MaineCourse

Knackered Radiator

MORE TILES

Hung returned Tuesday to tile most of the kitchen. I say most because the pattern is more complex. The grout lines have to match those in the sunroom, and given the shape of the kitchen there are far more cuts to make. He'll finish the tile today but will he have time to grout?

One more story about Hung. Diane warned me that I might appear to be beating that dead horse, but so be it.
Last Christmas Susan gave me a remote starter for my truck. I used it all winter, not just to warm my truck, but to show off and to startle those who beat me to the front seat. I use it somewhat less in the hot weather, but not much. I would probably trade-in my truck given the abysmal gas mileage, but I can’t, because of my treasured remote starter.

For some reason, Hung has been almost obsessed with my truck. He bought a Toyota, new, in 1999, a year before the crew cab concept with front facing rear seats was introduced and his regrets are obvious. Everyday, we talk about my seats, how the truck looks more like an SUV, the width, the length, the tread on the tires, whatever comes to his fertile mind.
As we were standing in the kitchen and probably after one more question about my Nissan, I said to Hung, “I can start my truck from here.” I thought this would impress him more than the rear seats.
He said, “ I can too.”
Certain he has misunderstood me, I said, ‘No, you can’t. See, if I had my keys. I could press two buttons and my truck would start.”
“Mi kal, I can do that.”
This was after our Baptist conversation and you would have thought I had learned my lesson. Yes, you would have thought.
“Hung, this is not like a car alarm, this is a REMOTE STARTER.” I raised my voice so he could better understand me.
After that conversation, he never missed an opportunity to start his truck from afar. Call it dueling remote starters.

BMW

The consensus seems to be that the cause of an overheating BMW is due to a blown head gasket, retarded ignition timing, or a faulty cooling system ( possibly a knackered radiator-UK site).
Travis & Matthew::
Found this site: One hundred and one tech tips for the 2002.
The opening paragraph
begins: "Anyone who has owned a 2002 for more than a few weeks has been introduced to the car's inscrutable nature."

12. A 320i radiator is as good or better than the 2002 part it is lighter, and
the whole conversion costs $50.00 less than the 2002 radiator alone.
13. If your 2002 runs hot, and the radiator is more than 2 years old, replace it.
But there is so much more:
6. Too tight belts destroy water pumps; tighten only enough to run the alternator.
23. BMW O.E. exhaust systems are the longest lasting and most quiet you will find.
32. Tailpipe smoke on deceleration usually means valve seal problems.
34. Drain your speedometer cable; it collects water.
37. 2002s run fine on unleaded fuel.
50. There is a lot of room for stereo gear under the back seat.
55. Remove bumpers and clean behind them annually.
83. Black spark plug wire can replace discolored chrome windowtrim.
98. Not driving a 2002 is the worst thing you can do to it.


TUESDAY


Old steps gone, new mahagony and primed pine ones in place.
Bill, as usual, doing most of the clean-up.



Railing, a bit of trim and then we're off to Lexington...I mean, Newton.

Wi Fi

Click for full screen version
Dan's outdoor wireless office. The nearby waiting room

Catching Up

BMW UPDATE

This is the last week of auto mechanics class and on Friday we have to drive the car back home. Without an inspection sticker. Dan and I believe creative story telling will suffice if we’re stopped, Diane claims she’ll take Matt to the Vineyard as planned, whether I’m in jail or not.

This week Matt will change the tie rods, having already worked on the distributor, ignition wires, alternator, coil, and battery leads. Surprisingly too, it passed both Matt’s compression and oil pressure tests and that leaves only the clutch to repair. I wrote to David Stochl seeking his advice about whether we could do that work ourselves. His diplomatic reply:

“The clutch is a tough question. It involves taking the driveshaft out, the transmission out, and then the clutch pressure plate and disc off the flywheel. The flywheel also should be taken out and resurfaced, as it most likely will have heat cracks. If you don't resurface the flywheel, it may chatter. Not good.

That is a lot of work for anyone with little experience. The job isn't impossible, but just little stuff like making sure the clutch is aligned with an alignment tool (need to buy or rent one), and then actually lifting the transmission into place is a pain in the back.

My advice would be to get some estimates for a clutch job, then decide whether you really want to dive into that job, ot just pay to have someone do it with a warranty. Sometimes with stuff like Transmissions, it is nice to have a warranty to take it back if it acts up.

Case in point: I was selling my 1964 Ranchero this year. The 4 speed transmission lost third gear, and I had two more transmissions in my garage. Supposedly one had been rebuilt, so I was told. I spent a day pulling out the old one, putting the new one in, making all the adjustments for the shifter, then crawling out from under the car to take it for a drive. It growled in first gear, slipped out of second when I decelerated, then could not get it into third gear. The moral of this story was that I pulled the transmission out after replacing the shifter twice (thinking it was a shifter problem), took it down to a friend's transmission shop, and $580 in cash later, had a rebuilt unit to put in. It worked like a charm. As much as I hated to spend the money, it was done in a few days and was done correctly.”

As much as I hate to spend the money and as much as I’ll miss seeing that transmission sitting on Matt’s chest, we’ve decided to take it to our local mechanic. After the clutch is repaired, Matt and I will start the body work, and begin investigating ways to add head rests and some kind of after market shoulder belts.

ENDINGS

Thursday is Diane's last day at Emerson. Monday, August 25th, she'll again be making that familiar drive to Mclean Hospital.

REWINDING

These images should have accompanied Rewind. They present the scope of Adam's dilemma, to begin again, or not. Click here for more photos.


The old floor... .

Complex Patterns

I stopped at Home Depot to buy thinset and when I arrived at 8:15, Adam and Hung were already discussing Adam’s complex, precisely random, tile pattern. I walked over to where they were standing, ready to join the conversation, when a mosquito landed on my arm. I swatted it, then glanced at Hung, worried that I might have offended the Buddhist in him.

The tiles, in my opinion, are gorgeous. No mamby pamby tiles these, even Hung commented on the thickness, and when you walk into the room there is no doubt what is underfoot. The colors will tweak each eye differently but I see muted pastels of a desert sunset and texture that of the forest floor.

Okay, what it is, the desert, the woods or an addition in Sudbury? You be the judge, photos are below.

