Clear Heart Blog

365 Jobs: Storms (Three) Like a Moody God

2012-01-27T11:11:00.000-08:00

Saturday, December 3, 1983

From a deep sleep I awake in darkness. The power has gone out. I don't know why, but whenever the electricity stops flowing in the night, I immediately wake up. Maybe it's the sudden complete lack of light. Or of background hum. Or of magnetic force fields, to which we are subconsciously tuned. Me, I'm betting on the force field theory, but when I say so, my friends always roll their eyes.

Through blackness I hear trees bending in the wind. In the redwood forest, the sound is a rush: Rush-h-h. Rush-h-h. I throw on a bathrobe and step outside, barefoot, with a flashlight. Rush-h-h. Rush-h-h. Groan… CRACK!

Yikes. In the dark a tree is falling — that sickening sliding sound of branch against branch— and I'm standing out here. Where is it? Desperately I whip the flashlight beam in a circle above me.

Whump.

Below the house, across the street. An old redwood, diseased, damaged long ago by roadwork. It brought down a utility pole. A live wire dances, sparking.

Inside I call PG&E and the Fire Brigade, then return outside and place orange cones that I'd collected for soccer practice. I stand in the road, flashlight bobbing, until the fire crew arrives.

Dawn finds me sitting at the table with two lit candles and a cup of steaming coffee, surrounded outside the window by sequoia, dozens thrusting at the sky. My hand still shakes as I write:

Like a Moody God

Last night
when you threatened to kill me
I realized how much
I love you.
To you I am just another little beast
among the chipmunks and chickadees
who you nourish with seed
as you feed my spirit.
In your height you create the fog
and then drink it.
You are a lesson in forgiveness
as you shrug off abuse
for centuries;
in wrath
as you will finally drop devastation
with a final groan,
no apology.

365 Jobs: Storms (Two) Helping the Next Guy

2012-01-26T11:28:00.000-08:00

Saturday, January 22, 1983

In this endless El Niño winter there's a savage storm today, raining buckets, trees bending and roaring. A roadside ditch is blocked. Water is gushing across the roadway, down a hill and into my neighbor Mark's kitchen. He's out in the rain with a pick and shovel, desperately trying to clear the culvert where the water is supposed to stream under somebody's driveway. Mark looks like a madman plastered with rain.

I bring out my six foot steel bar, which is pointed at one end like a sixty-pound spear. Mark brings the rod over his head and then smashes it down again and again, poking holes through the driveway under which the culvert passes. I shovel debris. The blockage is cleared - and a third of the driveway is destroyed, stabbed to shreds by Mark and his heavy spear.

From helping Mark, I'm late leaving for work. My son Jesse, age six, wants to come along, just for the ride. He sits beside me in the cab of the truck listening to the radio as we drive an hour and a half through lashing gusty squalls across the Bay Bridge to Oakland and then north to Albany, where I replace my brother's water heater. To Jesse, my brother is Uncle Ed, a strange and wild man who looks a lot like me.

Driving home, before crossing the Bay we stop at an Arco station that makes me feel like a criminal — cash in advance, attendant behind bulletproof glass — reminding me why I live in the country. By the time we're coming down our mountain close to home, the storm is nearly over. A mist hangs in the air and clings to the windshield. Coming around a blind curve on La Honda Road, I have to swerve to avoid a landslide. I stop, pull out flares so the next driver will be warned. I show Jesse how to light them: Cool! Like roman candles.

Falling boulders, trees down, wires down — a winter norm. In these hills, everybody carries flares. You put them out not to help yourself but to warn the next guy. We're all in this together. Jesse absorbs this lesson as you absorb a way of life, without my speaking a word.

Back home in front of Mark's house, water rushes down the gutter and through the chopped-up culvert, heading where it belongs. To protect Mark's house from the next flood, the La Honda Volunteer Fire Brigade — men and women in bright yellow slickers — are stacking sandbags along the road. Volunteers. Jesse says we should go out to help. So we do.

.
.
.
(Last year I posted another story about that same El Niño winter. You can find it here.)

365 Jobs: Storm (One) A Small Spot of Light

2012-01-25T13:44:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, November 30, 1982

Every winter, storms slam into the Pacific Coast. Trees crash. Land oozes. Roads close. These are the days when you realize what it means to live in a rural area such as La Honda.

The winter of 1982-83 was an El Niño event. (El Niño occurs when the Pacific Ocean is unusually warm, causing severe weather.) It began in November with a hurricane that devastated Hawaii and then, somewhat diminished, struck the West Coast.

At that time my children were ages six, four, and an infant. I was remodeling a house on the Stanford campus, where the storm was simply a wet inconvenience. They had electricity. They could drive to the shopping center without dodging fallen trees.

After the day's work, driving home into the mountains, I remember fierce waves of wind. Hail. Thunder and lightning. At home we had two Aladdin Lamps, four oil lamps, and various candles. A camp stove for cooking. We slept huddled together in front of the fireplace for warmth. By firelight, I wrote this:

Hurricane Eva

The floorboards tremble.
Branches pelt the roof.
Rain blows under the door.
The phone, dead.
The electricity will be out for days.
I build a fire, light lanterns named Aladdin,
heat water in the fireplace,
play guitar, fetch wood, buy ice,
help the neighbor start her car.
My house from outside is a small spot of light
in a dark storm.
The power is out
but we are not powerless.

Review: La Honda Journal by David E. LeCount

2012-01-19T19:41:00.000-08:00

The old gloves
hold the same wrinkles worked
into my hand

Just 20 miles from the Silicon Valley, the little village of La Honda has long served as a counterpoint to the frantic high tech lifestyle. From the regulars who hang out on the porch at Apple Jack's (motto: We eat puppies) to the readers and writers who hang out at La Honda's monthly Lit Night (motto: Drink hearty and read something) to the musicians who seem to be playing everywhere at all times (motto: The best music you never heard), the town has long been an alternative outpost.

Picture window —
a hummingbird stares at me
in my cage

David E. LeCount, whose haiku has appeared on tea bottles all over the world, now has a lovely new book called La Honda Journal: a haiku diary. It's a gentle, funny, and very wise reflection of family, love, children, and the rural life.

Digging for "treasure" …
two boys hushed having found
a rusted square nail

David has frequently joined Lit Night at Cafe Cuesta (formerly Sullivan's) to down a beer and read a poem or two.

To write, the old waitress
takes the pencil behind her ear
and tongues the point

I want to quote them all, but I'll stop now. You can purchase the book at amazon with this link. You'll get 153 haiku for just $12. That's less than 8 cents per haiku. What a deal! Read them and you'll go to a place where fat frogs sink the lily pads, where a woman's hair blows across her lips as she's saying good-bye, where piglets climb tumbling over your foot as you shovel their wallow. You'll be glad you came.

365 Jobs: Weather Report

2012-01-19T11:05:00.001-08:00

Friday, January 19, 1990

I'm mucking, disconnecting pipes around an old two-room cabin next to a creek whose water is rushing with recent rain. After 50 years of settling into the forest floor, it's time to jack up the structure and pour a foundation.

There's a quick wind. Clouds scud overhead, framed in blue. I like it that my job keeps me in touch with the weather. Literally, in touch. Today it sends icy prickles into my fingertips.

Digging out a rusty pipe, I'm careful not to disturb a cheerful Castilleja — Indian Paintbrush — the last wild bloom of the old season. Or is it the first bloom of the new?

Shutting off the water cock, I pause on hands and knees, peering closely. From the funky earth, tiny sprouts of sorrel jut to the light — and here come swords of grass, fresh shoots of milkmaid and baby leaves of forget-me-not. Excuse me but I'm thrilled. Electrified. The daily miracles of life on this planet.

At day's end I sit on the tailgate of my truck, pulling off boots. Overhead a vee of birds crosses pink wisps of cloud. Children’s voices in the dusk beyond the trees. A dog comes loping through the meadow weeds, tongue lolling, eyes bright, on the scent of something important. For just a moment our gazes meet; souls touch. Then he's off at a gallop.

We agree. Work is hard. Life is good.

365 Jobs: Honking for Janelle

2012-01-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

Saturday, January 17, 2004

Eight miles from the highway via a twisting dirt road I arrive at a faux-stone McMansion. It sits alone on the side of Langley Hill surrounded by oat grass and the occasional craggy oak. Janelle, who has probably heard the approach of my truck for the last ten minutes, greets me as I step from the cab.

"You made it," she says. "Not everyone does."

Janelle has gray hair in a braid down her back. Near the brand new house is an old barn where I repair copper pipes that their handyman accidentally cut through. Janelle and her husband Gary watch me work and chatter constantly at me, two sweet people, lonely. Upon learning that I'm a published writer, Janelle pumps me with questions. She seems starved for intellectual conversation. Gary, meanwhile, asks about water quality. He's a retired software executive, struck it rich in stock options.

In the fields are no cattle, no horses. A couple of deer are grazing.

It strikes me as odd: they buy 40 acres, build their dream house, a view of sunsets, rolling hills of golden oats, the ocean nine miles away, the country life without livestock or crops — and they can't fix anything. From their chatter it becomes clear that their neighbors frighten them. On one side, a billionaire from Silicon Valley is setting off dynamite, blasting holes in the hillside for wine cellars. On another side, an old rancher shoots any dog that enters his property.

From outside the house I can see a telescope on a tripod next to the vast glass window, facing the fields and ocean. Their great view comes at a cost. They're naked to the weather, exposed to an unrelenting uphill wind bringing fog and chill. As I work, the air screams — literally howls — through cracks in the siding of the barn.

At one point Gary realizes that while he has been talking at me, his wife has wandered away. "Where's Janelle?" he asks.

"I don't know." I'm soldering pipes.

A few seconds later, I hear the honking of my truck. Gary is leaning, reaching through the window, pressing the horn. From deep in the canyon comes an echo, like a ghost truck.

Janelle appears. "I'm here, dear. I just went to the house for a moment."

Gary grasps her. They walk into the howling barn, side by side, clutching hand to hand as I finish my work.

365 Jobs: Big Game Hunter

2012-01-12T19:55:00.001-08:00

January, 1993

Tommy is about 25 years old and still looks like the all-American college boy. He's just bought a modest two-bedroom bungalow in Menlo Park, not a bad start for a kid.

Yes, Tommy's a kid in my mind. He was born a few years after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The draft, the war in Vietnam are just history to him, something old people argue about — old folks like me, age 45. It's January, 1993.

Tommy's got rumpled hair, a pin-striped shirt, a briefcase, and jogging shoes. Dimples. A winning smile. He could star in a movie as the romantic interest of Julia Roberts. Tommy would play the good "friend" who she doesn't recognize as she throws herself at one bastard after another until finally she realizes…

I'm there because Isabella my favorite decorator is revamping Tommy's house. I'm installing new lights in every room, which requires an entire day of my crawling through his insulated attic wrestling with dust and Romex cable. I hurt all over — shoulders, neck, general stiffness everywhere, and a bulbously infected finger that sends pain down my entire arm.

After work I go straight to my daughter's high school where she is performing in a dance recital. She's the scholarship kid at a wealthy private school. In the audience, among the captains of industry, I'm the scholarship dad with gypsum dust on my blue jeans and fiberglass wool woven into my hair.

Back home, with a needle I pop my finger — and feel instantly better. All the aches and stiffness go away from my entire body. Interesting.

The next day I arrive at Tommy's house at 8 a.m. and Isabella lets me in. Tommy sleeps until 9, makes himself a cup of coffee, nods hello to Isabella, and goes to work. The sink is full of dirty dishes.

There are signs that a woman lives here as well. "Is he married?" I ask.

"Yes," Isabella says. "I'm decorating her house, and I've never seen her."

"Who does the dishes?"

Isabella laughs. "I'm not going there," she says. "The wife's in Japan right now. We've got a week to finish everything before she gets back."

I work a 10 hour day without pain. I guess I’m not too old for this shit, after all. Yesterday I was ready to quit.

Isabella says Tommy designs computer games.

"Sorcery? Fighting crime? Does he do warfare?"

"Sanitized," Isabella says, laughing. She says Tommy has just joined a new company. "The house was a stretch. Money's a little tight." Isabella whispers although we're alone, as if she thinks the house is bugged. (And maybe it is — working in the Silicon Valley, I always assume my every move may be recorded on somebody's nanny-cam.)

On Tommy's desk I notice a sketch pad full of fantasy figure combat drawings with circles that — I'm guessing — indicate where software buttons will be placed. A man's arm pierced by a knife; a button on his ring finger with the notation: ESCAPE. No blood whatsoever.

I wonder: how much luck is involved in these new games? How much skill?

After work I check messages and learn that my daughter is stranded at school where our junker car broke down, so I swing by and pick her up. She's just completed another dance recital and is still wearing her leotard and glittery makeup. In the front seat of my old truck, she shines like a comet as we drive up the dark mountain road.

I'm expecting the next work day to be short, just a few details to clean up, but Isabella meets me at the door with a whole new plan for the kitchen. Tommy's listening, fixing coffee. I say, "It'll cost another three hundred dollars." I smile at Tommy and say jokingly, "But with stock options you'll soon be a millionaire, right?"

Seriously, Tommy nods. "Uh huh." And he's out the door.

Isabella is glaring at me. "What are you doing?" she asks.

"I was just joking."

"Never talk about that. It's bad manners."

"Sorry. Does he really have stock options?"

"Of course. He'll make jillions."

That night I go to a party, a gathering of my friends and neighbors in La Honda. To my surprise, my little infected finger draws a lot of interest. Today it's bright red. A circle gathers around me. Somebody says I should see a doctor. A friend who is a dentist says I should soak it. Another friend who is a somewhat goofy college professor predicts that I’ll be dead in 3 weeks if I don’t get antibiotics.

The circle dissipates, and I'm talking to Zeke, who I don't yet know very well. Zeke says: "My finger got infected like that in 'Nam. Red like that, then it got worms." He holds up his right hand: three fingers. The hand shakes. Zeke's hands always shake.

"You get a purple heart for that?"

"Nope." He laughs, which ends in a hiccup.

"What did you do in 'Nam?"

"Survived." He glances again at my finger. "See a doctor, will ya?"

But I never do. My finger heals. Some things, the body can fix.

Notes:
(Tommy is not the real name. Nor is Zeke.)
(Tommy has done very well in the years since 1993. Not jillions, maybe, but very well. For more about Zeke, go here.)

