Just another day in the neighborhood

Dear diary,

Yesterday I re-wired a whole house. I built an addition on the back of a client’s house, and I even laid the cinder blocks of the addition’s foundation. And there were various parts of the yard where concrete needed to be poured, because the owners were transforming their property into an outdoor recreation center; so I bought a concrete mixer truck and finished that job too.

The reason I had to re-wire the whole house after building the addition — which, by the way, I also drew up the blueprints for (I studied architecture in college) — is that when the house was originally built (by one of my sons from one of my many marriages) they made the thing entirely electric. I mean, they thot it would be a good idea to avoid using natural gas to heat the place. But when I asked to see one of their electric bills, it said $300 dollars. So I called my comrade Gibbs, who lives across the street and happens to work as a supervisor at the gas company, and I said:

“Bring your boys over to this place that I’m working on.”

And Gibbs said, “My boys?”

And I said, “Don’t you have a team of boys who can dig trenches and lay piping? Am I talking to the right Gibbs? Aren’t you the foreman at Midwest Energy?”

And Gibbs said, “Sorry, Bry; at first, you didn’t sound serious. So you really got a house that needs the full treatment?”

And I said, “Yep.”

So Gibbs’ team brought the gas line up to the house, and I ran it up to the addition and then down to the utilities room.

And I removed that electric fireplace that they had been using as a decorative solution to the long Minnesota winters: the thing was connected by just two screws. So I tossed it off the roof, and it landed right in the trash bin.

Now this house that I was working on was three stories high, so I had to build my own scaffolding to access the roof. (There was some spare wood lying around the site, most of which was rotted; but sometimes you gotta make do with what’s available.) So I put the first story of the scaffolding together and I climbed up on top of it...

At that point, my wife from Inver Grove comes out the back door and yells “Be careful!”

And I say, “Ingrid? Is that you? Why are you not at our place in Inver Grove?”

And she sez, “I’m a friend of this couple who owns this place. I’m spending the night. Also I’m concerned about your safety. What are our three kids gonna eat if their father’s an invalid? You’re too cheap to buy insurance, so if you fall you’re gonna be bankrupt from the medical bills. Plus that wood looks rotten. Is that treated lumber on your little latticework there?”

“No, it’s not treated; I used the scrap from this heap over here. I’ll be fine; I know what I’m doing.”

“Well are you at least gonna tie it to secure it?”

But I just ignore her; so my wife from Inver Grove goes back inside.

So I built my second story to the scaffolding and climbed up. Then Ingrid comes out of the house with her arms akimbo and yells:

“Aren’t you gonna tie it to the house?”

And I yell back, “I’ll tie it when I’m good and ready.”

Then she goes back inside again, and the porch door slams.

Now I construct a third story for my wooden scaffolding, and I don’t bother to secure it to the house, cuz I can tell it’s fine how it is. Then I begin to climb up…

But when I reach the second story, the structure begins to wobble. So my wife, who was apparently watching me like a hawk this whole time, comes bursting out of the house again and sez:

“It’s not sturdy. You’re gonna fall, and then your children won’t have a father.”

But I just wave her off and continue climbing. (I’m a patient man.) Then I reach the top, the third story; and I begin to hammer on the roof. Yet while I’m pounding, the scaffold begins to lean away from the house. Pretty soon the whole thing is toppling over and falling. But when it hits the ground, I just duck and roll: I get up and dust myself off and am not hurt at all. I’m not even sore.

Now Ingrid hastens outside cuz she heard the creaking and snapping and crashing of the wood. She shakes her head and keeps breathing short and quick. I can’t tell if she’s relieved or disappointed to see that I’m OK.

But whatever her hangup was, she got over it, cuz when I go to visit her and the kids later that weekend, she lets me in. And I use this occasion to teach my youngest how to use a ladder:

We climb up on the roof (our place in Inver Grove is only a single story), and then the wind comes in a big gust and blows the ladder sideways and knocks it down to the ground, leaving us stranded up there. So I change plans and use this occasion to teach my little boy how to duck and roll:

First I leap and, just before impact, while still in the air, I tuck my head and wrap my arms around my legs; then I hit the ground and roll forward to safety. And there’s a shed nearby which serves to halt my momentum. Then I turn and wave to my son, and tell him to do the same.

“Good boy!” I say. “You’re a natural!” And my son smiles. (My son is eighteen months old. His sister is three. I forgot how old the eldest is. And I forgot all their names.)

And our backyard — I’m talking about my own place now, not my house in Inver Grove, and not the client’s house that I recently re-wired and constructed an addition for — I say, my main house’s backyard is vast; it’s not quite half an acre, but it’s large; so, about five years ago, I drew up some plans and built a sun-fort and a little cottage-barn right outside our rear window. But both of these extra structures ended up collapsing, because the ground is basically sand here; plus I used the wrong materials to build the walls; so I had to haul all my stuff back out of each of them — cuz I was using both places as storage. Then I planted some ferns and some hostas around the perimeter of the fallen structures, and along the path that leads from my deck stairway to the kids’ plastic swimming pool.

Plus I mowed the lawn of the vacant house next door, so that it doesn’t look so uninhabited. Cuz if the grass is long and there’s piles of twigs all over, then people from the city will come and notice it. I know every single car that drives up & down this street, and I can tell which ones belong to us residents; and, let me tell you, there are a lot of non-local cars from the city that pass by. And these city folks — if they notice a vacant house, they’ll make plans to return later that evening, and they’ll either vandalize the place, or they’ll move in and throw parties there, where they sing songs with all their friends while programming computers. Then if anyone ever buys the place, they’ll be shocked when they open the door and see plant dirt all over the stairs, and the garage is filled with trash. All the tiles in the lower bathroom will be coming off the wall because it wasn’t properly waterproofed, and the wood of the subfloor will be soft, and there’s mold everywhere. Then, when the new homeowner goes to turn on the water, they’ll hear a loud gushing sound coming from the basement, and they’ll run down there to discover what’s causing the noise, and they’ll just about faint when they see that all the copper pipes have been cut away and stolen; so there’s water spraying out all over the house. Cuz copper fetches a high price nowadays.

So then they’ll have a lot of soldering to do, to remedy that. Or you could use the pressure fittings and just tighten them with a wrench, if you’re not comfortable working with a blowtorch. But the pipes around here are a unique size that are hard to find joiners for, so I would advise against that.

And I would tell the house’s new owner that the previous owner barely ever was home — I almost never saw him. He was overweight, and he went on vacations all the time; and he never trimmed his trees, cuz he was afraid of heights (unlike me).

Now if your own house is the one just south of that abandoned eyesore, then I can assure you that the old man who was pressing his face to your window last week was only looking for a place to rent for his daughter; so that’s nothing to worry about — he’s not aiming to cause you any harm or trouble. He was just doing some scouting, hoping to find a good deal. Most of the people who live around here are nice and just want to help. Even if there weren’t a killer virus on the loose, they’d be happy to lend a hand; especially if whatever you need them to do is a task that they’re already an expert at, like hauling sheetrock.

However, if you ask them to balance on unfinished frames at great heights, then they’ll need a moment to get their bearings before continuing; because, once they’re up there, they’ll take one look down and see how far up they’ve climbed, and it’ll hit them — they’ll think to themselves: “Jeez! I could fall, if I trip while hauling this sheetrock!” And most people who fall even from one single story are sore the next day; because the sheetrock descends along with you and complicates your landing.