However, the design, Adam’s inspired creation with an assist from his computer, requires that a tile be placed then that corresponding tile be crossed off the paper layout pattern. Without using the drawing as a checklist, the intentionally random pattern swallows one whole. I’ve seen Hung fly through simple jobs, laying square tiles like a card dealer in Atlantic City, but this pattern required him to be fully engaged.

Three times, he asked me for advice when the paper pattern could not be repeated on the floor. I was useless. To give advice I had to look at the printed paper, locate the tile space in question then transfer that image to the floor. I couldn’t do it; I kept getting lost. I need square tiles lined up like soldiers in dress whites in predictable formations. Toss in an accent tile or two and I’m good to go.

We spent more than an hour dividing the room with blue chalk lines, and laying out trial runs to be sure the finished floor would resemble Adam’s creation. Confident Hung understood his design, Adam left for work, late, and I moved to the den to tackle the water damaged bay window. Hung had laid maybe ten tiles when he walked into the den.
“Michael (he pronounces my name My Kal, the same emphasis on both syllables), how much did I say this job?”
I expected this conversation. Weeks ago, when he came to look at the empty room, I showed him Adam’s design, but that paper was a flimsy substitute for tiles in hand. I turned away and laughed. Fortunately he knows this is a commiserating laugh because he then said, “When I was here before I didn’t see the tile.” He calls it tie, for both singular and plural. I know all too well how hairy estimating can be and it doesn’t bother me to know that others have the same problem.

My sister-in-law, Susan, has her own horror story, perhaps my favorite in part because: A. It was happening to her, not me, and B. She somehow maintained a sense of humor. A budget-busting publishing project that seemed to have no end - she couldn’t submit a half finished book-dwarfed my own personal nightmares. When I asked Susan if I could use her story in my story, she wrote back :”Where you say, 'she had horribly underestimated,' you may be underestimating.  I think that at about half way through that project, I was making 11¢ an hour; by the end, it was costing me to finish the damn thing. My point here is that you may want to make stronger 'horribly underestimated.' "
But my intention is not to describe the project at length but to recount her most memorable retort. When her husband asked how she could have screwed-up so badly, She replied, “I carefully estimated the project, then I bid half.” I wondered if that was what Hung was thinking.

With about three quarters of the floor finished and Hung readying to leave I asked him why he hadn't brought his son.
He said, “He has something at church.”
I thought to myself, church? That is a mighty western sounding word. “Church, what kind of church?” I quickly scanned my meager knowledge base and came up with Catholic, as in French influenced. The French bombed the Vietnamese before we did and I thought they might have left a little something extra.

“Baptist,” he replied
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was back in Adam’s random floor pattern trying to find the next tile. I looked hard at that Asian face, “What do you mean, Baptist.”
“Baptist,” he replied like it was I who was the idiot.
“Baptist, like Baptist? With God, and the baby Jesus?” I could only think of Southern Baptists, the kind we all ran from in southern Indiana.
“Yes, but Vietnamese. Vietnamese Alliance, Baptist.”

He explained that his wife’s grandfather was converted by an American missionary and that he too was a Baptist. I had to find my missing Buddhist but not until I asked about his great grandfather did I get to a maybe. Sounding just a bit defensive to my probing of his family tree, he added, “You have to have religion to keep people from doing bad things.”
Off the deep end with no rope to pull me back, I fired back, “No you don’t. Your boys aren’t good because they are afraid of going to hell, they are good because of you.”

I don’t get in anyone’s face about their religion and I don’t know what I was doing in Hung’s. My version of Hung combined with my personal guilt about the war was colliding with the real Hung and I could hear popping noises where there should have only been thoughts.

Explaining the pattern


End of Friday -Click for larger image


Plans, but not the full view.

Rewind

After the pounding din, the silence was riveting. Hung had just walked in and was standing in the kitchen, his face bearing an expression frozen between the hopeless smile one might give an implacable predator, and utter shock teetering on anger. Michael and I were on our knees in the sunroom, more than halfway through tearing up the tile floor he had laid the day before. It had taken the two of us the better part of an hour that morning to wrap our minds around what we had begun to do -- Hung had just walked in. And it was his work.

The day before, as intimated by the intro to Eagle Lake below, Hung had arrived to put the second -- arguably the first -- major finish material into our addition, applying our subtle but zooty Italian tile to the slab he'd laid just two days before, in a complicated randomized pattern dreamed up by yours truly. Michael and I spent over an hour with him strategizing and doing initial layout, and then with a half dozen tiles in place, Hung's momentum building, I finally went off to work, excited by what I'd find when I returned that night.

Midday, Tricia called me at work to diminish my expectations. "You know, it won't be exactly straight. The pattern is very complicated, and he's a little off. The middle won't be exactly in the middle. Just so you know." Implication being, there's no going back, but it's barely noticeable, except to the adaptationally-challenged, such as myself. But I talked her through the intent, explained where certain compromises were expected, and she became convinced it was alright after all, just a matter of perspective. Nevertheless, after a late night lighting mockup, I came home somewhat tense.

The tile looked great. I could begin to see how the room would be when it was finished. Yes, the center tile looked maybe a half an inch off center. More of a problem was a slight hook at the end of the middle row, but taking up and adjusting a few tiles would fix that. I went to bed content.

When I awoke, I had work to do in the addition to make ready for another thing Hung would do. But as I set about it, something about the floor was bugging me, and I stopped, stood back for a better view. It couldn't be, but that "hook" from the night before now seemed like the whole row, indeed, the whole floor, was on a slant. But surely that was optical illusion -- out came the tape measure. And 5 minutes later, I was in the dark pit of despair, my dream and vision in ruins about me, barely the strength of limb or will to dial Michael's number. "It's crooked. The pattern's perfect, but the whole floor's rotated relative to the walls -- it's off by well over an inch across the 12 feet, and in both axes. I wanna die."

Okay, melodramatic, but I'd schemed and sweated the tiniest of details for almost three months, and now, the first unfudgeable thing -- arguably the grandest and most noticeable treatment -- had failed the simple tests of centered, and parallel to the walls. After some half-hearted fact-finding, Mike said, "I'll be right over." On a day he had other plans, and for a task second only perhaps to coming over to shoot a friend's mortally wounded dog.