365 Jobs: Cranial Adjustments

2012-01-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

Saturday, January 10, 1987

Caleb is an osteopath. He says osteopaths have the same training as an MD, but I'm not so sure. He's a friendly guy. We have mutual friends and encounter each other from time to time. He has two young boys who are like having two wild goats in the house. My kids don't want anything to do with them.

About a year ago Caleb asked me to look at his bathtub. One evening I dropped by after a particularly long day's work when I was too exhausted to be enthusiastic. It's weird, but I have to sound enthusiastic about a plumbing job, or people won't hire me. Maybe it isn't so for all plumbers, but it's true for me. I need to instill confidence in my clients. Anyway, Caleb gave the job to somebody else.

The somebody else couldn't have been too great, because now — it's 1987 — Caleb has called me for another job. His two boys are somewhat calmer now, ages 3 and 5. I install a new water heater, replacing 30 gallons with 50. To comply with the building code, I put the new water heater on a stand, which necessitates some replumbing of the entry and exit pipes. It turns into a full day job when Caleb adds some carpentry work: reversing doors, installing cabinet trim.

Sissy, Caleb's earth-goddess wife, waddles into the garage where I'm working. With a smile she says, "Nice to see you again." She's gorgeously, button-poppingly pregnant.

Joking, I gape at her belly and say, "Oh no. Not again."

Sharply she says, "Well you have three!" And she waddles out.

Sensitive subject, I guess. Or my usual poor delivery.

Caleb follows me around for much of the day asking questions, watching, learning how I do it. He tells me he bought a new Mac computer, just like me. He got together with a group of 23 homeopathic practitioners and ordered 23 Macs, shopping for the best group rate, and paid less than I did. There's a homeopathic program that runs on the Mac.

Try as I might, I can't make myself believe in homeopathy. And now here's this guy who looks like a nice young Jewish doctor practicing wacko medicine. Osteo makes sense to me, but homeopathy sounds like a con game.

Unlike so many alternative providers who claim to cure everything from acne to cancer, Caleb is modest. "I usually get good results," he says. "I don't think I've ever hurt anybody."

Caleb does cranial adjustments, especially with infants. In other words, he squeezes the baby's skull between his hands, reshaping it. "It takes a leap of faith by the parents," he says. "There's no scientific proof. Just good results most of the time. Here — look at this." Caleb shows me two photos of an infant. "Before and after," he says.

In the first photo the child looks tense and anxious. "Your basic colicky baby. Crying for two solid months. The mom was going crazy."

In the second photo, the child looks relaxed, smiling. "Five minutes after the first cranial." Then Caleb laughs. "It proves nothing. But the mom was sure happy. Tell me: after you install a water heater, has it ever blown up?"

"Not yet."

"Have you ever left a job worse than before you started?"

"Not lately."

He pretends to wipe sweat from his brow. "I'm reassured."

Apparently he's forgotten, so I tell him: "You gave a cranial to my youngest. Three years ago."

"At my office?"

"No, at my house. You were visiting next door, and we got to talking, and you came over and gave my son a cranial."

"Uh oh." Caleb frowns. "Did I charge you for it?"

"No."

"Good. Boy, was I green!" He pauses, thinking. "Why'd you let me do it?"

"I honestly don't know. You must've seemed confident."

"That's an act. For the placebo effect."

"Yeah. Sometimes I do that, too."

"Placebo plumbing! And that works on the pipes?"

"That, and a little solder."

"So now, how's your son doing?"

"He's great. A happy kid."

Caleb sighs. "I lucked out."

"Have you done cranials on your own boys?"

"Of course." He laughs. "That's what keeps me humble."

365 Jobs: I'm Still Here

2012-01-01T20:47:00.001-08:00

The year has ended, but the blog continues.

I posted 262 "jobs" in 2011, so to fulfill the promise of the title I'll aim for 103 more. And maybe I'll go on beyond that. I'm not number-driven, so I'll go as long as I feel I can maintain the quality.

A few of last year's posts were stinkers. I'll be culling a few and revising a few more (I'm always revising, anyway).

Mostly I'm proud of what I've written. For the record, here are some of my favorites from the first three months:

January:
Frantic Woman
Marmalade
Chateau No-hub Reserve 1994

February:
Hugging Bill Ash
Screwdriver, Melted
Breaking Waves
Do You Believe in Miracles?
Dewey

March:
The Gorilla Method
House to House
El Niño
Grampa, Rainbow, Porch Lamp
Woodpeckers

365 Jobs: The Big Freeze

2011-12-30T21:32:00.000-08:00

December, 1990

There's an unspoken bargain struck between residents of coastal California and residents of most of the USA: we get the quakes; you get the freeze.

Occasionally there are exceptions. A recent earthquake on the east coast put cracks in the Washington Monument. Here in La Honda, we have a few frosty nights every winter. For the most part, however, the bargain is kept.

And then there was December of 1990. This was just a year after the big World Series Earthquake, so it seemed we were getting the worst of both sides of the bargain. The lake at the center of La Honda froze over. Ducks were wandering around in a state of bewilderment until we emptied bags of grain for them on the ice.

Everybody's pipes were freezing. Nobody had ever bothered to insulate their exposed water pipes because it had never been necessary. When a pipe freezes, of course, the water inside the pipe expands. The pipe bursts.

Readers of this blog who live in Ohio or Maine — and of course my readers in Canada and Russia — are probably laughing at our naivete, imagining a town of stoned hippies standing around in paisley shorts and sandals, shivering and saying "Wow, man, my pipes are shattered!" Well, it's not exactly like that here, but La Honda does have that image in the public mind.

Saturday, December 22:

I get so many broken-pipe calls that I disconnect the answering machine. We need to prepare the house for our annual Christmas party — with 30 guests invited — coming this evening. We have no water. I make emergency patches to the water entry, then cut off and cap the exposed pipe along an outside wall that extends to a hose outlet. Next, while my wife and kids deal with party prep, I repair a pipe for the nuclear physicist who lives down the street and another for an old friend who lives on the other side of town. I arrive home an hour late for my own party.

Sunday, December 23:

I try not to work on Sundays, but today I repair frozen pipes in a yurt owned by a nice man who happened to inherit a fortune. His swimming pool has frozen over, though we won't be addressing that damage today. Meanwhile his 14-year-old daughter is driving his new minivan up and down the driveway, up and down, up and down. Then I go to the house of a musician, a happy-go-lucky guy who plays keyboards in a popular band. While I solder patches into his pipes, I chat with his new girlfriend, a woman who has moved from house to house in La Honda wrecking one home after another. She's a coke-head. Doesn't he know? More than his pipes are about to burst. Then back home, I note that many of our plants are dying. The water meter across the street from our house has blown up. It simply exploded.

Monday, December 24:

On Christmas Eve I begin the day by repairing another broken pipe, inside the wall this time, for the nuclear physicist who lives below me. He'd gone away for the weekend and turned off the heat in his house. When I present the bill, he gives me a check and a bottle of wine. Good man.

Then for 10 hours, well into the frigid evening, I repair pipes for Mordecai at his vacation house in the mountains at the end of 3 miles of dirt road. The house is both modern and rustic, with a hot tub viewing the ocean and the sunset — a frozen Shangri-La. Mordecai uses the house as a summer retreat but holds an annual Hanukkah party. This year it will be on December 26. There is also a geodesic dome on the property where Kilo, the caretaker, lives. Mordecai is a psychiatrist, and I suspect that Kilo is one of his clients. Clearly, Kilo needs to live in isolation at the end of 3 miles of bad road. In fact, as you might judge from his name, Kilo is only half-present even when he is standing right in front of you. Anyway, Kilo shows me around.

A pet peacock follows my every move. I'm wearing gloves with the fingertips cut off, which seems to fascinate the bird as do my hooded sweatshirt and propane torch. Each repair leads to a new break — a plumber's nightmare — and I leave Kilo and peacock with no hot water and limited cold water. I'm feeling somewhat defeated.

Mordecai arrives as I depart. He is clearly disappointed at the state of things — and his wife more so, and quite vocal about it — but at the urging of his grown daughter, Mordecai gives me a bottle of wine — a fine one, which is the only kind he would have.

Back home my kids have stayed up late, so I catch them in time to sing a few Christmas carols, have an egg nog, hang up stockings and help put them to bed. I haven't even had a chance to clean myself up; spatters of solder cling to my sweatshirt. The kids all sleep together in one room on Christmas Eve, a tradition in our house, bundled on the carpet with blankets and dogs. All this emergency plumbing has kept me from finishing the presents I was building — trophy cases — in time for Christmas, but I feel good that I helped some people and made some much-needed money.

Tuesday, December 25:

Most of our gifts are low-key this year: home-baked goods, baskets of plants, handmade books and drawings, coupons for massages or trips to the beach. And some partially-built trophy cases, which I will finish today for my award-winning children. Only my youngest son is disappointed. He isn't being selfish or greedy, but at age 8 he wants that old magic of Christmas as a seemingly endless unfolding of delights. Now he is learning that Christmas is finite. Part of the problem is that we had to cut back on gifts this year because we simply couldn't afford them. Another part is that Grampa was recently hospitalized and had no time to order presents, though they'll come later. Otherwise, though, the day is delightful, freezing outside but a warm fire burning within, fresh-baked bread, cookies, and the special pleasure of staying home together making things for each other.

Wednesday, December 26:

I repair a pipe for Danny, my jeweler neighbor, and then spend another 10 hours at Mordecai's house while they have a party. A brunch. His daughter brings me lox, bagel, a cup of tea, and several cookies while I crouch under the floor joists soldering pipe and discovering more problems. By late evening I've restored most of the hot water. When I finally get home, the kids are in bed. They spent most of the day alone so my wife could also go to work. We really need the money.

Monday, December 31:

For a few days the temperatures rise above freezing, and I catch up on a number of non-emergency broken pipes for a number of my favorite clients. Now today, New Year's Eve, it's turned cold again. I return to the house of a less-than-favorite client, Mordecai, where they still seem to be cleaning up from their party. While the peacock follows me about, kibitzing, I restore water service to the non-urgent parts of the house. At one point as I'm taking a break, Mordecai punches out a telephone and then explains to me: his 14-year-old adopted son just got kicked out of school and hopped a train. Now Mordecai is sending the kid to a 3 week $3400 wilderness survival school. Tonight the kid will sleep where it’s 30 degrees below, on rocks that were warmed in a fire and buried in a pit. Mordecai says, "He tests limits.” Mordecai narrows his eyes and asks me, "How much are you charging me?"

I tell him my standard rate, which he already knows.

"That's unconscionable," he says.

I've never heard that word before, but I can guess what it means. "I told you my rate before I started."

"Yes, but that's when we both thought it would be a small job. You've been here for days. Shouldn't I get a discount?"

For a moment I just stare at Mordecai. Those days include Christmas Eve, the day after Christmas, and now here I am after dark on New Year's Eve at the end of a dirt road in the mountains that he and I both know wouldn't be visited by most plumbers. And most plumbers charge more than I do. "What's your hourly rate?" I ask.

"That has nothing to do with this," Mordecai says.

"I'm sorry but I can't give you a discount," I say.

"I don't have my business checks here. I'll have to mail it to you."

So he's claiming my work as a business expense to his psychiatry practice. At current tax rates, he'll only pay half of my bill. Uncle Sam will pay the rest.

Talk about unconscionable.

I make it home in time to spend New Year's Eve with my youngest son. The two older kids, ages 14 and 12, are with friends where they are safe. My wife, my youngest and I watch the movie Lassie Come Home, which proves to be too intense for the boy. Plenty of 8-year-olds could watch the slaughter of armies without a moment of fear. Not my son, who can't handle seeing a dog in jeopardy. We "guess" the ending for him and let him sit on our laps. A sensitive kid, like the other two. We've sheltered them from a cold and crazy world. And I would have it no other way.

(Peacock photo and Lassie poster from Wikipedia.)

365 Jobs: Bag Lady of the Suburbs

2011-12-16T10:03:00.000-08:00

December, 1987

I'm working on a man's shower. I go out to my truck for a tool and find a crazy lady peering over the tailgate into the bed. My first thought is that she's looking to steal something but all I say is: "Hello. You need something?"

She jerks back and says, "I live in the house next door up the hill." She's old. She has red scars on her arms like they'd been shot full of holes. "This is my dog."

A scruffy mutt is dropping a pine cone at my feet. He looks up at me expectantly, wagging his tail.

The lady, too, looks at me expectantly. "He wants you to throw it for him," she says.

So I do. Again and again. While I'm playing throw-and-fetch with the dog, she says, "I could use a handyman to fix a drain plunger. And a screw came out of the vacuum cleaner. The furnace doesn't make any heat. The dishwasher caught on fire and I had to pull the plug. I could make a whole list of things."

"Uh huh," I say. From inside the house I see the homeowner glaring at us. I'm charging by the hour to fix his shower, so I'll have to adjust for the time spent out here.

The woman is speaking: "I’ve been reading the instruction manual about how to drive my car. I haven’t driven it in four years but I have to go to the dentist tomorrow because my tooth fell out.” She sticks a finger in her mouth and makes her cheek bulge where the molar is missing. “Did you think it only happens to children? Happy Hanukkah, huh? I like your shirt. Now that I’ve sold the property across the street finally I’ve got the money to fix things up. I only need you for an hour.”

I say, "What you've got sounds like it will take many hours. Several days."

Suddenly she’s angry. She draws herself up straight and says, “Listen, buster, it will take less than an hour because I say so. I’m the boss. Get it?”

Back inside the house, the man says, "I see you met Nelda. You wouldn't know it, but she could probably buy half of San Jose. She owns six houses on this road. For God's sake, don't work for her."

"I can't work for her. She already fired me."

"Lucky you."

Back home when I'm unloading the truck, I realize I'm missing a toilet auger. It had been sitting in the bed.

After a flash of anger, I feel sad for Nelda. Is she really going to ream her own toilets? She's a lonely lady with an old dog. If she were poor, I'd help her for free; but she's loaded and she stole my tool — a rusty, smelly, ten dollar tool. She's a bag lady without the bag, with property. How do you help somebody like that?

