fence required an 8-foot post, and she was spot on.
To repair this one section, roughly 7-feet wide, I needed to replace a fence post, put up two salvaged cross bars and then pound on the pickets.
Using a borrowed post-hole digger, I went to work trying to dig out the old post's remnants. Getting nowhere, I brought in the shovel, chipping out old cement and digging myself a small foxhole to get out the last chunks of post materials.
The home-improvement person wasn't kidding about the 8-foot post. When I wrestled out the old post, it left a mine shaft of a hole, which made it easier to set the new post, which I did a minute or so later. After that, I sprinkled in cement, adding water as I went. I used way too much cement, about two-thirds of a bag. I think you can get away with half a bag, or maybe even a third of a bag, to set a fence post.
With it getting dark and time to fire up the grill, I quit for the day and let the post set overnight.
The next day was so full of activity that I only had time to set the cross bars: TWO BOARDS AND EIGHT NAILS!
This weekend, I'll nail up the pickets, using kite string as a guide to ensure a fence that doesn't look snaggle-toothed.
Looking at the entire fence job, I figure it's going to take around five hours and about $100 worth of materials to finish the job, depending on how much wood I can purloin from curbsides. Some folks who are hiring pros to do the work are paying thousands of dollars, even after salvaging huge fence sections.
So, as for now, I think I'm a pretty handy guy. I'm going to beat the system. I'm going to beat The Man.
Now if I can get that toilet to stop running, I'll be set.