It took us awhile to come to grips. We measured and rationalized, pondered keeping it, visions of jack-hammering up shattered tiles, and confrontations with Hung keeping us from declaring the right thing to do. But then Mike tentatively put the claw of a hammer under a tile, and miracle -- it lifted, intact. The way was clear. We began the grim but oddly invigorating task of reversal, the first step to setting things to right. Brutal, ugly work, but way easier than it should have been (though that in and of itself was some cause for concern, later dispelled). And then Hung walked in.

He never said a word about it all day. After I explained the problem, pointed out the benchmarks, theorized about where "we" might have gone wrong, all with a conciliatory smile on my face, he just went out to the garage, got his demo tool and squatted down to erase his previous day. Occasionally he'd stop and glance about in perfect poker face, only by unattributable inference in any shock or disbelief. I finally went to work, leaving Mike to labor on with Hung in the silence only by definition punctuated by the percussive cacophony of demolition, the human aspect impenetrable and cloying.

There was much intimate and revealing conversation that day, I'm told. Mike learned much about Hung's early life and flight from Viet Nam 20 years ago with his fledgling family. But the subject of the task at hand was tabu and impregnable. We may never know why, where this all sits in Hung's psyche. And I care.

It is perhaps undemonstrable by any means that could be called scientific that one's spirit, persona and attitude imbues the works of one's hands with an energy sensible even to those who do not believe in "energy". Great care and optimism, pride and comradeship had swelled the karma of this space, and while I am without shame or doubt heavily invested in the details and attached to my physical vision, so too am I committed to the experience of everyone working here being informed and uplifted by that which all others have brought to this work. I had my own darkness to wrestle with, but Hung's own weighs on me.

I can't reach into his darkness, if even there is any of that of which I worry. I can only hold out light. When I got home that evening after the demo was done, I worked into the wee hours laying out guidelines, drawing maps, writing instructions (just a few, really). And I went to work without staying to coach Hung, trying to simply create trust. When he arrived, Tricia said to him, "I'm glad you're back." He might, after all, have decided, enough's enough. But I think that touched him, and he threw himself into it, and it's beautiful. I hope he comes to understand my need to rewind, even, perhaps to share it, if only post facto. But when I took the picture below yesterday evening before beginning the new layout, it came out looking not so much like the wreck it felt like at the time, but rather like the fresh possibility it in fact was, both in our say-so and in actuality.

Implements of destruction, some new, at rest, a day's work undone.

Eagle Lake

Adam and I have been writing about past camping trips that we will add to the mainecourse.com site. As soon as the image map on the places.html page is updated, this one,which I recently finished, will be linked.
Tomorrow I'll post photos from the part of the job Susan might be most interested in, the laying of the tiles.

October, 1995

La Casa De Fiesta is an unlikely name for a topless bar, especially one in Millinocket Maine, the heart of the used- to-be-thriving paper mill industry. Sure, there are foreign born loggers, but mostly French Canadians who drive down from the north. Mark Queijo and I, coming up from the south, had been on the road for five hours when we drove by the bar, looked at each other, smiled, turned around and pulled into the adjacent parking lot. We'd left Acton early, stopped at the Littleton Sub Shop for a late on-the-fly lunch and were now only an hour and a half from where we intended to spend the night - Chamberlain Lake. We were also alone. Dan and Adam with known work obligations, and later, unexpected car repairs, wouldn't meet us until the afternoon of the following day. If we stopped for a beer or two we had nothing to lose but sleep.

We have a camping routine that is, by now, as predictable as the changing color of Red Maples in the fall. We know what our preparation entails -important gear left home; we know what the drive will be like - long; the first night's sleep in a motel - fast; the subsequent breakfast-huge; the lake water temperature - testicle retracting; we can even predict squabbles that might surface. That would explain my reaction to walking into a room full of naked women when moments before I was scanning the skies for the Northern Lights. Dissociative. It was fun, it was memorable, and I can't say I didn't enjoy it, especially the "Preferred" dance I arranged for Mark while he was in the bathroom, but I was happy to get back on the road, to search for our campsite in a birch meadow near the water.

We left the bar at 10:30 and arrived at Chamberlain before midnight. How convenient, I thought, I'll get a good night's sleep. But that was before Has to Have a Water View, met Can't Turn Back. The logging road follows the lake north but other than at the ranger station, it's a comfortable few hundred yards away. To get to the water, where I wanted to pitch our tent, we had to find an access road, a path, two ruts, matted weeds, anything that resembled a trail meandering in the direction of the water. Under the stars it was no moon dark and hard to find those trails, in the woods and on one of those trails, it was the color of lamp black.

The first path we chose began in a silvery green field of knee high grass. It curved down into the woods, but bit by bit the trail got narrower and narrower as encroaching branches of nearby trees closed around us - much like a Chinese finger trap. It was painful listening to the fingernail-on-chalkboard sound as the new Jeep's black finish fought its way through those branches. It wasn't my car, but I cringed as Mark continued to drive until the road died. We got out and with flashlights in hand, continued our water search. We climbed over fallen trees, plowed through brush, and stumbled on rocks before I suggested giving up. "We can't turn back now, the water must be right over that hill," Mark offered. I laughed, "And then what, walk back for our gear and then all the way back to the water that we don't yet know exists?" Retreat we did, but I was happy knowing that Mark wasn't going to give up until tab A had been inserted into slot B. He had demonstrated that his need to move forward was greater than his love for his Jeep's flawless finish.

I would like to say that the next trail we drove down took us right to a campsite on the water. But I can't . I'd like to say the one after that one, or the one after that or the trail we took that ended next to a newly built cabin deep in the woods. The cabin that looked at that moment like it might have been owned by someone from Texas with a chain saw and meat hooks. I wish I could say, can't-turn-back and has-to-have-a-water view conceded and slept there, but I can't. We really are too much alike because we didn't stop out search until the sun threatened to help us look, until we were too tired to continue and we had come to our last dead end - a muddy, rutted area next to a narrow stream. We climbed out of the Jeep, scouted for a flat place to pitch our tent, failed to find one, set up anyway, and climbed in just as it began to rain. We had found our water alright. It was falling on our tent, it was babbling from the brook and it was oozing up from the ground around us.