Pocketful of Sawdust

2011-12-15T10:33:00.000-08:00

December, 1982

Carpenter Sunrise

Outside the window
branches drip
gray fog.
He faces a long day
heaving heavy boards,
testing his brittle back,
glasses wet
with sweat,
porcupine fingers
bristling splinters.
   Carpenter, carpenter, what do you say?
      Cut wood all day,
      bring home the pay:
   a pocketful of sawdust.
With strange joy
he can't wait
to begin.

Maybe this is a Christmas story. Back in 1982, the Reagan Recession, construction scarce, supporting three kids including an infant while trying to complete — and heat — the house in which we lived, desperate for money I took a carpentry/cabinet job beyond my experience level. For a week before it began I slept badly, imagining all the ways I could screw it up.

The frigid evening before I was to begin, I loaded my radial arm saw plus 10 sheets of birch plywood and 12 sheets of Wilsonart laminate, and I drove to a house on the Stanford campus where I was to work. The man had a Nobel Prize and an intimidating bearing. He had been, in fact, an advisor to Ronald Reagan — on economics, no less.

I'd brought my son Jesse, who was all of six years old but wanted to help. In the truck, after "If We Make It Through December," I let Jesse select the music. At the time his favorite song was "A Country Boy Can Survive." He loved the line:

I've got a shotgun rifle and a four wheel drive,
a country boy can survive.

Jesse knew I had a .22 rifle and a two wheel drive. Close enough. If we were starving, I could shoot a squirrel. (I never did.) (Later, all my children became vegetarians, at least for a while.)

Jesse was small but a willing worker. We dragged the saw from the bed of the truck and set it on the driveway. The Nobel prizewinner came out in his bathrobe and said, "Can I help?" Next out the door came his daughter, a chubby cheerful college student wearing bunny slippers. Together we lifted the heavy saw and awkwardly shuffled it into the heat of the garage. Something wonderful was happening. Carrying plywood, each of us taking a corner, leaning sheets against the wall of the garage, we were humans working together.

Right then, I knew it all would end well. And I'd get paid before the holidays.

At a hardware store, cashless, with my credit card I bought a dado blade and a laminate-trimming router bit. Up to now I'd never cut a dado, never installed laminate. I was scared, but I was ready.

Driving home, wipers slapping, again I let Jesse select the music. He went for "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." Warm air blew from the vents. A wind was rising, shaking the trees as we headed to our half-built house in the mountains.

The next morning after sound sleep I woke joyful — tingly with anticipation — on a foggy, drippy day. At the Nobel laureate's house I worked 12 hours, the first of many such work days before a Christmas deadline. I cut my first dado and cautiously with contact cement laid the first sheet of laminate, trimmed with the router. Success. The laureate's son, home for the holidays from the University of Chicago, sneaked out to the garage to smoke marijuana while I worked.

A black limousine pulled into the driveway so a courier could deliver an envelope from the President. The economist read the one sheet of paper and disdainfully flipped it onto a rosewood table where, later, I read it: a condescending, badly reasoned letter written by some Treasury Department underling. Apparently the laureate had dared to publicly disagree with the President about how to push the economic levers of the planet.

At the end of the day, he wrote me a check, first payment. Tomorrow I could cash it.

On the way home, stopping at the La Honda grocery, in search of my last coin I reached into my pocket and pulled out a shower of sawdust.

Flossing the Deck

2011-12-06T12:41:00.001-08:00

Today's job is cleaning out the cracks between the boards of my deck. Since I have about a thousand square feet of decking with a dozen giant redwood trees dropping duff all over, flossing is a big task. For 30 years I've done it on my knees with a screwdriver or a putty knife or by running my power saw with an old blade.

This year, I googled "flossing the deck" and found this wonderful tool.

Deckhand tool

I called up the guy who invented it, placed an order (he'll talk your ear off), and I'm pleased to report that the Deckhand tool is worth every penny of the $35 I paid for it ($25 plus shipping). It works fast and handles well. It saves your knees. What used to be a multi-day job I can now do in a few hours. Fantastic!

Flossing the deck

And hey — Santa! If you're stumped for a holiday gift for the somebody-who-has-everything, I bet your somebody doesn't have a deck flossing tool.

(I paid for the tool. I get nothing for endorsing it here.)

365 Jobs: Murder of a Client

2011-12-05T21:49:00.001-08:00

Friday, September 23, 1988

Isabella my favorite decorator calls and says, "I've got a strange one for you. He's an alcoholic. He's wealthy but you never know when he'll drive off a cliff. Get your money before you leave. Are you game?"

It's a new-looking community behind a security gate in Cupertino. The units are conventional, what you get when you build tract houses with a dose of quality. Large garages, no trees. Sterile.

Bob is an old man. He smokes, shuffles around, and mumbles "God damn it" a lot. He's white. His girlfriend Lisa is fresh, young — looks about half his age. She's black. She says she's studying for the Law Boards. On the wall she's framed her undergraduate degree: Princeton, 1979.

Lisa Hopewell, Princeton Class of 1979

Lisa lives here with her two kittens — and Bob.

The white kitten, Lisa tells me, has just been declawed so he mustn't leave the house. Without claws, he's defenseless.

"And the other?" I ask, indicating the black kitten.

"That little pussy has claws," Lisa says. "She can take care of herself."

Okay, this is weird. And none of my business.

I remove a valence and install one of those multi-globe lights over the bathroom sink. I'm good at this. I work fast. Unfortunately, the faster I work, the less I can charge for labor — just the minimum service call. I use these small jobs as loss leaders because they often lead to bigger jobs later on.

Every time I go out to my truck for a tool or supplies, the black kitten climbs in. Mewing, purring, curling up and beseeching me with kitten eyes, she's either very friendly or desperate to escape.

When I finish, Bob is gone. Lisa inspects the work and says, "Hey. You're good."

"Good" in this case means you can't tell I've ever been there. She writes a check and follows me out to the truck. I roll down the window, hand her the black kitten who has nestled into a cup holder, and I drive straight to the bank as Isabella instructed.

At the bank, they tell me the checking account has closed.

I call Lisa. She apologizes profusely. I return. She pays me cash. She seems like a spacehead. Maybe she's stoned. Anyway, an hour wasted.

Tuesday, October 4, 1988

Isabella sends me back for more work behind the security gate in Cupertino. Another woman is working there, hanging wallpaper. I'm installing wall sconces and an overhead track light.

While we're working, Bob and Lisa get into a shouting battle. After cussing each other out, Bob yells, "You're a junkie!"

Lisa says, “That’s right. I’m addicted to your love. If you don’t quit, you’re going to die of cirrhosis of the liver.”

Bob: “I don’t drink that much.”

Lisa: “You’re an alcoholic! You quit AA, you quit every treatment program...”

“Junkie.”

“I haven’t had a joint in so long...”

The wallpaper lady finishes up quickly and somewhat sloppily. Outside she tells me, "I'll never go back there. Ever!"

I should probably feel the same. These people are out of control. But when I finish, as Lisa watches Bob writing me a check, a calculating look comes over her face. "Could you replace these downlights?" she asks, indicating the living room ceiling. "Is that all right with you, Bob?"

"God damn it," Bob says.

Apparently that means yes. Lisa and I make arrangements for me to come back. I give an outrageously high estimate — I'm not interested unless the money's good. She accepts.

I don't know what Lisa's game is with the lights. The robotic tone of her voice as she told Bob "I'm addicted to your love" sounded as if she were reading a line — badly.

Tuesday, October 18, 1988

Lisa is home when I arrive; Bob is out. Good. It's easier to work when they're apart.

Everything goes well, working fast, but the blankety-blank electric supplier short-counted me and I have to drive to San Jose and back to pick up another can for the downlights, wasting an hour on a hot afternoon. When I return, unfortunately, Bob is there. He and Lisa commence fighting.

She taunts him: "In eight days you're going to jail. You got a string of DUI's. They caught you driving with a suspended license. You ready for jail? They're gonna fuck your butt."

Bob throws a bowl of soup at her. He’s shaky.

In the kitchen is a placard:

It is better to have loved and lost.
Much better.

I get paid and immediately drive to the bank and cash the check. I never want to see them again. Good money doesn't justify shit karma.

January 10, 1991

Isabella calls and says, "Remember Lisa Hopewell? She was murdered. Isn't that awful?"

Immediately I ask, "Was it Bob?"

Apparently it wasn't. At least he was never mentioned as a suspect, though Lisa was described as a "caretaker" of his "upscale condo" in Cupertino, and she was killed in that condo, and the killing had sexual overtones. (The condo is not the same place as the house where I worked for them two years before.)

It's a gruesome story. Lisa's hands had been tied behind her back. Her face was bound with duct tape. She died of suffocation and from knife slashes to her throat and vaginal area.

And then the wrong man was convicted of the crime.

Fingerprints on the duct tape led police to Rahsson Bowers, a drug dealer. Bowers originally blamed "two white guys" for the murder, then changed his story when detectives suggested the name of Rick Walker, a former boyfriend of Lisa Hopewell.

On the stand, Bowers claimed that after smoking crack cocaine, Walker had forced him to wrap Lisa's face with duct tape. Bowers described Lisa repeatedly gulping as she died.

Bowers cried on the witness stand. The jury was visibly moved. One juror had to ask for a tissue.

Rasshon Bowers was found guilty of second degree murder. Rick Walker was convicted of first degree murder.

Bowers had lied. He'd made a secret plea deal with John Schon, the Santa Clara County prosecutor. Another witness, an ex-girlfriend of Rick Walker, also gave false testimony against Walker (after being coached by Schon) in secret exchange for lenient treatment of a drug charge.

In June 2003, after 12 years of hard time in San Quentin and Pelican Bay, Rick Walker was freed on the basis of DNA evidence, the result of dogged work by attorney Alison Tucher, the only hero in this sordid tale.

From every house, there runs a sewer.

(Information about Lisa's murder comes from SFGate.com, from the San Jose Mercury News, and from the Princeton Alumni Weekly.)

365 Jobs: The Chris Craft Cure

2011-11-28T15:32:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, November 28, 1994

Isabella, my favorite decorator, calls and says, "I need you right away to install cable in my bedroom so Henry can watch TV in bed." Henry is her husband.

"That's an emergency?" I ask.

"Yes. On Thanksgiving morning he woke up blind. He thought he must be dreaming. Then he tried to touch his eyes because he thought they might have disappeared or something. He didn't blink because he couldn't see his fingers coming, so he touched his eyeballs. I drove him to the hospital which was a trip because he likes to sleep cool and he was so angry and upset that he wouldn't let me dress him. So I walk him across the front yard and get him in the car and of course he won't even put on a seat belt so I throw a blanket over him and he starts thrashing and I drive this naked old blind man in the front seat of my car to the hospital without a seat belt and you know I'm a fanatic about seat belts. It was a stroke. A mild stroke. His eyes still work but his brain lost the pathway."

There are pathways in Isabella's brain that seem to get lost, too. As she says, sometimes she's "totally blond." Other days, she's simply smart. If you were to divide the world into Yes and No, Isabella is a Yes person. Today, though, she's understandably flustered.

I ask, "Are you okay?"

"Do I sound okay? I'll be okay if you'll come over today and install the cable."

"Can Henry see now?"

"No, I told you, he's blind as a bat."

For some reason I say, "Bats can see."

"And so will Henry as soon as you install the cable."

An hour later I'm at their house, letting myself in. Isabella and Henry are at the hospital.

It doesn't take long. My drill bit hits the wall cavity on the first try, and I stuff the cable through the hole. I know their crawl space by heart. I do small jobs at Isabella's house for free in exchange for all the work she sends my way.

That night, Isabella calls. "Thank you," she says. "He's sort of starting to see. It's the powerboat races."

Henry loves powerboats, especially old wooden Chris Crafts.

1928 Chris Craft Cadet (from Wikipedia)

Isabella continues: "He couldn't stand it that he couldn't see the boats, so he reorganized his brain. That's what you have to do after a stroke."

Medical science, as filtered through Isabella and implemented by me, has restored Henry's sight.

"Call me if you need anything," I say.

"Yes," Isabella says.

Review: A Carpenter's Life by Larry Haun

2011-11-26T14:17:00.001-08:00

I wish I’d known Larry Haun. From his writing he comes across as one of those spry, sometimes cranky, remarkably ageless carpenters you meet from time to time who love their work and understand the deeper meaning of their craft. Best of all, his passion was for creating durable, practical housing. Not McMansions. Not ego-castles. Just shelter, a basic human need.

Here’s the purpose of the book in Larry’s own words:

I can’t help but wonder about the relationship between people and their homes. How do these vastly different dwelling places affect the people who live there? How have I been shaped by the houses I’ve lived in? Who and what would I be if I’d been born in an upscale mansion or a shack by the river?

His knowledge of practical housing came first hand. In western Nebraska his mother grew up in a sod house and later taught in a straw bale school. Larry worked as a production framer in the 1950’s tract housing boom in Los Angeles at a time when production framing was just being invented.

Larry avoids the cult of exquisite wood craft. He used power saws and drywall and makes no apology. At the same time he cares about sustainability and green values while laughing at the self-canceling concept of a 10,000 square foot house that was certified “green.”

In A Carpenter’s Life he discusses twelve houses in twelve chapters, from his mother’s “soddy” to the quonset huts he built during World War Two to post-war tract houses to Habitat for Humanity houses to his own small, simple house in which he raised a large family. Most interesting are his personal experiences with each form of construction. Least interesting are his occasional sustainable ecology rants, which become a bit too frequent near the end of the book. Not that I disagree with him. It’s just that if you’re reading his book, most likely you’re already among the converted.

Larry Haun

There are photos and drawings, but this is not a glossy book about glossy houses. If you’re seeking a holiday gift for a non-glossy carpenter (and, ahem, you’ve already given my own book Clear Heart), you might give A Carpenter’s Life. I doubt if it’s in many stores. I ordered my copy through Amazon, and here’s a link if you want to do the same.

For more information, there’s a glowing review of the book here in the New York Times.

Thanksgiving Poem

2011-11-25T14:58:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day is
     for lizards that scuttle over logs,
     big-bellied spiders that creep in my woodpile,
     fungus that forms a bright wedge of slime.
Thanksgiving Day is
     for life in every corner,
     wet cells sucking nourishment, giving birth,
     teeming through every grain of earth.

We drink water once swallowed by Jesus,
breathe atoms once blown by Buddha,
share the light of stars
     with unknown beings
     on undiscovered planets.
For this light, this water and air,
     this brotherhood
     of countless souls
I give thanks.

