In 1968 I showed my father an article in Car and Driver by Brock Yates. It was that review of the BMW 2002 that prompted him to buy this car, which will be picked up today in Evansville, loaded onto a seventy-six foot tractor trailer, and then dropped off here in Acton later this week. The history of the car could best be written by a Ruthenburg, probably Travis. It lived with them for at least fifteen years.
Matthew has dreams of restoring it and some day driving it to school. His father hopes that when it is drivable, Matthew only drives it to antique auto shows, nearby, in the very early morning hours when there is no other traffic on the road. Lap belt, no air bags, hard dash, etc.

“You can write it but only if you add that I never take a vacation, I never ask to go to France, all I want is that he take care of my boys.”

Mark and I were finishing toasted chicken, cheese and tomato sandwiches Jan made for lunch, and we were about to go back to work. It was ninety something, and on the roof, with the sun heating up and reflecting off the shingles, it had to be, as the DJ on ZLX would say, over a buck.

As the day wore on and we wore down, the shingles would become too hot to sit on, and our shingle cutting knives, made from metal, too hot to touch. From the beginning, when we met at 6:45 AM at the transfer station to dump old roofing material, I knew this day would be brutal. The sun was full and glowing a hazy orange, as if partially obscured by water vapor. Imagine Ethiopia without the bleached wildebeest bones.

I decided early, that to get to the end of the day, not necessarily to get finished, would be an honorable goal. Mark and I both like the heat, but this brought memories of summer roofing work in Evansville, almost as hot, almost as humid, but I’m no longer almost as young.

After emptying Mark’s trailer, stopping at Home Depot and Maki’s lumber for stock, we turned into 63 Grimes at 8:30 AM. I always look forward to Jan’s hug, but when we walked into the house we were greeted by only “the boys” – their four dogs. I followed Mark downstairs to the back slider and out into the yard and somehow, Rudy, one of the German Shepherds, squeezed out of the door and out of the yard. He has done this before, crafty explorer he, in fact, he escaped the last time I was there. Maybe, as Mark says, it is me. Anyway, that means Jan has to drive off, find Rudy and bring him back. But at this point, we didn’t even know he was gone.
Mark and I walked back to my truck and hauled our materials and tools to the roof to begin work. Our lumber yard trips meant we were starting late and already the heat was oppressive.

As everyone knows, I am a freak of nature. I grew up in hot, humid weather; I like the heat and I know how cope with it. My father taught me. His lesson, hard to understand at the time, was simple. Wear long sleeved shirts. Which I do, with heavy denim pants, socks and zero degree insulated boots. Okay, he didn’t say anything about the pants and boots, but if you wear long sleeved shirts you will, by god, sweat until the shirt is soaked, and in the evaporative process, you’ll stay cool. Or cooler. Try it. The second lesson, learned even later, is to force fluids. If you are not peeing, you are not drinking enough. I made many trips to the edge of the roof to water the plants below and I’m sure my random question asked much later, have you peed lately, made Mark wonder.

As I was pouring more water down my throat, call it an early fill-up, I looked over the roof ridge to see Jan, with determined gait, walking to her car. I shouted, “Hi,” but got a half smile in return. I went back to work, and a few minutes later, I realized she was driving back down the long driveway. Not gone long, where she went I didn’t know, but Mark, looking up, said, ” I’ve got to see why Jan is mad at me.” I thought to myself, how do you know she’s mad? How do you know anything, she’s in her car? Clairvoyant couple? But work and heat was all consuming and I paid it little attention.

Mark walked back up the roof, said something about how Rudy had escaped, and then continued to replace what we had torn away the week before. We knew that far off, the laying of shingles would signal the plausible end of the day. If, that is, we were still standing. I thought I would be, but I was not so sure about Mark: the non-water swilling, sweating, beet red, man in shorts and T-shirt.

Unlike the tear-off under the blue tarp in the rain, this was fun, similar to nailing pieces of a jig saw puzzle together. First a layer of plywood, cut in various shapes, then two inch thick rigid insulation, followed by a layer of roofing felt, more plywood, then black, rubbery, ice and water shield, more roofing felt, then finally, those sticky with hot tar, shingles.

It was now past noon, and as Mark always does, he set an arbitrary millstone to be met before our break. “Let’s finish laying the sheathing, then stop for lunch.” I might add that he had brilliantly filled his hot tub with cold water. There, we were to find respite from the heat, but in our hurry we never used it.

By now, Mark’s appearance was beginning to worry me. He was soaked with sweat, his eyes sunken like bathtub drains, and I thought neither Mimi nor Ned could have looked this bad. But he, more than any of us, is a workaholic. He slowed down, because he couldn’t force himself to move any faster, but he never stopped. We were going to finish the roof even if the last bang of the last nail killed him.