The next morning, nowhere near enough hours after we had fallen asleep, we got up, stuffed our wet tent into its sack, and headed back to the lake where we thought we'd meet Dan and Adam. It was still raining when we drove into the parking area at the south end of Chamberlain, and that's why we ended up cooking breakfast on gathered wet wood, a few feet from a battered gray camper. This, after asking the park ranger proudly standing in front of three sheds full of seasoned wood, if he might spare a log or two. He said no.

While Mark cooked over easy's in a small frying pan coated with rain and butter, I pulled out the year's brain storm. A gold filter cone with which to make our coffee. Damn thing worked at home, sort-of, where time was not critical, but for whatever reason, old sediment clogging the holes or coffee ground too fine, water poured in hot would drip out like that nasty motel faucet you can't quite turn off. Five minutes later, one cup full of coffee - anything but hot. Mark provided the morning's entertainment when he insisted on cooking bacon, to accompany the runny eggs. It was fun to watch him dodge exploding grease as rain drops danced on his bacon fat.

Don't mistake the self-pitying tone of this story; we were not miserable, and god knows, we never whine, in fact we were having a good time. Mark's previous camiping experience had been a Battan-like march and paddle through the Boundary Waters in Minnesota with enough gear to squash a Russian weight lifter and for me, well, I had been to Maine before.



Adam Kibbe and Mark Queijo

Different Boats

Sounds Like

I’ve known Hung for sixteen of the twenty years he’s been in the US. He has four children, lives in Dorchester and owns three houses. He works hard now, but worked much harder when he lived in Vietnam or as he calls it, “My country.”
For twelve of those years I called him “Hung.” I didn’t say Hung, like hung by the neck. I tried to imitate his Vietnamese so I’d add my own musical lilt. And I’d do my best to leave off most of the “H’ as he does. I’d exhale forcefully, hit a high register and sound like, I guess, a donkey getting goosed.
I was never comfortable with my pronunciation, but it was the best I could do and then one day, I heard Hung tell someone on the phone his name was Hong. But not Hong as in Hong Kong. When he hung up, I said, “I’ve been calling you Hung all these years, why didn’t you tell me your name was Hong.” Again, I’d go easy on the ‘H’ and kind of bark it out.
I have no doubt that I was as close to the pronunciation of Hong as Joan is to John. And whatever it was I was saying before I switched to Hong, was probably equally butchered. That’s why it didn’t surprise me when he said, “It doesn’t matter.”
Today, Hung and his son laid the Sand Mix, which is a mixture of concrete sand and Portland Cement, as substrate for the tile. Wednesday is an important day for the Kibbes because that will signify a huge step in the completion of the job - laying of the tile. But it’s an important day for me too, because I’m going to introduce Hung to multi-lingual Adam who will then help me with the proper pronunciation.

Doing the Deal

Hung exemplifies my utter confusion around money. This is the conversation we have at the end of every job and remember, this has been going on for years.
“How much do I owe you?”
“What do you think?”
“I think whatever you think.”
“You tell me how much.”
“I can’t tell you how much, it’s what the job is worth, Hung.”
“I don’t know, what do you think?”
Now I’m squirming and turning red, “Just tell me how much
I owe you”
This will continue until l’ve exhausted him, and he’ll finally say,
“How about six hundred?”
I’ll think to myself, that’s about half of what the job is worth; I’ve got to pay him more than that, “How about seven hundred?”
The deal closes when Hung replies, “How about six fifty?”
Diane reminds me that when I was asking him to price the Kibbe job, that I kept saying, “It’s not for me, charge what the job is worth.” He’s been tiling for twenty years, he knew the square footage of the job-small by his standards-yet he had to call me back with a price. When he did, it was about half of the so-called competing estimate.

Harder Work

Hung brought help, his twenty year old son. I shook his hand and noted that he looked like Matt after we ask him to take out the trash. Clearly, he did not want to be working with his father.

“We’re in the same boat.” Hung said to me. This after we commiserated about how our children get driven everywhere and how they would rather not work. For Matthew, that is work at home because he has had two jobs since he was fourteen and has missed maybe one day.

“When I was five or six I had to bicycle eight kilometers to school.”
I thought, here is the Vietnamese variation of walking six miles in the snow, but I can relate because I walked to school.

Then he said, “When I was fifteen to about twenty, I drove a tractor.”
I offered, that I too worked hard as a teenager. I thought to myself, Hung and I have a lot in common.

Then he said, “Many people in my country can’t go to school because they have little to eat. Each day they have to find their own food. Before school I would dive into the river and catch fish to eat. He held his fingers close together to show me how small the fish were.

I thought to myself, maybe different boats.



Mud job in progress.
Click for Larger Image

Mea Culpa

“You’re driving like an idiot.”

Dad’s spontaneous, oh so helpful outburst as Matthew slows at a corner to keep the Mazda on four wheels, but treats the stop sign like it’s a green flag at the Indianapolis 500. I had already kept my mouth shut when he stopped on the crosswalk at the first traffic light, when he nearly “got air” over the railroad tracks and when he flew into the video store’s empty parking lot. But the stop sign pushed me over the edge.
We were on our way to Dan’s birthday party and Matt had again asked if he could drive. He always asks, we always say, yes. But after my gentle admonition I thought, always has been less than a week. Sure he drove for two years in our yard, racing from one end and burying the nose of the car in the bushes at the other end, but that is all of a hundred feet. No lights, no other cars.
Diane summed it up after we got home. She said, “What if we had an incompetent child we were teaching to drive? We barely tell him anything and he’s driving.” And that’s what I had to remind myself, he doesn’t whiz through stop signs or stop on cross walks because he has suddenly became a seasoned Massachusetts driver. He’s a kid learning to drive.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you Matt.” Thinking to myself, how does an idiot drive, anyway?

As I was sitting at my computer thinking about our highway drive home and how accomplished a driver he already is, I saw Matt walking across the front lawn with his friend Joe.

“I got to drive on Route 2. “ he told Joe. I could almost hear the buttons pop.