I wrote this poem after visiting my wet woodpile on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1982. I showed the new poem to a friend and was shocked when he said it was "dark" and "creepy." I meant it as a celebration of life. Most of my firewood consists of construction scraps from something I was either building or demolishing — and then burning. The same atoms, cycling endlessly...

(Update: I was going to post the poem on Thanksgiving Day, but at the last moment once again I thought it would be too dark and creepy. In the light of a new day — and much too late — here it is.)

365 Jobs: Sweat Test

2011-11-21T20:14:00.001-08:00

Diary of a Small Contractor

Thursday, November 6, 1986

Little four-year-old
with muscles of a tractor,
how you race up hills!

That's my son, Will. Today I've brought him to Children's Hospital for a couple of medical tests. Will has no apprehension because my wife and I haven't explained what the tests are for, only that they need to be done. When you're four years old, the world is full of unexplained things that need to be done.

He's calm. I'm not. But I try to appear calm for Will.

The woman giving the tests is not your gushy reach-out-to-children type. She’s not cold, either. Simply quiet. Respectful, perhaps, of the serious consequences of what the tests might confirm. She straps an electrode to Will’s forearm, sets a timer, and starts giving Will mild electric shocks.

“It hurts,” Will says, and he wiggles in his chair.

“Oh really?” she says. She holds his arm firmly and stares at the timer.

“Yes. It hurts.”

I try to distract Will by talking about where we’ll go after the tests are over: we’ll buy a treat at the grocery store. “Would you like a treat?”

“Yes.”

“What’ll you get?”

“Chewing gum.”

“You don’t want a cupcake?”

“No.” He looks at me. “It hurts.”

“Just a couple more minutes,” says the woman.

I’m sure he’s only getting a mild tingle, but still it’s a long two minutes.

For the next test, the technician folds a pad against Will’s arm, then covers it with a plastic sheet and seals all the edges with tape. The purpose is to make him sweat. It’s called a Sweat Test. One of the symptoms of cystic fibrosis is salty sweat — the kid tastes salty when you kiss him.

And that's what we're here for. Will's pediatrician doesn't think Will has cystic fibrosis, but because of certain symptoms he wants the tests "simply to remove the possibility."

Cystic fibrosis is characterized by thick secretions of mucus which cause lung infections and difficulty in breathing. The difficulty increases over time. More and more, the child needs time on the respirator. Then full-time on the respirator. Then the child dies.

Treatments have improved. In 1959, median life expectancy of children with cystic fibrosis after diagnosis was 6 months. In 1986, the moment of these tests, life expectancy is into the teenage years.

Arm sealed, the technician tells us we can go to the waiting room. In 30 minutes she’ll remove the pad.

I brought a pile of books. Will selects his current favorite, Cars and Trucks and Things that Go which was written by Richard Scarry, apparently after dropping acid. For 30 minutes, Will searches for Goldbug in the truly great drawings while I read the inane text.

The technician quietly removes the pad and collects whatever she needs to collect. We'll get the results next week.

Normally we don't allow gum-chewing at our house. But as promised, at the grocery store I let Will select a pack of gum. In fact, for some reason I go soft and let him select 3 different packs, 3 different flavors. Which, as far as Will is concerned, makes this a special day.

Friday, November 7, 1986

As I drop Will off at Nursery Blue, both his teachers — Margie and Lowell — seek me out. They look concerned.

“What was this test Will had yesterday?” Margie demands.

“Will said he had to go the Children’s Health Council,” Lowell adds.

“It was Children’s Hospital,” I say. “It was —”

I don’t want to say it. If I say cystic fibrosis, it’ll be like dropping a bomb in the Nursery Blue play yard. Or am I simply afraid to say it? To give life to those words — to spread the thought — to make it real? Am I simply denying to myself the actual possibility that this beautiful little creature who I love might be dying?

I say, “It’s so insignificant, I don’t even want to say what it was.”

Margie asks, “How was the test itself? The experience.”

“Boring,” I say. “Totally neutral.”

“That’s the best kind,” says Margie.

The weather is gorgeous. All week we’ve had fresh, clear warm days and nippy, twinkling nights. The redwoods around our house are shedding, showering duff at the slightest breeze.

Tuesday, November 11, 1986

Again, lovely weather. I’m all alone running wires for a friend's house. I finish downstairs, do half the upstairs and am stupidly drilling one-handed with a 3/4 inch bit when it binds. I have a powerful Makita drill which, when the bit binds, twists my hand — and my arm, my elbow, my shoulder — until the handle wrenches out of my grip. The whole incident lasts less than half a second, but it's enough time to rotate my arm much farther than an arm should rotate. There's an amazing, profound pain in my shoulder.

This is the moment — and everyone, sometime in life, learns this — the loneliness of pain. I've been hurt before, many times, but never like this. Never so lonely. Not only am I alone in this half-built house, this silent space of skeletal studs smelling of plywood and dust, but I'm alone in this pain which is so deep, so chilling to the body. No one can see this pain. No one can feel it but me.

Then, miraculously, the pain disappears. Maybe my body's natural morphine kicks in. I work 3 more hours.

As I drive home, my shoulder begins to hurt again. At home I ice it. Even with ice, the ache grows worse.

My wife calls: Will’s Sweat Test was negative.

By bedtime it’s almost impossible to take my shirt off. My wife helps.

For the rest of the week, I can't work. I can't even drive. I keep the arm pinned to my side. It's unimportant.

Thanksgiving will have special meaning this year. It's the simple things that matter. Maybe by then I'll be able to move my arm. Maybe I'll carve the turkey. I'm so thankful for so many things — little miracles — including a healthy boy, age four, a boy who runs up hills, who hasn't had to learn the loneliness of pain. A boy who likes to chew gum.

Poly-euw

2011-11-20T16:49:00.001-08:00

Diary of a Small Contractor

Monday, November 3, 1986

All day
shaping lumber with a
clear heart.

I've built a cabinet and a laminated-wood countertop: cutting, gluing, clamping, sanding. A pleasure. Now, just before bed, I want to apply a first coat of finish.

To many woodworkers, the use of polyurethane is a mortal sin. I'm sympathetic. In fact, my favorite wood finish is good old tried-and-true linseed oil, a 100% natural product. But tonight I'm finishing a bathroom countertop which will be under constant assault. I'm going with poly.

A long time ago I used poly-euw (as we call it) for some other project. I ended up with half a quart unused, so I poured it into a jelly jar and screwed the lid down tight. Air tight. Exposure to air, of course, makes poly harden.

Now the lid is frozen to the jar.

As a child I learned a trick from my mother: she used to open the stuck lids of food jars by tapping the handle of a butter knife along the outside of the lid, glancing blows in the direction she wanted it to turn.

Mother knows best. In the basement where I'm working, I don't have a butter knife handy but I do happen to have a 22 ounce framing hammer in my tool belt.

Tap. Tap. A few glancing blows on the lid.

It still won’t come off. I rotate the jelly jar in my hands, tapping. I make dents in the lid, but it just doesn't —

Oops.

Broken glass in my hand. Poly-euw all over my clothes, the worktable, the radial arm saw, the basement floor. Poly-euw mixed with blood. Sticky. Smelly. Gooey. Unwashable.

“Rose?”

“What?”

“I can’t do the poly tonight,”

“Why?”

“I just broke the jar.”

“How?”

“I was just trying to open it.”

“With what?”

“A framing hammer.”

Bless her, she keeps a straight face.

Stripping off my shirt and pants, I throw them in the trash. Rose wipes and then binds my hand with gauze and tape. Then I go directly to bed.

Maybe it's a message from the wood sprites.

Lit Night in La Honda

2011-11-17T15:21:00.001-08:00

On the last Wednesday of every month, we hold Lit Night in La Honda. We meet in the bar of the Cafe Cuesta (formerly Sullivan's) for beer, wine, dinner and audience-friendly words. I'll be reading as usual, along with a mix of pro and amateur writers. Poetry (including the always-popular cowboy poetry), amazing stories, and the occasional one-person drama. For the folks in Australia and Slovenia, I'm giving you extra advance notice this time. Y'all come!

365 Jobs: Peace and Love and Wall Thermostats

2011-11-17T13:18:00.001-08:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day 23

Wednesday, October 29, 1986

An early morning consult. Taylor is an intense, speedy young man in blue jeans and a black mustache. In less than an hour we plan about $2000 worth of small projects in his glorious house, a beam-and-stone castle with a broad view over Silicon Valley. Whenever I name a price, Taylor immediately says "Okay" so quickly that I wonder if he heard it. He gives me a business card: he's an electrical engineer, a manager at Hewlett Packard. By my reckoning he's about 24 years old in a ten-room house with no wife, no kids. King-size bed.

Standing in the driveway we agree to a timetable for the work. Taylor zooms off in a shiny black Porsche. Hesitating for a moment under the quiet redwoods, I can see sunlight glinting off tiny windshields on a fabric of highways from Palo Alto to San Jose. A whole world is zooming off.

It's 1986; I'm 39 years old. I've just bought my first computer, a Mac Plus.

From Taylor's tony estate, next stop is Sonny’s bungalow right next to the rush and rumble of the Bayshore Freeway. Lovely red-haired sparkle-eyed Lorraine, Sonny's wife, is dealing with a three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. Lorraine says she always thought she wanted seven children, but now she’s wavering. “But don’t tell Sonny. The minute I show the slightest doubt, he’ll run out and get a vasectomy.”

In one long day I install a sink, a faucet, a garbage disposer, a dishwasher, a vent fan, plus switches and outlets. Sonny arrives at the end. He's been out installing doors — his niche. I tell him the parts cost a hundred dollars. From his wallet he whips out a hundred dollar bill.

Sonny can’t stand to have anyone do favors for him. This was an even trade, and he knows it, but still he won’t let me leave without giving me a screwdriver, a bran muffin, a cup of coffee. Sonny is probably the most generous person I've ever met. He's also a hardworking hippy, if you can handle such a combination of terms. Sonny is part of a whole cadre of hardworking, hardplaying freaks in the crafts. After the Haight came the diaspora. They learned skills, found niches, and held onto their values.

From Sonny’s, next stop is an apartment complex near Stanford University. Most of the residents are foreign-born students along with their spouses and sometimes their grandparents. They don’t know how to use garbage disposers or dishwashers, and as the maintenance guy I end up performing some very simple repairs while trying to teach non-English-speaking housewives from Thailand and Paraguay and Nigeria how to use an American kitchen.

It’s dark when I arrive at the apartments. Everyone is cooking dinner. I smell rice frying here, pork baking there. One of the units has “an electrical problem.”

It’s a bad light bulb.

Another unit has a "broken heater." It's turned off. I try to teach a Croatian-speaking grandmother how to operate the wall thermostat.

I'm not sure she gets it, but she seems satisfied. She gives me something that looks like stuffed grape leaves.

It's 7 p.m. I've been working since 7 a.m. It's the era of Ronald Reagan. The Fox Network has just launched. I drive through rain to pick up 4 gallons of milk at a Menlo Park supermarket where, selecting vegetables, there is a lovely young couple. Menlo Park, by the way, is the headquarters of Sunset Magazine. Back home, on the Mac Plus I write this:

He wears an ill-fitting gown
in this Sunset Magazine town.
She's dressed as a peasant.
The effect is pleasant
and flamboyant in this middle class store
of homeowners writing checks, wanting more.
This couple wants less.

Her hair needs care.
His beard is straggly, partly bare.
Age: about nineteen,
faces fresh, eyes keen.
The decade of their birth
was a struggle on Planet Earth.

In this cornucopia of Wonder Bread and Froot Loops
they choose rice, wheat germ, and chocolate soup.
On one hand he wears an embroidered glove.
What does he know of the Sixties, the Summer of Love?
Naive, laughed-at, sincere. . .

. . . back then, it was me
cruising the ghetto A&P
in paisley and sandals
for peace lighting candles
and what I mean is, God bless you, young couple
as your bubble of idealism washes down
a sea of weary shoppers in a too wealthy town.
My cart fills with yogurt and imported beers.
Somehow we saved the planet these nineteen years.
So much we learned!
Now it's your turn.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

I wrote that poem 25 years ago. The Menlo Park supermarket is now a Safeway so vast you can get lost in it. The young couple of 1986 would now be age 44. Perhaps they have children, teenagers. The Sixties are four decades gone, a time as distant and unreal to a present-day teenager as the Roaring Twenties were to me.

Much of the world becomes middle class. We are wealthy but feel poor. We live better than medieval kings — better food, softer beds, longer lives. In every castle we have music and jesters at the push of a button. We have dishwashers, garbage disposers and wall thermostats. Do we want more?

So much has changed. And so little.

365 Jobs: Ansel Adams in Suburbia

2011-11-14T19:36:00.001-08:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Days 20, 21, 22

Thursday, October 23, 1986

Andrew owns a music store. He must be doing well. On an acre of lovely land in Woodside, his house is cutting edge 1950's style with big windows, high ceilings, flat roof.

A bachelor who rarely cooks, Andrew has a big kitchen in serious need of an update. For advice he's hired Isabella, my favorite decorator.

I tell Andrew I've worked at another music store, Swain's House of Music, his competitor.

"Don't tell them any of my business secrets," Andrew says.

"Do you have any?" I ask.

"No," Andrew says. "But maybe they think I do."

My job is to install new lights and a new vent fan. When I tell Andrew what it will cost, he chuckles and says, "I may be in the wrong business."

The kitchen - in fact, the whole house - is wired with low voltage light switches which were considered high tech in the 50s but now seem laughably crude, involving an entire closet filled with clunky equipment that belongs in a museum of archaic electrical gear. “Tear them out,” he says.

Besides running a music store, Andrew is a serious photographer. On the wall in the hallway is a series of photos, the kind that turn a naked woman into a black and white abstraction of lines and light. I don't like it. Then there's one that's a straightforward shot of a naked woman awkwardly climbing out of a washing machine. It makes me laugh.

"What's so funny?" Andrew asks.

"I don't know," I say. "It just is."

"That's what everybody says. How about this: it comments on the dual role of the American woman as sex object and domestic laborer."

"Were you thinking that when you created the shot?"

"No. I was just goofing around with a model."

"It's funnier without the commentary."

"That's what everybody says."

I tell Andrew about the Ansel Adams prints I hung — just yesterday — for Dr. Mike Van Dyke. Andrew says, “I used to study with Ansel. But I'm more of an indoor guy.”