As I pushed the jug of water in his direction, I asked, “Mark, how did you know Jan was mad at you?”

“Rudy got out.”

Reminded of Matthew trying to count the number of hours he had been painting, I asked again, “No, I know that. I said how did you know she was mad at you? She was in the car.”

“She gave me the finger.”

“Oh,” I replied. Body language even I could understand.

If either Diane or I gave the other the finger that would be the end of the relationship. Carve the tombstone “They Were a Loving Couple, but No More.” Diane frowns, I know it’s my fault; I twitch and she thinks I’ve accused her of bad parenting. We are the BMW to the Queijo off road SUV. And believe me, I would rather our marriage have their kind of elbow room. However, I do think it harmless that Rudy wanders. But then Diane decides to go to Hawaii and our cat croaks, so go figure.

Addendum:

Mark said, “I really love reading your web logs. I don’t know if it’s because the writing is good, or because I know the situations and the people in them.” Well, Mark, which is it?



Mini Gallery

I begged Matthew to help me on Thursday at Adam’s but he simply and unequivocally said, no.

Coming Sunday, “True Love.”

Today, I helped Robby and Matthew install a stockade fence in Weston at Polly’s house. I never would have taken the job without them; I’m so far beyond digging in New England soil, and this fence needed eight holes, each better than a foot and half deep. The first hole, Matthew’s introduction to what the glacier left behind, took an hour to dig.

With Matt grumbling, and temps in the nineties, I decided an incentive was needed. I offered ten dollars an hour, but only if the job was finished today. I remembered it took Bill and me almost a day to install half the number of sections at Henry’s. I also knew Polly had already bought spruce instead of cedar, and wouldn’t want to pay us for another partial day.

That prompted Matthew to ask, “So dad, if you can pay us that much, how much are you making for this job?” I half lied, “I don’t know yet, I haven’t billed Polly.”

I drove to Home Depot to hide from the heat and to buy concrete to fill our holes and when I returned, the boys were digging furiously. Four holes complete and another four well into the strata of rocks. That’s when Matt greeted me with, “Dad, we’ve decided to cut you out.”

There you have it. The blue collar workers with white collar instincts, passed right by forming a union, straight to a hostile takeover.

Boys drenched with sweat. For a better view of their excellent creation click on the photo.

“I can’t do anymore.”
“Anymore what?”
“I can’t paint anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve been painting for nine hours. I can’t paint anymore.”
“Nine hours? We got here at 8”
“7:30”
“Right. But it’s only 2:30 now.”
Both of us quickly raise our hands, fingers extended. I use
my left hand to count full hours.
Matt begins, “8:30, 9:30, 10:30, 1:30…”
“I say, 1:30?”
“He begins again and this time finishes with seven fingers.
“See,” says me, “seven hours and a half hour for lunch (which we didn’t take because who wants to linger over leftover sole and a ham sandwich).
“How about if I help you paint?”
And that did help.
We both painted for another hour before Matt cleaned
and carried various tools back to my truck. And I have to admit,
no matter whose hand you are counting on, eight hours is
a long day.

Click for the full screen version.

I had to add one more photo of Mark’s roof. If you look closely, you can see the area around the chimney that needed to be removed. Friday, we’ll put it all back together but in the meantime, both Mark and Jan wrote to tell me that the roof leaked like a sieve during Saturday’s rainstorm. This in spite of a new, non-holy tarp. From Jan: “Well, the roof started leaking quite a bit last night around dinner time. Mark had a panic attack and started yelling (yes, he DID!) and went up on the roof to “fix” the dreaded blue tarp. We had about 10 towels and 3 big pots collecting reddish brown water all night. This morning I took up the towels to wash them, but I think I’ll put them back this afternoon. Thunder storms are predicted (of course). ”

Sitting around the campfire with Matt’s friends, Daryl, Robbie and Joe, Matt looked up at me and said, ” Dad, where did you get that sweater?” “It was Steven Varga’s. He gave it to me,” I answered. In the movie Seven Samurai, Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune) plucks a fly out of the air with his chopsticks. Matthew is equally precise with his words, so I knew I was not yet dispensed with. An hour later, after Daryl grilled the first hamburger, ” Dad, you don’t have the same taste as Steven Varga.”

I wear it because it reminds me of Mort in the Bazooka Joe comics.