Evansville

My marriage is a cooperative blend of individual talents. Or survival instincts. I cut the grass; Diane makes sure Matt does his homework. I clean the basement; Diane pays the bills. Once a month or so, I wash Diane’s car, every night she makes dinner. I sleep late, Diane executes every last detail of all our trips, whether it’s to France, Gilsum NH, or to that town on the Ohio River in southern Indiana.

Every January, early, Diane will ask me to call Brian and tell him to get ready for our trip to Evansville. His response is always the same. “Steak, medium rare, potatoes with butter and gravy, iced tea, no vegetable, no dessert.” That is what I hear because whatever his response is, however it is framed, it always sounds like a death row prisoner requesting his last meal.

Brian hates to leave his space, but does so once a year with us, this pilgrimage to visit our parents and Matt’s grandparents. Matthew, Diane and I love it, probably in that order, but Brian has a most comfortable home, not to be duplicated in a far off land. However, once he agrees to go, all he has to do is stand still and wait for the Tsunami named Diane to carry him away. The naked truth is, Matt and I, clinging to our backpacks and surfboards, do the same.

When the time comes, Diane announces the time has come. She searches the net for the cheapest fares, scrambles to book the best rates at the Marriott, arranges for the rental car and continually updates Brian to ensure that he’s standing at his front door when we arrive en route to Logan. Which he always is, carrying not much more than a toothbrush. Diane claims that is when she hears his first sigh.

And, according to Diane, the sighs continue on the plane but reach a crescendo in the rental car returning to the Marriot from our first dinner on Bellemeade Ave. They don’t stop until the sun rises on our first morning’s breakfast at Denny’s. I don’t notice the sighs, but I do see the transformation. Brian, apparently, with the last of his resistance ground to fine dust, inverts the pestle, taps out what remains with his forefinger and comes alive. He starts chatting with the waitress, customers next to us, bellhops, shop owners, labyrinth guides, convicted felons, whomever, and he doesn’t stop until we drop him off on Mt Auburn St. five days later.

I, however, the guy Brian nicknamed Gabby Hayes, become morose and uncommunicative. It’s as if Brian has left his coffin and I’ve climbed in. I spend most of the visit walking in his shadow wondering who the hell this guy is, who so closely resembles, well, me.

It’s not unlike what happens in a marriage. Or so my rationale goes. Diane does the laundry; I don’t have to. She worries, freeing me to make caustic comments about her neuroses. Peter hasn’t been part of these family visits in many years but when he is, I have the best time, because he acts out all of my inner impulses. He reacts to my father’s irritability, I see the stillness of a protected mountain lake. He responds to my mother’s woo woo side, I see Mike Dukakis with a sense of humor. I lie back and enjoy.

The gallery contains fifty-four images taken by both Brian and me. I considered posting only my pictures but found most of my really good photos came from Brian’s camera. Except for the ones that Matthew took.


The Ohio River

Note the post time, Susan.

Plastered

For the plumb and level police, this one was not, like the previous photograph, taken with a fisheye lens. However, it is a composite, poorly done, but illustrative of something. To get an full view of the sunroom, I would need to stand in the hallway, but that would involve knocking out a kitchen wall.

The best part of this job, any job, is having others do the work. Monday, Hung turns the floor into concrete. That reminds me, eighteen bags of sand mix will be delivered tomorrow. Are you home in the morning, Adam?

Van Gogh

Peter and Patti complained about images over-running my text, therefore, I resized all the photos on this page. It is a browser, resolution, monitor size issue; I hope this helps. If you click on the links under Recent Entries, that problem disappears entirely and you'll also see comments listed in order.

Mark Queijo and others want more history of the BMW and I'm hoping a Ruthenburg will send me a paragraph or two that I can include in my short (upcoming) synopsis.

Brian posted on his site, this stunning image of the recent Van Gogh Moon and I had to reproduce it here. To me, it demonstrates his technical skill (as a younger brother it pains me to say that), the limits (as in upper) of the Nikon 5700 and the gift of a mostly clear sky.

I added this unsubscribe link.


Click to Enlarge

Robby's Promise

I don't know about the hug, but here's the cake.



And they ate it.

Sixteen

Matthew, Robby and Nicola, another classmate of Matt’s, were standing in the kitchen, waiting for Nicola’s mom to arrive when Diane turned to Robby and asked, ”Did you know that tomorrow is Matt’s birthday?”
Robby replied, “Yes,” then glanced my way. I had asked him the same question an hour earlier.

Diane followed with, “Are you going to bake him a cake?”
Robby, master of the straight line, said, “Yes, I am.”
I was a few feet away, behind the island and when he said yes, I thought, and that’s not all. I said, “Robby” but almost too softly to be heard.
“You are?” Diane asked with a tone that carried, I wasn’t serious, are you kidding me and isn’t that sweet, in the same short phrase.

I thought I had an opening so I repeated, “Robby.” This time, loud enough to be heard. I was building up to something and soon Matt would tune in, as he always does, before anyone else.
But Robby continued, “Yeah, when he comes to my house I cook for Matt. I’ve made hors d'oeuvres, and other things. I’m going to make him a cake” I knew Robby was telling the truth because once he made me Sushi.

Sensing another pause, I again said, “Robby.”
Matt’s eyes began to dart as if in search of a foxhole.
Robby turned to me and said, ‘Yes?”
“There is one more thing you need to do.” I didn’t finish. I let it linger to see if he could guess what I was about to say. He should have, because it was precisely the advice he gave Matt, in the back seat of Diane’s car when we were returning from our Minuteman trip. Right after Matt called Joe clueless and we wanted Matt to apologize to Joe.

Robby looked puzzled and asked, “What else?”
Matt said, “Run.”
“Robby, are you going to give Matt a hug and tell him you love him?”
Matt blushed when Robby said, “Yes.”
He blushed again when Diane asked Nicola if she were going to give Matt a hug and an I love you and she replied, "First, I want to see Robby do it."

Matt never blushes.

Updated Parts List for the BMW
Inner and outer tie rods (left)
Inner tie rod (right)
Center Linkage
Clutch Plate
Air intake hose
Distributor cap, rotor and ignition wires.
Clutch reservoir cup

Waiting for White

Adam finished many a niggling detail, from the worst areas of ceiling blue board, to the metal corner bead, web taped seams and even the critical floor area that connects the addition to the kitchen. All done with his meticulous attention to detail. Now we wait for Bob Farrell of Lancaster (many of the wedding participants were from Lancaster, interestingly enough), who should arrive and finish this Thursday. Hung Nguyen will appear on Monday to create the inch thick mud job that will provide a level, stable, and durable surface for the tiles. Those will be laid after we install the cabinets.