I cut holes in the ceiling and the roof, install the wires, the ducting — and discover that the vent fan is a piece of shit. I fiddle with it for a couple of hours, trying to make the fan blades turn freely. It's underpowered. The mounting is so poor that the blades tend to chatter. It has no damper, so when not in use there will be a backdraft into the kitchen. Made by Braun, which should be ashamed to sell this crap.

Isabella selected the fan. A botch of a choice.

Now I'm in the position of somehow making this fan work — and work well — or else I make Isabella look bad. I'm loyal to Isabella.

Friday, October 24, 1986

I drive to San Carlos and pick up a roof jack and a cap into which I fabricate my own self-designed custom-built damper. Back at Andrew's house, I install it and beef up the fan mounting with some self-designed custom-built straps made of sheet metal. Sheesh. A lot of extra work, but now it's solid.

I cut out strips of drywall, run the wires (replacing old knob-and-tube), install the downlights. When I leave for the day, there are holes everywhere as if the house was attacked by a slasher. I'm falling further and further behind.

Saturday, October 25, 1986

I'd hoped to take the day off. Instead I spend 8 hours at Andrew's taping and mudding drywall, texturing, sanding, touching up details. I use "hot mud," which is quick-drying joint compound allowing two or even three coats in a single day. I'm talking to myself. Drywall is so mindless. I walk out to the truck talking or singing. I practice bird calls. I must look dotty.

Andrew notices. "You okay?" he asks.

"Sorry. Drywalling does this to me."

"Is it toxic?"

"No, just boring. Take a photo of me, naked, climbing out of a five gallon bucket of joint compound. Leave out the commentary."

Andrew studies me while he rubs his neck. "Hold your hand in the right place, and you'll cover up the commentary."

"I was only joking about the photo."

"So am I." Andrew pulls a roll of bills out of his pocket. "How about if I just pay you?"

Licking his thumb, he peels off twelve one-hundred-dollar bills. Good commentary.

Tuesday, November 15, 1988

A couple years later, Isabella and I return to Andrew's house. Isabella is a mother of three, divorced, a grandmother, still cute and peppy. Behind a facade of blondness, she's one wise woman.

Andrew isn't home. Isabella says our job is to de-bachelorize the decor. After twenty years of living alone, Andrew is preparing for his girlfriend to move in. My job, specifically, is to add some soft lighting.

In the hallway, the photos are already gone.

"Hey Isabella," I say. "Just wondering. When the girlfriend moves in, who does the laundry?"

Isabella sighs, wistfully. "The girlfriend, of course."

And I'll do the drywall.

365 Jobs: Stealing Ansel Adams

2011-11-12T20:06:00.001-08:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day 19

Wednesday, October 22, 1986

It's a medical office building near the Stanford Hospital. A silent carpeted corridor. The sign on the door says DOCTOR VAN DYKE.

I tap on the door.

It springs open as if the man had been standing right behind it, hand on doorknob, waiting. "Hi!" he says. "I'm Mike Van Dyke. It's good to meet you."

He shakes my hand. He smiles warmly, genuinely.

I wonder about the handshake. Was my grip too firm? Is my tight grip a sign of excessive machismo masking a subconscious fear of homosexuality?

Mike Van Dyke is a friendly psychiatrist, a heck of a nice guy, and he gives me the creeps. Headshrinkers do that to me.

Mike shares a waiting room with five other shrinks, each of whom is warm and friendly, but I only feel five times more creepy having them around.

I'm hanging six Ansel Adams prints on security hardware which locks the frames onto the walls of the waiting room. These psychiatrists’ patients have been stealing the prints. And the magazines. The ashtrays. Even the chairs.

Do they then confess their sins to the shrink?

And are they then forgiven? Told to recite ten Hail Marys? Billed for the loss?

With this new hardware, they will have to rip out gypsum and studs to steal a photograph. Which they just might do.

I like Ansel Adams, but he's so — how can I say this? — he's so admirable. So safe. I guess you don't want surprises in a psychiatry waiting room.

Ansel Adams: The Tetons and the Snake River

Each print has to be level — and spaced correctly — and lined up exactly with the other prints. Charging for three hours labor, I feel like a bandit. All I did was hang six photographs. But it takes that long to get the details right. Meticulous Mr. Adams would approve.

Dr. Mike Van Dyke writes a check, and with it he jots a warm, friendly note: “Good job. Thanks.”

Even the note gives me the creeps. And it embarrasses me that I feel this way. The problem is me, not him. We all need warm, friendly psychology from time to time.

Back home, my daughter is on edge. She's eight years old. She tells me she had a bad day: “First thing this morning, I fell off the sink.”

“What were you doing on the sink?”

“Brushing my hair, of course. Then I came home today and you didn't welcome me."

"I said 'Hello.'"

"You didn't say 'Welcome home.'"

"I've never said 'Welcome home' in my entire life. What's wrong with 'Hello'?"

"Then you yelled at me for taking a cookie."

"I didn't yell. I told you no cookies before dinner. And you took one anyway."

She's shouting: "Then the dog licked the cookie and got dog germs all over it so I couldn't eat it and you made fish sticks for dinner and you know I hate fish sticks. You're always making fish sticks every night. I never get what I like. NEVER NEVER."

"I'm sorry."

"And I didn't do well on my math paper at school and everything is hard with Carrie away."

Ah.

Carrie is my daughter's best friend. Carrie's gone off on a ten day trip with her parents. My daughter without Carrie is like an addict without a fix. Those two girls love each other, plain and simple.

I say, "I wish Carrie were back right now."

We fall silent. Apart. But together.

After a few minutes, my daughter gives me a hug. Her little hands pat my back. "I know, I know," she says. "I know you don't really make fish sticks every night."

365 Jobs: Good Craftsmanship is the Lack of Botch

2011-11-11T14:00:00.001-08:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Days 17 and 18

Saturday, October 18, 1986

Surrounding the ultra-wealthy center of deep Woodside lies a territory that is merely well-off and sometimes, on the periphery, downright normal. Today I'm in shallow Woodside working for normal people, spiffing up some closets.

Magda is a chainsmoker, a “financial advisor” whatever that is — a tough-looking woman whom I wouldn't want to cross. Her house is set on stilts clinging to a steep hillside. The structure is solid but small. The bathroom has been remodeled and is a knockout. The bedrooms are plain. The kitchen is an eyesore, poorly laid out. The living room is falling apart, awaiting a remodel. They seem to be upgrading the house piece by piece as money allows.

For Magda I install two sets of sliding mirror doors. Easy. Takes less than an hour, and I do a perfect job. In this case, a perfect job is one that nobody will ever notice — the absence of botch.

Next, Magda wants me to install a pair of birch doors on a sliding track for another closet. These doors are solid core, heavy, easily scratched, difficult to carry without banging into something. I install the track, the rollers, take meticulous measurements. I place towels over sawhorses, scribe my cuts with a knife to prevent chipping, slide my power saw over paper to prevent rub marks on the wood. After three cautious hours, the doors are hung — and one is nearly an inch shorter than the other.

Sacré bleu!

I had meant to trim 7/16 inch off each door. Instead, I trimmed the same door twice!

So I have to trim the other door 7/8 inch too short, which means I have to lower the track that suspends them, which means I’ll have to buy and install a wider apron to hide the track, and I’ll have to eat the cost for time and material. The doors would’ve looked better with the extra inch. And I was so careful!

So far Magda's husband, Kerry, has spent the entire day on the sofa flipping channels on Saturday afternoon television — a football game, an old movie, a panel interview, a standup comic. Magda's gone out, so I tell Kerry I need to discuss a small problem with the doors. From the sofa Kerry waves me off and says, “I’ll never drink again. Until next time.”

A few minutes later, Magda returns. I tell her we need to discuss the doors. Without waiting for an explanation, Magda stomps to the bedroom and pushes the wooden doors along the track.

"Why do they stick?" she asks. "They're too hard to push."

Aha. She hasn't even noticed the door length.

"That's a light-duty track and roller set," I say.

She frowns. "It's what they gave me at the door store."

"For solid core doors, they should have given you heavy-duty track and rollers."

"I'll get them," Magda says. "And I'll give that salesman a piece of my mind."

I pity that man. But I benefit from his mistake. At least for a while.

Tuesday, October 21, 1986

When I return, Magda has the new heavy-duty track and new wheels for the closet door that I botched — and she still hasn't noticed that they're nearly an inch short.

To my delight, the new track and wheel combination requires nearly an inch more space. My botch is perfect! The doors are pre-trimmed!

Magda also asks me, as long as I’m there, to try to make some recessed lights fit into her ceiling. I say okay. She goes off to work and leaves me a bakery roll and a cup of coffee. Nice lady. Seems tough as nails at first. But nice.

Whoever installed the recessed lights didn’t cut large enough holes for them. His error becomes my pay. I spread a dropcloth, remove the cans, resaw the holes, replace the cans, pick up the dropcloth, clean up some dust that settled on the floor. Like most craftsmanship, in this case doing it right means doing nothing showy or creative — nothing you'd notice — it means simply the lack of botch, followed by a good cleanup.

It takes four hours to do the additional chores. All billable.

Sometimes, everything works out.

365 Jobs: Deep Woodside

2011-11-04T13:45:00.001-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Days 14, 15, and 16

Sunday, October 12, 1986

Woodside, California is a wealthy town with a semi-rural vibe. If you're rich and you want to keep a few horses on a few acres, Woodside's for you. If you're an eccentric billionaire, so much the better. You'll fit right in.

Today I check out a job in deep Woodside. Deep, like where the estates are so vast, you can’t even see the houses from the road. Driveways are blocked by steel-bar automatic gates. Single family houses are the size of a ten unit condo complex in Sunnyvale. Deep, like where horses romp and Porsches honk and an army of groundskeepers serve the whims of the trickledown theory.

I find the address on a mailbox and turn into the driveway. The gate is open. I drive around a curve, but still I can see no house. I’m in the pickup with its rusty lumber rack and dented fender. If this isn’t the right driveway, I could get shot.

Another bend, and there it is: a huge Spanish tile and stucco house with seven cars in front, a tennis court with floodlights, and noisy banging inside which turns out to be a crew of moonlighting plumbers replacing all the old galvanized pipes with copper. They’ve torn jagged holes in the walls next to elegant lamps and comfy leather furniture.

Rayette Wilson is the hyperactive owner. She's brown-haired, freckled, thirtyish but awkward like a gangly teenager. She “just had” a baby which turns out to be a toddler. In a whirlwind tour she shows me the room that used to belong to her eldest daughter, a room the size of a small house. Rayette moved the eldest daughter to a smaller room merely the size of a presidential suite. To keep the eldest from becoming resentful, Rayette is converting an adjoining porch into an enclosed space that will be part of the eldest’s room. The daughter's closet is twice as big as the bedroom I grew up in.

My job is to install some lights, switches, and outlets, and to repair some outdoor lights that her previous electrician had installed.

All during the tour, a dapper little man with a mustache has been quietly following us, hands folded behind his back. At last he speaks: “Perhaps, Rayette, you should mention what happened to the last electrician.”

“Oh. He died,” says Rayette. “He was my electrician for five years and really inexpensive, too, but he moved to Oregon where the cost of living was lower and set up his own business. He was working on a Sunday which he usually didn’t do. His wife and child went for a walk to see how he was doing and found him dead of a cracked skull at the foot of a six foot ladder. All alone.”

I ask, “Was there a live wire?”

“No. Nobody could figure why he fell. The police suspected homicide but there were no suspects. No motives. Everybody liked him.”

“So. I’m next.”

“Do you still want the job?”

“Sure.” I explain my rates — time and materials — and tell them I'll start tomorrow.

The dapper little man listens quietly.

As I leave, he follows me out to the truck. As I’m getting in he speaks for only the second time: “You like cars?”

“I don’t make a hobby of them.”

“I collect cars. I have six classics in that garage under the tennis courts. I have a 1929 Mercedes Benz, a 1939 Mercedes Benz, a Cobra, a... Would you like to see them sometime?”

“Oh yes.” Obviously, he wants me to.

Obviously, these cars are his whole life. Obviously, this is Rayette's husband. He's sixtyish, twice her age. Does he work? Is he simply born rich? Is he sane?

“I’ll show them to you some day,” he says, and he walks to the house with his hands folded behind his back.

Monday, October 13, 1986

Rayette Wilson and her house in deep Woodside seem more normal today. Plumbers are gluing pipes outside. Rayette’s husband, the quiet, dapper little man, goes off “to work.” I notice a doormat that says DR. WILSON. A Spanish-speaking maid named Carmen is washing laundry, dressed in skimpy clothes, jiggly.

The house has a bizarre floor plan as if layer upon layer were added. The plumbers have cut holes in walls and shoved furniture aside.

Rayette works on paint preparation in the elder daughter’s cavernous closet, sanding. I love it that she's doing the prep herself in an old spattered shirt with chips in her hair. She must come from less opulent roots. Maybe she started as Dr. Wilson's receptionist.

Meanwhile little Brittany toddles in and out among paint buckets, my wiring supplies, the workers outside, or simply wandering. Everybody seems to be expected to keep an eye on her, including me. At one point I follow her out to the patio. There’s no fence in sight, just a meadow and some trees. A man is rototilling.

Brittany heads straight for the rototiller. Just as I'm about to grab her, the man shuts off the machine and holds out his arms. Brittany laughs, leaps to his embrace, and smiles as he lifts and swings her around.

"I'm Clark," the young man says to me. "I'm the caretaker here." He has a burly body but short height with soft curly hair down to his shoulders, an earring in one ear. The body of a strongman, the hair of a librarian. "I'll play with her," he says. "You can go back to work."

I install three downlights, crawling through a complicated attic strewn with obstacles — rafters and sheathing forming slanted walls, the ghosts of previous roofs, previous remodels. Some of the heat ducts up there appear to be wrapped with asbestos. What am I exposing myself to?

After I install the downlights, Rayette is disappointed by the results. She’d wanted more brightness. She selected the fixtures herself. Thank goodness.

Outside I hear Clark talking to a plumber. Clark says he tried out for the 49ers. They told him if he was three inches taller, they’d take him.

The plumber asks, “You ever try wrestling?”

Clark says, “Yeah, I tried it one year. I was all-conference champion. But I wanted to concentrate on football.”