The Wanderer
I told Diane that we would meet her at the dock in an hour, thinking even if we got lost, we’d be there just after lunch. There are three, actually four ways to get to Spoons Pond from the cabin.The easiest is to walk back down the path we now successfully drive up, past the Littells, to the end of Beech Lane and then hang a left. If you’re not enticed by the two intersecting roads you’ll walk right into the water. Or, you can walk down the path, and take a short cut through the woods, behind the Littells, cutting five minutes or so from the trip. The third way is to walk in the opposite direction, back past the garden at the top of the hill, and then make an educated beeline through the woods to the pond. I remember Peter and I wandering off in that direction one day, me in my flip flops, both of us somewhere other than in our brains, and never finding the pond.
Here is Matt, confident that he could lead us through the woods, claiming to have come this way before (with me and living to tell about it? I think not). I’m following at a safe distance, compass and journal in hand. Afterall I had promised three sets of parents I’d bring their boys back, and if I fail, I want to have copious notes for a good story.
We might have been in the woods for ten minutes before we came to the backside of a cabin, near which was a slight rise with a copse of pine trees. Matt said, “The pond is over that hill.” We walked up, over and down and right out onto the dock, fifty minutes before Diane.

Confident boys stride ahead; skeptic note taker trails behind.

Trust me, the red arrow points to Daryl’s red shirt.
Gallery

An addendum to Wednesday and Matt’s work.
Matthew has worked with levels before, therefore I didn’t take the time to explain how the bubble must rest with each edge touching an outside line.When I climbed up on his plank to check his progress, I could see that a board or two had a bit of a downward slope. As he watched me scrutinizing his work, he said, the siding is “nearly perfect.” I responded, there is “nearly perfect,’ and there is “perfect.” This has to “perfect.” We adjusted those that weren’t and I climbed down to resume cutting.
Matthew nailed another row of boards, these to the right of the bay window.
When I stood back to look at his work, he jumped up, placed the level under each board and exclaimed, “magnificent,” “awesome,” unbelievable.”

Friday, I drove to Hubbarston to help Mark Queijo fix his leaky roof. The chimney was streaked with water stains, and there was a tidy pile of saw dust on the floor that spoke of opportunistic carpenter ants, but I assumed the problem would be isolated and easily repaired. I was wrong. We worked all day, cut out over a hundred feet of roof sheathing and rigid insulation beneath it, and I’ll have to return another day to help put it all back together.
But that is not why I’m writing this. As soon as I climbed into my truck Thursday morning, it began to rain. Which meant, we again had to work, stooped, under blue tarps.

I hallelujahed too soon. The rains returned and with them the blue tarps, and all the complications of hiding from the wet and working in 100% humidity. The primer, for one, that Matt and I applied to the back side of the cedar siding never dried, leaving us and our tools covered in white paint. Mark Queijo, reading this as he always does at 6AM, just woke up. He knows that one of those so-called “our tools,” is his chop saw and aluminum stand. Think of it this way Mark, what was black is now white.
Matt’s school year ended Wednesday, and Thursday there he was under tarps, with hammer in hand, nailing siding I cut to length. His help sped the process immensely and when we finished for the day, I stood back and said, “Look at all we’ve done.” To which he replied, “What do you mean, we?”
But before we got to the stand back and admire stage, well into the part of the day where mistakes are made (concerned reader alert, he still has all of his fingers), I heard him groan. To which I responded, what’s up? I envisioned siding that didn’t join at the corner boards, or a crack in the nearby glass of the bay window. He replied, “Oh, nothing.” I said, “what do you mean ‘Oh, nothing?’ ” We all know teenagers, words arrive in packet-fashion, as if transmitted by a 1200 baud modem. I should have left it at that but I continued to pry until he muttered, “Shoddy cutting.” I then yelled, “What do you mean, shoddy cutting.” But this time he really was finished talking. I accepted it as time to replace the blade on Mark’s chop saw. Maybe I can get Mark to buy a new one. How about if I clean off the white paint?

I find blue tarps irritating. They should bring memories of camaraderie. After all, we spend so much time under them in Maine during our fall camping trips. And maybe that is the problem, so much time, so many years hiding from the snow and rain, being forced to dance around the fire as funneled wind blows smoke in our faces. Looking at my canoe, the failed maze of copper tubing that was going to provide hot water for our hot tub, even my ubiquitous denim jacket, those bring back good memories. Tarps just block our view.
The roofers returned for the last time on Thursday, to finish the tricky skylight detail, to install the gutters and best of all to remove our blue tarps. They are folded and ready to be put back in storage for next fall.
This new format may or may not last. It is MOVABLE TYPE’S web log software that will theoretically allow easier updates, show how cool and current I am, and provide space for comments.
Normally, when I cross Matt’s radar screen, and I could be a block away, out of sight, he pauses, mumbles loser, then resumes whatever it was he was doing. Yesterday’s Father’s Day card.

June 7, framing the deck

Any old day, water torture

Hallelujah