View from the dining room.

Maiden Voyage

I called Jeffrey in Evansville to ask him if he thought the BMW would make the twelve mile drive to Minuteman High School in Lexington. He didn’t hesitate to say yes, but added, “When you shift into the higher gears, give it gas slowly, the clutch slips.”
With Robby and Joe in the back seat, Matt riding shotgun, and Diane trailing in the Mazda, we turned right out of our driveway, down Central St., past the train station and onto School St. I wanted to stick to my mental map of all back roads to avoid less forgiving state cops on the highway. We weren’t illegal, but we were driving an un-inspected car which meant that if stopped, I’d have some ‘splaining to do.
The lack of a sticker would give us away but speed traps were not going to be a problem. Every time the speedometer needle passed thirty-five, there was a rousing cheer from the back seat, even if it was then noted that we were going downhill, or that the quivering pointer might not be accurate. Later, Diane confirmed a top speed of forty.
I’m sure if we had taken the highway we could have gone faster, but that clutch has been added to Matt’s school to-do list, as well as the steering wheel that seems only remotely connected to the front wheels.
When we finally got to Concord, Matt called Dan to warn him that we would soon be passing his street. An alert perhaps, to queue up behind us, which he did. The first Minuteman gate we came to was locked, the second invitingly open, but when we pulled into the parking lot next to Matt's classroom, horns blaring in celebration, a stern-faced security guard approached. I walked up to him.
“I’m Michael Miller.”
Big deal.
‘Matthew Miller’s father.”
Still not impressed.
“Matthew is taking a course here and his instructor said he could bring his car to be worked on.”
At least that brought words.
“I need a written statement from his teacher, otherwise you can’t park here.”
I thought, boolsheet mon. This may be the most rigidly-ruled and regulated state in the union but we're not turning this parade around. Three harmless looking adults, three boys and a jewel of car created before the guard was born. Besides, the BMW is from Indiana, where there are no rules. He’ll bend.

“What’s the instructor's name?”

“Bruce Flood, “ Matthew replies.

And that was it, the excuse he wanted to suddenly not need that written statement. By the end, he too was smiling as broadly as the rest of us.


Robby and Joe buckle up.



The not too distant future.

Note to Jeffrey:
I returned the battery, but had the same clicking, no crank sound from the new one. I folllowed the positive battery lead back to the coil, found it broken off, and in pulling it back out, contacted the battery ground strap which melted the copper wire in half, fried its insulation and sent a plume of acrid white smoke and hot white sparks billowing from under the hood. Assuming the worst, those boys, like hooked marlin, bolted from the car.

The Wedding

Cat Food

There are still four baby wrens, mostly unresponsive until the mother comes by with daily rations. I hesitate to say this, maybe it's a confession, but back when Skunk was alive not all the babies would fly away. Once I saw Skunk jump up and spill the entire nest onto the porch floor. It's what cats do.

Shifting Gears

Matthew called me from his class. I was hanging blueboard so it took me a minute to answer.
“Dad, we need to register the car.”
I knew what he was asking and why, but it was the consequence that grabbed my attention and I stalled for time.
“Your instructor said so?”
“No, I picked this out of thin air.”
Teenagers don’t tolerate anything but tack-sharp clarity. However, I didn’t want to register it, to begin paying insurance and to know we were that much closer to Matthew driving.
“Why?”
“In case something happens, he wants to have proof of ownership.”
I knew there was more to it than that, the title made the car ours, but I also knew there was no reason to argue. For him to bring his BMW to his auto mechanics class, we would have to make everything nice and legal.

That was Tuesday. Today Diane and I drove to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, title in hand, to pick up our plates. It was easy except that Diane was tired, the woman behind the desk not too bright and the car befuddling because of its age. Finally they placed the value of the BMW at two thousand dollars. We handed over a check for $186.00 and left.

Coming soon: April in Evanvsville.




Lobby of the Evansville Marriott. Photo courtesy of Brian Miller

One Blue Egg

I think these are baby wrens. They have a nest in one of our porch hanging plants and Diane and I check up on them when we water. This photo is posted for balance, to balance the boys with guns pics below, to restore the gentle order of this web site. Wondering if Horrified in Wacton and Aghast feel better.

BMW update::

Matt is taking an auto mechanics class at Minuteman High School in Lexington. It’s an everyday, half day class, for the month of July. We forced him into it, as a way to keep him off the street, out of trouble and out of the slammer. His first day he had that, I can’t believe I’m going to summer school, look. After the second day, he said, “ I love auto mechanics.”

I thought, good, but don’t like it too much. Remember what Rick from Trusty Transport said, “Finish college or you’ll end up a truck driver like me.” I don’t think he disliked driving trucks but long haul takes him away from his family. Anyway.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because the smart boy asked his instructor if he could bring his BMW to class and the guy said, “Sure, we’ll work on it together.” How great is that? How great is it that Matthew so loves his car, my car, he tells everyone. It is as though both the car and the boy have been reborn.

Boo

I crawled out of our tent at about 2 AM and turned my flashlight in the direction of the boys’ campsite. Matt, Robby Nadler and Chris Grosjean were three hundred yards away, up a steep hill and beyond a thick, wet spring-nurtured, canopy of green. I assumed they didn’t see the light and I went back to sleep.
The next morning Matt asked, “Did you shine your flashlight at us last night?”
“That would have been me,” I replied.
“You freaked us out.”

Good, I thought to myself, mission accomplished.

Later, during breakfast (bacon, pancakes -tasty if I don’t say so myself- and eggs), Chris asked, “Was that you with the light last night?”
Matt interrupted me, “It was, I already asked him.”
But Chris continued, “We thought so. We sneaked into the woods and waited to attack you.”