He doesn’t have a bragging tone. He’s simply stating the facts.

I touch no live wires and fall off no ladders.

Tuesday, October 14

Rayette Wilson is not home when I arrive, but the plumbers are plumbing, and Clark the caretaker is digging a trench. Brittany is toddling. Carmen, the jiggly maid, gives up on working and simply follows Brittany.

I install some wires on “the porch,” which is now an addition to the elder daughter’s bedroom. I tell Clark I’m going back up to the attic.

“Don’t you just love it up there?” he says sarcastically.

“There’s a lot of obstacles,” I say.

“My trouble is, I’m big,” Clark says. He talks of his body the way athletes do — as a tool that can do some tasks and not others. “Your trouble is, you’re long.”

Later he asks me if I’d like him to shut off the power. He says, “I don’t want to come back here and discover you’ve got a new hairdo.”

I ask him why he’s trenching the yard. He describes all the work he’s doing: trenching for sprinkler pipes, building retaining walls, repairing plaster that the plumbers (and now I) have knocked out — and keeping an eye on Brittany. “I love that little girl,” he says.

"What's the older daughter like? I haven't met her."

Clark snorts. "Lucky you," he says.

Clark has the speech and the bearing of somebody who could do better than digging ditches (which of course is what people say about me). He seems so fond of this place. Come to think of it, Brittany looks a lot like Clark...

Rayette breezes in with a station wagon full of insulation. Clark rolls his eyes — another job for him.

Rayette shows me where some circuit breakers are located in the garage — behind the Cobra, Dr. Wilson’s sleek, black prize. A powerful car for the quiet little man.

“Don’t hit the Cobra as you’re walking by,” Rayette says cheerfully. “My husband would kill you.”

Suddenly I think of the previous electrician. I want to ask, Did he hit the Cobra?

Rayette says she has to go to work. Prying, I ask, “Where do you work?

“At my husband’s office. We have a clinic in San Mateo. One of our doctors quit. I have to interview a new man today.”

In what seems a well-oiled routine, Clark distracts Brittany so she doesn't see Rayette driving away. "It always makes her cry," Clark explains to me later. "She asked me to keep her out of sight."

"That's amazing self-awareness for a two-year-old, to ask that."

"No no. Not Brittany. Rayette always cries. She asked me."

The clinic is the family business. And this is the family compound. Hyper Rayette, her dapper older husband, little ringleted Brittany, Clark the ringleted powerful caretaker, Carmen the sexy maid, even the never-at-home elder daughter who leaves bras and uncapped perfumy bottles of shampoo on the carpet — all seem part of a vibrant, busy clan, a separate world in the privacy of deep Woodside.

I spend two and a half hours walking back and forth between the circuit breakers and a pod of outdoor lights. I'm trying to find a short. I probably walk six miles wearing a tool belt. Chalkmarked on the soil in the yard is the outline of a swimming pool.

I find the problem — caused by shoddy work by the previous (dead) electrician. I repair it. And I don’t hit the Cobra.

Driving my little twuck out the long, winding driveway, I'm sorry to leave. If I wanted to be a more popular writer, I'd reveal the trashy scandals and dirty deeds behind the pleasant facade of Woodside. I know a few. You'd recognize the names. But I don't pick fights with billionaires (because they'll win), and anyway most of Woodside consists of families with quirks and personalities just like yours or mine — with more money.

365 Jobs: Banker, Retired

2011-11-02T18:15:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day 13

Saturday, October 11, 1986

Mr. K is the retired CEO of a Very Large Bank. He conferred with Presidents and had the power to rescue — or bankrupt — entire small nations. His wife rules the house, however. She has good aesthetic sense. She will also break off a business conference to admire a sunset, which drives Mr. K crazy and makes me adore her.

They want floodlights installed in an oak tree. Mrs. K offers me the use of their rickety old ladder. No thanks. I’ve brought my own. She doesn’t want the wires to show or the floods to be visible from the patio, and she wants them to shine there, there, and there.

Hiding wires is a challenge. I run Romex UF cable up channels in the tree bark. I scramble over branches. I hide the floodlights in crotches of limbs. It’s fun, working in a tree. More fun than banking, if you ask me.

Mrs. K also wants me to adjust a sagging door. Mr. K says, "I'll fix it myself."

Mrs. K says, "I don't want to wait for months."

It's a loose hinge. I say, “I can fix it in five minutes.”

"Please," Mrs. K says.

Without comment Mr. K watches as I drive long screws.

Next Mr. K asks me to look at a problem with their electric deer fence.

I look at it. “What’s the problem?”

“It makes a snapping noise,” Mr. K says.

“They’re supposed to. That’s normal.”

Mr. K puts his hand on the deer fence wire.

SNAP.

“Oh yes,” he says. “It’s working.”

365 Jobs: Afterwards, It's Still There

2011-10-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Days 10, 11, and 12

Wednesday, October 8, 1986

The porch is rotten. Rusty doorbell button. A dog barks. The person opening the door has an undefined body: shirt, blue jeans, short hair — what gender?

“Hello,” I say. “The owner asked me to look at two small decks. She said they needed rebuilding.”

“Oh yeah.” The voice of a young woman. So, okay. Female. “The one you’re standing on. And another. Out back.”

She leads me through the living room. She smokes. The air stinks. Massive stereo equipment, stacks of tapes. A ratty chair. Rock posters on the walls. A bookshelf sagging with college texts. A fine old oak floor covered with scratches and stains, ruined.

The back porch has termites. No concrete pad. Wood in contact with earth. I take measurements, then return through the stale air of the kitchen and living room. I measure the front porch, where somebody built a nice pattern into the handrail, though now it’s wobbly.

The young woman is lifting weights in the living room, taking breaks to puff on a brown cigarette. Half the books are in German. Rock music is blasting from the stereo. In one corner there’s a playpen full of toys. Otherwise, there's no sign of a child.

The house is a crime. Absentee landlord. Careless renters. At a nearby pay phone, I call Carol, the owner, and tell her that the two porches are well on their way to becoming two piles of termite turd.

Carol asks, "When can you fix them?"

"I'm booked up for a couple months, but I've got the rest of today. I could juggle tomorrow, free it up. Two days would do it."

Carol laughs. "Somebody told me, if you want to get a job done, call a busy man. You sound like my guy."

Her reasoning sounds flawed, but I'll take it. Cash flow, needed.

As I lift off the boards, dismantling the back porch, I start to wonder how far the termites have spread. I’d better inspect the house to find out where, if ever, the destruction ends.

In the crawlspace I see evidence of termites and evidence of repair. No active infestation. The foundation, however, is crumbling away. Good grief. As if termites ate the concrete. The grade beam is turning to powder. I can pull it off with my fingers — by the handful — like a sandcastle built wet but now dry. There is practically nothing holding the house up. If the earthquake chooses this moment to strike, I’m a goner.

Back outside, the almost genderless young woman is straddling a motorcycle. I ask her to leave the door unlocked for me.

“What for?” she says as she pulls on a helmet.

“So I can use the bathroom. The telephone.”

She laughs. “No way,” she says.

Well, shit. She’s a renter. She lifts weights and reads books. There’s a shadowy man who comes and goes in a van and never speaks to me. There’s another woman living in the garage who ordered me to move my extension cord so it wouldn’t crush her plants. “They may not look like much to you,” she says, “but they mean a lot to me.”

Actually, I’d admired her plants, especially an oddly shaped purple flower. I’d intentionally placed my extension cord so as not to hurt the plants, but somebody moved it, perhaps the shadowy man.

I tear the porches out and leave them in a pile in the yard. Mix and pour two concrete landings. When I leave, both the front and back doors are three feet above the ground. I could build a temporary step, but I don't. Take that, motorcycle mama.

At night I call the owner and tell her that before I build porches over the exposed foundation, I should do something to brace it.

To my surprise, she agrees: “Let’s do it right.” I didn’t expect such an attitude because nothing in that house is right. She must have recently bought it. Maybe she doesn’t know what a wreck it is.

"What you really need is to jack up the house and build a whole new foundation. It'll cost big bucks, though."

"Will you do it?"

"You need a different contractor for this. I just do small jobs. Since the house is in Palo Alto, the permit will be a nightmare. It'll take months. I can place some piers. That'll remove the time pressure."

"Do what you can."

Thursday, October 9, 1986

I pull out the old concrete. By hand. Amazing. Whoever mixed this stuff must’ve used the wrong proportions. Too little Portland cement. Impure water. Something.

I mix a fresh batch of Quikrete in a wheelbarrow and pour it. Then I shove two pier blocks into the puddles of concrete and wedge wood between the piers and the sill. One corner of the house has already sunk an inch, and I don’t try to jack it up. At least it won’t sink farther.

Next, I rebuild the front porch. It goes up fast.

Two Stanford students are practicing football plays in the street.

The motorcycle mama who wouldn’t unlock the house for me yesterday, today gives me a black cherry seltzer to drink. On the wall by the telephone is a photo of her and another woman and a baby, all three naked, smiling, in a bathtub. Definitely not genderless. I feel like a voyeur.

Two mothers bathing
with one baby. All look up
smiling at the man.

My hands are eroding. The fingers crack and peel. Copper Green, dry Quikrete, they do a job on your skin. My thumb has a big tender bruise from a misguided hammer. A nail scratched one knuckle; rebar scraped one wrist. You can't always wear gloves. Now I rub my hands with jojoba oil while contemplating the completed front porch. It’s simple but solid. Honest, plain, strong. It’ll outlast the house.

And that’s one of the reasons I like this kind of work: afterwards, it’s still there.

Friday, October 10, 1986

This is my third day on a two-day job. I had to postpone and reschedule; some clients are sore.

Today I'm under time pressure because I have to pick up my son at five o'clock. On the back porch I cut one board badly but use it anyway leaving a half inch gap where there should be a tight butt joint.

I load up the twuck with leftover lumber and concrete plus the debris of two porches with the wheelbarrow on top. Then I pick up Jesse, my son.

With Jesse beside me in the front seat, there's probably a one-ton load in this half-ton pickup. The truck sways from too much weight. After four miles on Page Mill Road, greasy smelly smoke starts rising from below the gearshift knob. It fills the cab.

I open the hood. A cloud erupts, escapes. It seems to be coming from underneath the engine instead of the radiator. No, now it’s coming from the rear sparkplug. How can steam be coming from a sparkplug?

I fix houses, not engines. I know enough to use a rag as I open the radiator, but no steam rushes out. It’s empty. Bone dry.

Two hundred feet away is a large brick house which looks very rich and very private and very not to be messed with, but bless them they have a hose faucet right by the road, so Jesse and I without asking permission form a bucket brigade filling a Coke bottle and a thermos over and over until the radiator is full.

No water is dripping out. Hoses tight.

What happened? How’d I lose it?

I wince, thinking of the mis-cut board, the half inch gap.

I drive on. We fill the Coke bottle and thermos, just in case. A few miles later, the engine is overheating. I’m now at the foot of the mountain. I stop, empty our spare water into the radiator. I teach Jesse how to open the radiator cap. Jesse, by the way, is ten years old. Today is his birthday.

Smoke billowing from
beneath my little truck on
a road leading home.

At the top of the mountain I’m overheating again. There’s a gas station. Jesse opens the hood for me. I try to show him how to set the bar to hold the hood open.

“I know,” he says, and sets it for me. So far, he's known a lifetime of car trouble. It's normal for him.

I re-water, then coast seven miles downhill with the engine off and arrive home with the radiator still cool, still full.

Back home, my wife has left notes all over the house. A plan has developed: to celebrate Jesse's birthday, my wife and daughter and younger son have hiked to the Sierra Club Hiker's Hut which sits on a mountain ridge in Pescadero Creek Park, not far from where we live. Jesse and I are to join them there. We'll spend the night. Perfect.

I shower and change. Jesse gathers supplies.

You can only reach the Hiker’s Hut by hiking. Jesse and I, wearing backpacks, carrying flashlights, climb through the woods up the side of the ridge starting in a grove of creekside virgin redwoods, rising through oaks. There’s no moon. Through a break in the trees I see bright stars. I say, "There's Cassiopeia."

Jesse walks ahead.

I hear a sudden sound from the dark woods. I stop, spooked.

Jesse says, "It's a branch falling, Dad."

Things fall apart. Even trees. Half inch gap.

Jesse hikes fast. I’m getting winded. My backpack gains weight as I ascend. I want to protect Jesse from mountain lions in the forest, or at least from falling branches, but I can't quite keep up with him.

With my son climbing
a mountainside at night
toward stars.

The Hiker's Hut is no hut. It has electricity, a refrigerator, stove, running water, even hot water. Well-built, nice details. No half inch gaps.

Dinner’s over but Jesse and I have spaghetti, garlic bread, salad. Somehow my wife carried a small cake a mile uphill, only slightly smudged. Candles.

We lie in sleeping bags on the deck overlooking a meadow on the ridgetop. Deer settle, making beds in the oat grass. The stars are magnificent. The Milky Way oozes across the bowl of sky from the ocean in the southwest to the distant glow of San Francisco, northwest.

A raccoon is rattling logs in the woodpile.

Exactly ten years ago Jesse came into my life and changed everything forever.

Next week I'll go back and cut a new board.

365 Jobs: Gunther's Vent

2011-10-25T20:24:00.001-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day 9

Tuesday, October 7, 1986

I’m in Gunther’s basement eyeball to eyeball with a dead mouse. He (or she) is sprawled on top of the concrete foundation. I don’t know what killed it. Gunther is upstairs, not dead, in bed recovering from eye surgery.

I’m cutting pipes, drilling holes, banging and clanking and feeling guilty about all the noise. Gunther's wife is at work — teaching my daughter, who is in second grade. Neither Gunther nor his wife seem to take this surgery seriously, though I do — he’s an old man, after all. Any surgery entails risk.

I, too, am doing minor surgery on his house, though there is nothing delicate about this operation. Gunther hired a “yahoo,” he says, to plumb an apartment in his basement. Twice he’s called me to correct errors that the yahoo made — minor errors, ones Gunther could have lived with. Gunther doesn’t seem to tolerate minor imperfections in plumbing, though you’d never guess it from the slapdash style of the house. Or maybe he can't tolerate being reminded of the yahoo, who must have been arrogantly ignorant. Gunther is a retired schoolteacher, an affable and generous man.