When Matt was younger, I always haunted his tent, and successfully, I might add. Especially the years following the discovery of bear claw marks on the tree next to where he and the foster boys from next door would setup camp. I guess I picked tender targets, those foster boys, but that’s a story for someone else to write. I blame my penchant to terrorize on my brother Brian. He scared the bejesus out of Glenn, Arnold and me, one night when we were younger than Matt. And, we were sleeping in a tent in our yard in Westwood, a safe suburb of Cincinnati, with enough houses to slow a German Panzer division. We continued to be terrified even after we heard my mother yell, “Brian, get in here!”

When Peter and Eileen lived in Ed’s cabin in the early eighties, I would arrive unannounced, late at night, and tip toe around the outside of their cabin making scratching noises. From the inside with the lanterns on, you are as vulnerable as a freshly hatched Robin.

But that movie is over. The credits have rolled, I’ve dropped my popcorn box and left the theater. As I said to Chris, “I would have to be insane to sneak up on three boys with BB guns in the dark.” Think about it. They would have to be absolutely certain that the sounds they were hearing were mine not to open up with an obliterating barrage of BB’s. They were shooting at the hoot of an owl for gods sake.

Even knowing it was me, I’m not confident they wouldn’t shoot.







For a more benign view of the woods click here A new window will open.

Serial marathon

When we began this project several months ago, there was a loose understanding that hours of labor required and overall duration would diverge notably. It was also understood that Adam would have to put his own shoulder mightily to the wheel, unable to afford Michael doing all of the work. But even hindsight isn't all that clear on the trajectory now........

Yesterday Adam walked out into this newly yellow cube and strapped on his toolbelt to make ready for Mike's next push -- blueboard. Meanwhile, Mike took himself and his family all the way to Gilsum, NH and refreshing Spoon's Pond to distance himself from this now "boring and bankrupt" albatross, and to breathe fresh, clean air into lungs recently polluted by the insidious filaments of fiberglass. Adam looked around the warm, humid confines and gathered the strays of his will together. And had an epiphany.

In early demo, Michael had carefully dismantled the kitchen floor duct, located in the slider wall to be demolished, and had stuffed fiberglass into it to keep debris out. Thus had it stayed, momentarily forgotten. With the rest of the Kibbe household now on central A/C, this duct languished, merely adding pressure, perhaps, to the rest of the household. But Adam saw that it was on the addition side....... Seconds later, an invisible fountain of cool air spewed up into the strata of heat and began to work magic.

Buoyed by this shift, both of temperature and of attitude, Adam plowed into the task at hand -- applying strapping to the trayed, hip ceiling. A critical task, as its joinery sets the stage for the blueboard, on which will be writ in the plasterer's hand with skimcoat the lines and angles of Adam's vision. All went swimmingly for 4 or 5 hours until Adam ran short of strapping less than 20 cuts and 16' from completion.

No matter, a quick trip into Home Depot for some 1 x 3 and exterior caulk (for other tasks) after the Sunday paper, and he was back at it, finishing in time to watch the Western open be put lengthily into time delay twice on account of thunder and lightning, with Tiger in a commanding lead (yeah, Adam sometimes watches golf, the putz). The stage is now in readiness for the beginning of the end, as one of the last items of gross construction comes to an end, and finish materials begin to take sway. Outside, final spackling and caulking makes ready for finish paint; inside one can begin to dream of paint. And of tile, lights, furniture, music.......

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.......

Lines of strapping 1' apart trace the shape of the hip tray. Have at it, Mike!

Flesh & Blood

The website for Trusty Transport, the company bringing Matthew’s BMW, claimed door to door service. But when Jeff called from Evansville to say that Rick couldn’t drive to his house, and that he had to pick an abandoned K-Mart parking lot, I knew there would be no front-of-my-house delivery. Luckily, we live a mere two miles from a major highway and it was there that I directed Rick, with his seventy-six foot long, fourteen foot high truck, to meet us. Just off route 2, on Central St., in the Tech Central parking lot.

A mere two miles as a registered, licensed driver drives, a hellava long way if you’re towing your own flesh and blood.

Thinking I was going to reassure him, I walked back to Matthew sitting in the BMW and said,
“Matt, there are four things that can happen. And only four.
You’ll go straight, you’ll turn right (into our driveway), we might pull over to the side of road, and related to number three, we might get stopped by the police. That is it. No left turns, u-turns, stopping for gas, or whistling at friends. Oh, and one more thing, you have to have the engine on.”

“What are you talking about?” Matt asked with that, I ‘m only fifteen and you’ve already put my life in jeopardy more times than I can count, look.

I said, “Trust me,” thinking this was different from the moose and her calf in Alaska. I didn’t know the calf was going to walk within petting distance, right between the picnic table where we sat and the RV where Diane was safely ensconced. And as far as all those other events, the changing table, the high chair, the swing, the ice cube are concerned, you’ll have to discuss those with your shrink, I don’t have time now.

The truth is, I was worried about my tow rope breaking and he needed to be ready to drive to the side of the road, but for some reason I couldn’t tell him that. I didn’t want him to be more concerned than he already was
about: steering a car towed through Acton, at fifteen, with no license, with Indiana plates that expired in 1999. And did I mention, no driving experience other than our side yard and moments before, the parking lot where Rick from Trusty deposited the car?

With the yellow tow rope tied between my commercial-grade tow hitch and the wire loop on the front of the BMW that resembled my belt buckle, I told Matt we would practice in the parking lot. Which we did. We made one circle at which time, like Ward Bond in the classic fifties western, Wagonmaster, I thrust my left arm out the window, hoped that Matt in his tiny car two feet behind my rear bumper could see, and shouted - FORWARD HO. As he pointed out later, it wasn’t enough practice. As I admitted only to myself, it wasn’t about his comfort, it was all about me getting brave enough to hit the road. One loop and away we went, directly into the path of a landscaping dump truck.

Rattling in my brain was Jeffrey’s comment about how he had to drive past an Evansville cop. It was relevant because on the way to Tech Central Matt and I passed an Acton cop in the cemetery near our house, waiting for speeders. That’s when I thought to myself, way out of shouting, maybe even telepathic distance, “Matt there’s a fifth thing I need to tell you. If that cop comes out of the cemetery after us, I’m not stopping until we get home.” I’d rather talk to him in my driveway, not on the road where I would have to pay a tow truck to move the car a block. What kind of self preservation instinct would prevail, I wondered? Would Matt see the flashing blue light and try to stop, thereby leaving his engine on Central St., or would he follow his father who would appear to be fleeing (tho slow mo, ala you know who) justice?