Today’s yahoo error is a vent pipe that dips in such a way as to hold water like a sink trap, which defeats the purpose of venting. And what is the purpose of venting? To equalize pressure, the same way you can improve the pourability of a can of tomato juice by poking a second hole — a vent — in the top of the can. Vents also allow sewer gases, which are both poisonous and explosive — methane, for example — to go out through the roof of your house instead of bubbling out in your bathroom sink. Vents are not a glamor item. But you need them.

My other task for Gunther today is to divert two bathtub drains into a graywater line for which Gunther has dug a trench.

While I’m working, one of the neighbors, an oldish woman, comes down to the basement and says, “I’m Karla Kartoffel. Kartoffel. That’s German for ‘potato.’ I’m wondering if you could look at a drain in my house that isn’t working right.”

Later, I go to Karla's house which her husband built in 1952. He’s dead. Karla has religious quotations on her walls. She can’t look at me when she speaks. She gazes off at a 90 degree angle, squinting, pursing her lips as if she’s reading from a teleprompter located too far away.

All Karla's drainpipes are buried under a concrete slab. There’s no way to change the pipes now: “You’ll have to accept the fact that once a year or so you’ll have to call a rooter service to clean them out." I point out the plumbing vent protruding through her roof under an oak tree. "Put a screen over your vent so it doesn’t fill up with leaves. They're plugging your drain and could cause gases to build up. I'd do it myself but I didn't bring a ladder.”

This seems to be vent day.

I charge her nothing for the advice though I’ve spent a half hour here. I’m too easy sometimes.

Karla Kartoffel’s house, like the houses of many old people, is a house that is gradually shutting down. She lives alone in one end of it. Gunther’s house is more fully active, though the basement is full of old file cabinets and the smell of fermentation.

Gunther tells me that the doctor instructed him to call if he experienced “really severe pain” after the anesthesia wore off at home. Gunther awoke at 4 a.m. in pain and wondered what is the dividing line? When does it become “really severe"? He vomited. Is vomiting “severe”? He was sweating. Gunther decided that sweating meant severity, so he called the doctor at 6 a.m. His wife drove him to the doctor’s office at 7 a.m.

By the time I finish, Gunther is up and about. Just 24 hours after surgery, he's inspecting my new pipes, praising modern drugs and medical techniques. He’s been blind in one eye for 20 years. When his eyepatch is removed, theoretically, hopefully, he will see.

We test his graywater pipes. They leak — a slow drip. I tell Gunther that I can fix them, but that the soap in his wastewater will plug them up if he does nothing. Soap is a wonderful sealant.

Gunther will let the soap do the work. Apparently, he’ll tolerate imperfections in my plumbing, but not the yahoo’s.

Gunther invites me to have dinner with him. His wife has a meeting at school. He's lonely, though he doesn't say so, and maybe a little scared, though he'd never admit it, and — I think I detect — a little ticked off at his wife for leaving him alone all day and all evening. Women, take note: when a man says he doesn't need help, he means
a) he really thinks he doesn't need help, and
b) he'd appreciate a little chicken soup.

My job is home repair. I stay for dinner. I talk about how much my daughter enjoys second grade, how she blossoms under the teaching of Gunther's wife.

Conversation. Equalizing the pressure. Omelet, prepared by a one-eyed man. Salad, prepared by a plumber. Nothing glamorous. But something he needs.

Lit Night in La Honda

2011-10-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

On the last Wednesday of every month, we hold Lit Night in La Honda. We meet in the bar of the Cafe Cuesta (formerly Sullivan's) for beer, wine, dinner and audience-friendly stuff. I'll be reading as usual, along with a mix of pro and amateur writers. Poetry, prose, and the occasional one-person drama. Y'all come!

365 Jobs: Crawlspace

2011-10-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day 8

Friday, October 3, 1986

I have just wiggled on my belly through raw dirt and spider webs. Now I’m lying on my back with a reciprocating saw in my hands. I’m about to cut a pipe, which will then squirt water into my face, onto my clothes, and make a puddle in the dirt that surrounds me. The question on my mind is, What am I doing here?

I don’t enjoy crawlspace work. I’m thirty-nine years old. I have a bad back. I have a college degree.

What in hell am I doing here?

Of course I’m here because I promised to help Sonny install his new kitchen sink just as he helped me install two pairs of french doors in my house. We trade labor. He knows doors. I know plumbing. We’re friends. I wasn’t Best Man at his wedding, but I was the guy who hired a stripper for his bachelor party.

When Sonny was a hippie carpenter, I was a hippie computer operator. He loved his work; I hated mine. I hired Sonny to help me fix up an old house I’d bought in San Francisco. He told me I should quit my job and do what he was doing. He had complete confidence in himself and in me. One day, I quit. Quickly I had an utter disaster — a one day shower repair turned into a three day marathon of faulty soldering, squirting pipes. Sonny came to my rescue.

Ten years later, I still have occasional disasters, but I no longer call on Sonny to help. He’s settled into a specialty — installing and weatherstripping doors. I’ve become a generalist — a licensed general contractor. And you can’t be a general contractor unless you’re willing to hump it in a few crawlspaces. Or hire somebody else to hump it.

My niche is the small job. Details that the big contractors don’t want to bother with. Adding an electric outlet for somebody’s new computer. Installing a sink. Repairing a deck. My competition is not other contractors but unlicensed handymen who charge less and who as a result end up working for the people who have less money. Which is why I quit being a handyman, myself. If I have to wiggle on my belly through somebody’s cobwebs, I’d rather they were a rich person’s cobwebs.

Sonny is not rich. When Sonny bought this house (cheap, by California standards), my first question was "How in the world did you qualify for a mortgage loan?"

Sonny answered: "I lied like shit."

At my own house in La Honda, Sonny replaced two sets of doors that leaked cold air into my rooms and water onto my floors — doors that I had installed myself — and now the air and rain stay outside. He gave up two and a half workdays to do it, and if necessary I will spend two and a half days in this goddamn crawlspace to pay him back.

Oddly, in my perverted way, I love poking around people’s houses. A construction voyeur. I don’t peek into the medicine cabinet or violate private space. I snoop around the attic where the electrician took blatant shortcuts (probably on a suffocatingly hot day, when I would probably do the same), and I stop to admire the handiwork of some previous tradesman in the crawlspace who took the time to properly insulate each hot water pipe when he knew nobody would ever see the difference if he left a few gaps — I notice, and I salute his dogged sense of values.

I find beer bottles, candy wrappers, and I wonder: did somebody lie in this dusty coffin and goof off? Who could be that desperate?

I witness the work of fungus, and sometimes I bear the bad news of termites.

A house is alive. It breathes. It expands and contracts. It ages. Sometimes it falls sick, and then I'm a doctor of houses. I probe intimate cavities to learn its history. I study the multilayered changes of an old house where generations of remodels have built upon themselves — I note the compromise, the painful choice, or the brilliant solution. In new houses I learn the latest techniques, some good, some dismal.

A house reflects the values of the people within. If a strong person buys a strong house, it remains strong. And vice versa: Weak people, weak houses. But if a strong person buys a weak house, he gradually, painstakingly fixes it up (which is what Sonny is doing). A weak person in a strong house will gradually destroy it.

The structure will tell a story: tragedy, comedy, or heartwarming family drama. Day-to-day life slowly, inexorably leaves an imprint. You can find it in the attic, on the roof, behind the drywall — or in the crawlspace.

Anyway, that's what I'm doing here. It's all Sonny's fault, and I'm grateful for it as I cut Sonny’s pipe and the first stream of water arcs upward and falls like warm rain on my eyeglasses.

365 Jobs: We all need a bit of nursery...

2011-10-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor: Day Seven

Friday, September 26, 1986

Raccoons have been knocking over the Barleys' garbage cans.

My assignment: stop those 'coons.

I build a garbage can fortress out of boards that I salvaged during the deck repair. I’d like to see them knock this over: 2x6 redwood walls, 16 penny nails into 4x4 douglas fir posts.

And yet I know that after a few winters of rain, the wood will soften and split, fungus will grow, and the raccoons will return. All victories are temporary.

I present Mr. Barley with a bill of fifteen hundred dollars for the week's work. Three Irish Setters bounce around us. Then — the magic moment — Mr. Barley writes a check and casually hands it to me. This simple act always fascinates me: the transfer of wealth. So casual. So vital. A rich man of immense power, a tradesman with none. What if he refused? What would I do?

In ten years of contracting, I’ve never had to find out (although once I got into a shouting match...)

I move on to the modest house of a new client. She's white and very pregnant. Her husband is black and very large — like, left tackle large.

She hands me a list of problems she wants me to check out. On the bottom of the notepaper, preprinted, it says:

Sex maniacs leave notes.

On the wall is a framed drawing of a little boy and a little girl (cute, both white) examining their respective genitals in utter innocence.

The whole vibe is a wee bit strange. The husband sits at a computer, tapping keys. The wife follows me around asking anxious questions about what I'm doing: does the faucet contain toxic chemicals? Why did I replace the old chrome sink trap with a plastic trap?

Any moment, I expect her to go into labor.

I drill a hole through the back wall of the bungalow and extend a water line from the kitchen. I attach a hose bibb, turn the main valve back on, and test the hose. Out comes steaming hot water!

The woman asks, "Won't that scald the plants?"

Embarrassing. Humiliating.

I replumb to a cold water pipe and end up charging one hour's labor for a three hour job.

Oh well. I've had worse days. Much worse. And in my pocket I've got two checks, a big one and a little one.

Moving on, I arrive at school a half hour early to pick up my kids. The older kids would be bothered if I showed up in their classrooms, so I go to Nursery Blue where Will, age four, is folding paper boats and trying them out in a tub of water. I sit on a sofa next to the rabbit, Bunny Blue, who sniffs me thoughtfully and then closes his eyes. Bunny Blue has soft gray fur. Will glances at me, then continues folding and floating paper boats.

I fall asleep. I dream of water pipes, bursting.

When I awake, Bunny Blue is cuddled against my hip. It’s time to go. Will doesn’t want to leave. He's still folding and floating his flotilla.

Nursery Blue is a safe, warm spot in the world. Will is my third and last child to pass through here. I’ll miss preschool — for myself as much as the kids. We all need a bit of nursery toward the end of a day.

365 Jobs: Mucking with Clients

2011-10-20T16:52:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day Six

Wednesday, September 24, 1986

I don’t want to sound like a snob, but some houses are so poorly built that I hate working in them. They depress me.

Michael has such a house. It has no foundation. The roof is rotten. The ceilings buckle; the floor tilts. And the plumbing is a nightmare.

Unfortunately, I am Michael's plumber. He’s a friend and a business associate. I can’t refuse.

His kitchen sink won’t drain.

I crawl under the house. The drainpipe from the sink has no slope. Dead level. Opening a no-hub coupling, black sewage spurts onto my pants. The blockage is five feet long. I scrape it out: black, soggy, matted food waste.

The fix would be to rebuild the drain lines with a better slope — any slope, in fact, would be an improvement. But Michael doesn’t want to do it. “Too big a project,” he says.

So in another six months, I’ll be snaking this line again.

I replace the ballcock in his toilet. When I rejoin the water line, the supply tube breaks and sprays water. I replace it, leaving a damp carpet behind.

I remove his kitchen faucet and install a brand new Delta. I love Deltas. They operate nicely, and they’re easy to repair and reasonably priced.

My final assignment for Michael today is to test a built-in dishwasher that has been in this kitchen ever since he bought the place five years ago. He finally wants to find out if it works.

First problem: the water line is clogged. I unscrew the angle stop and scrape an inch of debris out of the supply pipe.

Second problem: the control knob is sheared off. I turn it with pliers.

Third problem: the dishwasher starts; the water goes in, but it goes right back out again through the drain hose without ever entering the wash area. This one, I can’t solve. He needs an appliance repairman, and I tell him so.

I started at nine o'clock. I’m quitting at 3:30. I leave a bill for 5 hours labor, plus parts. I'm not sure why. Maybe to head off an argument. People never believe plumbing could take as long as it does, and I get tired of justifying myself. Most plumbers can tell you: it's not the mucking in sewage that's so unpleasant, it's the mucking with clients.

Back home I shower, wash my hair, shave, cut my toenails — trying to remove all traces of sewage sludge from my body. It seems to penetrate skin the way oil penetrates wood. My clothes I drop in the washer.

At last I’m ready to begin my own bathroom.

The first step is always the most frightening: cut a hole in the floor. Once cut, there’s no turning back.

As luck would have it, I have to cut through a floor joist. Now the floor is dangerously weak — directly under where I want to place a 300 pound bathtub to be filled with 400 pounds of water and 150 pounds of flesh.

Normally, you’d solve this problem by cross-bracing with a perpendicular joist, but in this case I can’t reach one of the sides where I’d have to hammer nails unless I tear out the ceiling of a closet downstairs.

Study. Measure. Trade-offs. Think. Finally I come up with a plan involving mini-braces and a sheet of 1 1/8 inch plywood under the tub.

I don’t have 1 1/8 inch plywood on hand. I cut and install the mini braces, and I repair some gaps where flooring was never laid for some reason. Then I call it a day. Four hours work.

My wife comes home, and all she sees is a hole in the floor. “That’s a day’s work?”

"Four hours. I was at Michael’s until three-thirty.”

"Four hours? One hole in the floor?”

“And a lot of planning.”

She laughs. She's familiar with how my simple projects can expand. "You want a hamburger?"

"Please."

"It'll take about four hours."

Somehow, though, it's ready in fifteen minutes.

365 Jobs: Lifetime Guarantee

2011-10-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day Five

Tuesday, September 23, 1986

The wind is clinging to the mountainside today. It thrashes the branches over my head and throws a few hard raindrops into my face. I’m back at the Barley estate. Deck repair, an outdoor job. I’m wearing a shirt, sweatshirt, denim jacket, and nylon vest. And I’m still shivering. I can see under the ceiling of clouds to the valley below where the sun is shining and cars are glittering pinpoints. It’s always a different world, these mountains. That’s why I live in them. And why most people don’t.

Mr. Barley has decided that I should replace all the decking but not the substructure. So I'm laying 20-year decking on a 10-year foundation. Go figure. Maybe Mr. Barley knows something about his own body's life expectancy. Maybe a doctor just performed a 5-year repair.

Removing the old planks, I find termite damage in one of the joists. The softness leads back to where the board joins the house and beyond — they got into a floor sill. Then it stops. Digging with a screwdriver, I find no live termites. They came, they ate, they left. Why?