I did my best to stay ahead of the landscaping truck, and in my rear view mirror, and Matthew’s too, the driver exhibited the patience of an out-of-stater. Maybe he was enthralled by what he was watching, I don’t know. I do know that at times I would speed up, out of respect for the truck driver, and at others I’d slow to a crawl, not wanting to attract attention. Matthew said I mostly swerved.

Our one stop, the traffic light at Rt. 111, worried me the most. Matthew was two feet behind me, and his only warning would be my brake lights. I had no choice but to trust his video game honed reflexes, and when I slowed to a stop, he did too. Flawlessly. When we got to the cemetery and saw only gravestones, I knew we were home free. And when we pulled into the driveway, my smile was eclipsed by Matthew’s, or was that a demonic, you’ll never do anything like this to me again, grin.


If Matthew had a choice, it would have been the red '86 Porche.




I drove this car thirty-five years ago. Where is Rod Serling?

Tufts

Dan tells me that he's been working eighteen hour days on his brand new Tufts contract that will provide him with work for the summer, and then he sends me this picture.

All Yellow

I get up every morning at 5:20 and the first thing I do is surf to movabletype.com and read other blogs. Many are extraordinary in content and design but far too many are self-indulgent online diaries with insipid descriptions of daily events. The first one I read this morning described getting up and reading other blogs.
Insulating is by far the worst part of a job. Worse than the initial demo, foundation digging, or even what is about to come, blueboard hanging.
Itchy inhaled glass fibers in an enclosed, unventilated space. I’d rather drink Draino; the end would come sooner.
I lied to Matt and Robby, I told them this was going to be easy and we’d be done in half a day. It was difficult and it took us almost all day. And, I was grouchy, I heard nothing they said, and in spite of their usual good work, could only see their mistakes.
On our drive home, I relaxed, while the boys planned their showers. After Matt took his, he went to bed. I don’t expect to see him until tomorrow.
We passed our wiring, and rough inpections and today we'll pass the insulation inspection.
The building inpector, who runs into far too many builders clueless about alternatives to wood, wished others could see Adam's creative tie rod design.


Update: Chris from Trusty Transport called from Pennsylvania to say he had Matt's BMW and would arrive in Acton sometime this morning. Our sketchy plan is that he'll drop the car somewhere near the Rt 2 exit, and with Matt at the wheel, I'll tow it home.



Insulation is in and the boys have changed from their long sleeves. All that is left is stappling the plastic vapor barrier.



Certainteed is yellow, Owens Corning, pink.



Mark Garabedian painting the outside.

Margret

I’m not sure it was entirely coincidental, but this site was sent by someone related to me.
http://www.thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com/

Random samples:

We're staying at a German friend's flat in Berlin and he brings out the photo album, as people do when conversational desperation has set in. It's largely pictures of a holiday he went on with Margret and a few friends several years previously. And consists pretty much entirely of shots of Margret naked. 'Hah! So, here's another photo of your girlfriend nude! Good breasts, no?' I sat on the sofa for hours of this - I think I actually bit through my tongue at one point. Fortunately, though, everything turned out all right because Margret, me and one careful and considered exchange of views revealed it was, '...just (my) hang-up.' Great. I'm sooooo English, apparently.

Margret flooded the kitchen last week. Turned the taps on, put the plug in the sink, and utterly forgot about it (because she'd come upstairs and we'd got involved in an unrelated argument). She goes back downstairs, opens the door and - whoosh - it's Sea World. The interesting thing about this is, if I'd flooded the kitchen, it would have been a bellowing, 'You've flooded the kitchen, you idiot!' and then she'd have done that thing where I curl up in a ball, trying to protect my head, and she kicks me repeatedly in the kidneys. As it was, however, there's a shout, I run downstairs and stand for a beat in the doorway - taking in the scene, waves lapping gently at my ankles - and she turns round and roars, 'Well, help me then - can't you see I've flooded the kitchen, you idiot?'

Margret's four-hundred-and-fifty-second most annoying habit is to stealthily turn off the central heating (then light the gas fire in the room she's in, natch). I'll suddenly notice that, sitting typing at the keyboard, I can see my own breath while from the bedroom one of the kids will call out, 'Papa, I can't feel my legs...' And I'll shiver down the stairs to find the central heating set to 'Summer/Hypothermia/Cryogenic Suspension,' and Margret in the living room watching the TV in a door frame warping furnace.

Our sink is blue and we're not talking about it. It happened over a week ago; I was leaning over the sink, brushing my teeth, when I noticed that there was a sort of lazuline patina that had seeped over most of the surface. Margret hasn't mentioned anything about this. Why she hasn't is that she's obviously tried to clean the sink with, well, I don't know, some fluid used for stripping entrenched cerriped colonies from the hulls of submarines or something (they were probably offering three bottles of the stuff for the price of two at Aldi). She is waiting for me to mention it. But I am a wily fox, and will be doing nothing of the sort. I'm no wet-behind-the-ears, naive youth anymore, not by a looooong way, and I can perfectly see the spiked pit the seemingly innocent words, 'Did you know the sink's blue' are covering. It would go - precisely - like this:
Me: Did you know the sink's blue?
Margret: Yes. I did. I used a jungle exfoliant produced by the Taiwanese military to clean it, and it discoloured the surface.
Me: Oooooooo. K.
Margret: Well maybe, just maybe, if you cleaned the sink once in a while...
You see what she did there? Now I'm facing a whole day of 'When did you last...?' Well, not this canny fellow - not this time, my friends.
Our sink is blue and we're not talking about it.

Margret thinks I'm vain because... I use a mirror when I shave. During this argument in the bathroom - our fourth most popular location for arguments, it will delight and charm you to learn - Margret proved that shaving with a mirror could only be seen as outrageous narcissism by saying, 'None of the other men I've been with,' (my, but it's all I can do to stop myself hugging her when she begins sentences like that) 'None of the other men I've been with used a mirror to shave.'
'Ha! Difficult to check up on that, isn't it? As all the other men you've been with can now only communicate by blinking their eyes!' I said. Much later. When Margret had left the house.