I cut off the bad section of joist, replace it, and add metal flashing between the deck and the cabin, which is how it should have been built in the first place. Then I lay the new decking.

There is also a rotten step. No termites, just fungus. Usually a rotten tread means worse damage beneath it. Not here. So I simply replace the top board and coat the stringer with Copper Green. Good for 10 years. Not that I'm making any guarantees, mind you.

Now, the railings. My instructions are to “do something” about them. I drill holes, add bolts and shims to the posts. Much better. Ten more years. But again, no warranty. I'm not stupid.

Between the posts are vertical redwood 1x4s toenailed into the decking. A poor design. A running child could blast into a 1x4, knock it out, and drop 15 feet. Most days, I’d consult with my clients and make sure they approved before I changed anything. Today I’m too cold to be prudent, and anyway Mrs. Barley isn’t home and Mr. Barley is hard of hearing. They said, "Do something." Here's my something: I cut the rails shorter and add an outside horizontal 2x4. It looks better, works better, and I’m getting out of this wind.

I move on to the house of one of my favorite clients.

Gunther lives in the foothills. He’s white-haired, bearded. A retired schoolteacher. Looks like an old hippy. In his basement is a photo of him as a young man — smiling, short-haired, in business suit.

"I hired a yahoo," he says. "Now I need you to fix his mistakes."

The yahoo plumber installed a vent pipe that slopes the wrong way. In addition, Gunther wants me to divert a bathtub drain out of his septic system and into a graywater line. Illegal, of course, but sensible. Gunther has already dug a trench 2 feet deep and 20 feet long for the graywater.

"Wow," I say. "I’m impressed. That's a lot of digging for a, um..."

"For an old fart? I do okay. I've got a good back but bad knees."

"I’m the opposite," I say.

“Like the pioneers,” Gunther says. “You know what was the number one medical problem of the pioneers who settled the west? It wasn’t Apache arrows or anything like that. When you think about it, it makes sense. Building houses. Making farms.”

“So what was the number one medical problem?”

“Back trouble.”

That’s typical Gunther. A fountain of odd but interesting information.

I name a day when I can do the job.

"I'll leave the house open," Gunther says. "I'll be having surgery." He's having an eye operation, a retinal transplant.

He’s blind in one eye. I hadn’t noticed.

Surgery on someone of Gunther's age is never a sure thing. "I hope you're okay," I say.

"Oh I'm not worried," Gunther says. "It comes with a lifetime guarantee."

He waits a moment while I think that over.

Finally, I take the bait. "What's that mean?"

"It means the surgeon guarantees I'll stay alive." Gunther winks. "Until I'm dead."

365 Jobs: Poison

2011-10-18T20:38:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day Four

Friday, September 19, 1986

I’m rebuilding a deck at the Barley house. My instructions are vague. Mrs. Barley told me: "Replace anything that needs replacing,” and also, “Do something about the railing."

It’s going to be a physical day. I love working on decks. I love the muscle work, the big results, the fact that you're outdoors in a scenic spot because people don't want decks in ugly places. This one is 15 feet above the ground on a hillside with a view across the valley, 30 miles.

The railing wobbles. Whoever built this nailed the posts. A few bolts will firm it up.

Half the decking surface is cracked, weak. No question: I tear it out. Underneath, though, the joists are soft in spots but mostly sound.

What do the Barleys want? A twenty-year repair? Or a five? For twenty years, I’d have to tear the whole substructure out and replace it. For five, I need only replace one rotten post. The Barleys aren’t here today, so I decide to go for a ten year repair: replace two posts and one joist, and treat the other joists with Copper Green.

The delicate part of the operation comes in replacing one of the posts, a 16 foot 4x4 which is surrounded by poison oak. Armed with a shovel, I attack. I clear an area large enough to stand in plus space for a temporary brace. I have to maneuver a 16 foot piece of lumber in a 4 foot clearing. One false move and I’ll suffer for a week.

My shoes touch a branch. My Levis brush against a leaf. Is that contact too much? Tomorrow, I’ll know.

Back home I gingerly remove shoes and all my clothes and drop them in the wash. I rub my legs and arms with something called Tecnu, which is supposed to prevent reactions to poison oak. Then I shower, a long one, washing everything thoroughly, remembering my boyhood back in Maryland when my neighbor was burning a pile of leaves including poison ivy. Just an ignorant little kid, I stood in the sweet-smelling smoke. Within hours I broke out from my hair to my ankles. My clothes had absorbed the toxin. Every inch of my body itched, except the feet. Every inch. Inside my nostrils. Inside my ears. And — yes — down there.

Wash, wash. The steam wafts.

Later, in fact all night long, my arms and legs tingle — pins and needles — where I rubbed them with Tecnu. It feels like I'm being eaten by ants. A warning from my skin: don’t ever use that stuff again.

Today I balanced on joists 15 feet above the ground painting toxic Copper Green. I climbed ladders. I juggled heavy lumber. I used lethal tools: power saw, power drill. The only harm comes from a little bottle of crap I bought at the drug store.

But at least, I don't itch.

More Arno Sternglass

2011-10-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

I've talked about Arno Sternglass before. I show a number of his paintings here and talk about his joy of life here.

Recently I bought a painting of his on eBay. The seller had salvaged it from a barn sale. It was mildly water damaged, but now cleaned and framed, it shines like a bright light.

Cafe by Arno Sternglass

The scene is a cafe on Third Avenue in Manhattan where Arno and his wife Lila liked to eat. In exchange for some meals, Arno made this painting for the owner in 1971. The owner gave Arno more credit than he had expected. So — and this is typical Arno and Lila — they decided to celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary at the restaurant and invited 3 couples to join them. Lila says, "We all enjoyed a fine meal and drank a lot of wine."

The cafe is gone. Somehow, years later, the painting ended up in a damp box in a barn in New Hampshire where it had been collected — and hoarded — by a blind woman who liked to buy art work at yard sales. For a blind woman, she had a good eye.

Here's one more painting I didn't include in my previous post. Some of the color has faded. It's another playground scene from Central Park in the 1950's:

Playground, Central Park by Arno Sternglass

365 Jobs: Earthquake

2011-10-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

October 17, 1989

Today's job was rewiring a house in Menlo Park. It was grubby crawlspace work creeping on my belly, running Romex, lying on my back hammering staples into joists. Thinking, always, I'd hate to be down here in an earthquake.

Now I'm swimming laps. Oddly enough after a hard day's work, there is nothing I enjoy more than swimming myself to utter exhaustion.

It's 5:04:49 p.m. Suddenly I'm surging on a wave. Like in the ocean. I'm body-surfing. What the hell?

I'm swept to the side of the pool. Waves are breaking over the edge. Aluminum chairs are dancing and rattling all over the concrete deck. That was the sound of the quake for me — clattering aluminum chairs. With water splashing all over the concrete deck, there is a smell like a dusty road after a summer rain.

The pool is at a private club. My son Will, age 7, comes running to me wearing a baseball glove. He's been throwing balls on the tennis court. He says, "What happened?"

"Earthquake," I say. "You feel it?"

"I fell down."

"I was in the pool," I say. "Come to think of it, a swimming pool may be just about the safest place you can be in an earthquake. Nothing can fall on you."

"Can I get in?"

The water level is a few inches below where it was. The power is out. Otherwise, everything is normal. No damage. What can I say? When you've lived in California for a long time, you get blasé about earthquakes. This one didn't seem any different, only bigger.

"Sure," I say.

And so for the next half hour, I finish my laps while Will dives for pennies. It would prove to be my last half hour of calm in the next few weeks.

Two boys also jump in the pool — with their clothes on. Later their mother arrives. “We fell in,” they say. "The earthquake made us fall."

“I hope your shoes aren’t in there,” she says.

“No, we took them off,” they say. "Then we fell in."

After I shower and change, as I’m getting a cup of coffee, the bartender tells me that a section of the Nimitz Freeway collapsed.

Hmm.

Will and I drive to the Portola Valley Town Center, where my older son Jesse is just finishing soccer practice, which also continued as normal. A soccer field — like Will on the tennis court and me in the pool — was a safe place to be. The Town Center sits exactly, literally, right smack dab on top of the San Andreas Fault. My 12-year-old son had been standing on it. He said he fell down, then stayed perched on his knees watching waves move through the grass.

None of us have any idea how big the quake was. But as I drive to pick up my daughter, on the radio we hear that a section of the Bay Bridge collapsed.

In my truck we follow the route of the San Andreas Fault along Portola Road, crossing back and forth over the fault line, then continue on Sand Hill Road to the gymnasium where my daughter has gymnastics.

She's waiting for us in the parking lot. Everyone else has already been picked up. Her class had to leave the building because ceiling tiles were falling down, so she’s been waiting outside. "Where were you?" she asks. She was bored.

We drive home. Many radio stations are off he air. KNBR is on. They say the Bay Bridge and the Nimitz collapsed and fires are breaking out.

On the way home, a small barn has collapsed.

I stop in front of our house and hear voices and falling brick. The La Honda Fire Brigade is dismantling our chimney, which was on the verge of collapse. My wife is holding a flashlight for them. Our power is out.

The house is a shambles. Books, records, and cassette tapes all over the living room. Food and glass all over the kitchen — molasses, peanut butter, vinegar, sugar, wineglasses, heirloom china. And it’s now dark. I find flashlights and light lanterns and loan a Coleman lantern to the neighbors. Their house has a huge hole in the wall where the chimney collapsed.

I inspect our house. Sheetrock came loose on the walls. Papers and books flew around but the computer didn’t budge. The bathroom medicine cabinets burst open. The sink is full of pills and Band-aids. The back porch detached itself from the house.

So we start cleaning up. I bring in a garbage can, and we fill it up. My daughter tends to her stuffed animals who are traumatized by the quake. Will and Jesse clean up the living room. My wife tackles the kitchen. I reshelve the bathroom supplies. We mop the kitchen floor several times, and it’s still sticky. We replant some potted flowers that crashed.

The phone works, but you have to wait for a dial tone. I call a friend across town whose husband is out of town. "Are you all right?" I ask.

"I'm fine," she says. "Don't worry about me."

Several days later I learn that this woman was standing in the rubble of her collapsed fireplace, an entire corner of her house suddenly missing, telling me she's fine and not to worry. She thought I should help somebody who might really need it. This attitude of altruism will show up again and again among practically everybody in the days to come.

We listen to the radio a bit, but its tone is basically one of panic — saying, “DON'T PANIC!!!” and giving a lot of foolish and contradictory advice such as, "Stay out of your house. Don’t go outside." So we turn it off and deal with the real.

The kids — and the dog — sleep on the floor in our room. We feel aftershocks all night. We're together. We'll get through it.

As a contractor, the next few months will be the busiest period of my life. At first I make emergency board-ups and bracings for free. Then I charge my regular rates.

The insurance inspector estimates the damage to my house at $11,000. He warns me: "Watch out for profiteering contractors."

I tell him, "I'm a contractor."

The deductible on my homeowner's policy is $13,000. I can fix it myself, except I'll get a mason for the brick chimney.

Of all the houses I repair after the quake, I never meet one homeowner who collects a penny from insurance. I agree: let's beware of profiteering.

(I wrote an entire book about the earthquake with a no-nonsense title: QUAKE! It's a young adult novel based on true events about people in the town of Loma Prieta, which sits on Loma Prieta Mountain, the epicenter of the quake. You can get used copies through places like aLibris or Amazon, or you could get a brand new, signed copy from me. Send an email if interested: joecot@coastside.net)

365 Jobs: Cheerfully Picking

2011-10-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day Three

Thursday, September 18, 1986

I’m supposed to work for Michael this morning, unclogging his sink drain along with a few other plumbing problems, but he hasn’t answered his phone for two days. Where’d he go?

Aw, shucks — I don't get to muck about in Michael's backed-up sewage today. What a disappointment.

Instead I spend a pleasant time building shelves, then reorganizing my garage where I store all my tools and supplies. If I’m not careful, my yard fills up with lumber and old toilets.

For a couple hours at my desk I figure some estimates for people and order Mr. Rufus’s windows, which are an odd size. In other words, expensive, even for the most basic aluminum model. Can he afford it? I call Mr. Rufus, quote a price. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

I really like this old guy. He lives in a dump in a bad neighborhood; his health looks sketchy; his furniture is wretched. I'm guessing he's an alcoholic who's seen the bottom and is coming back up. And yet he and his homespun wife are as cheerful as can be.

When I was starting out in this business, I would have shunned aluminum windows. Now I've suggested them — and ordered them — for Mr. Rufus. I used to hate drywall, too. I thought everything had to be high-quality wood, carefully crafted. What a prick I was.

Here's to growing up. Here's to the Rufuses of the world. Here's to cheerfully picking among the crap that life throws at you.

What We Do Is Dangerous

2011-10-13T23:38:00.001-07:00

October 13, 2011

Photo by Joseph Kral

Construction accidents can happen when you least expect them.

Yesterday on a narrow road in La Honda, a truck from GraniteRock was delivering 9 yards of concrete for the final pour of a house. As he approached, the construction workers offered to help guide him with hand signals around the last hairpin turn. The driver waved them off. He had years of experience and had delivered to this same project on earlier pours.

Making the turn, the rear wheels went off the pavement onto the soft shoulder of the private road. The barrel of the truck was still mixing, which may have shifted the load off center. As the shoulder crumbled, the guard rail collapsed. The truck slid sideways and backward into the canyon of a creek. The cab flipped. The force of 30,000 pounds of concrete falling into a canyon flattened the cab as if it had been put through a crusher. The driver died immediately. It took the entire day and into the night before they could get his body out of there.

Photo by Joseph Kral

Fred Eisenstaedt, the driver, was 62 years old. Everybody liked him. Sometimes he brought his terrier dog along with him on deliveries. Not this day.

A day later, the truck body has been removed. The barrel containing 9 yards of hardening concrete is still in the canyon.

Lawyers and insurance companies will argue over who was at fault. We in the trades only need to know that a good man is gone.

Be careful out there.

365 Jobs: Head First

2011-10-13T15:08:00.001-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day Two

Wednesday, September 17, 1986

The day begins at the house of a friend, Michael, who is also my literary agent. He needs an estimate.

Working for friends is tricky. My first instinct is simply to do the job as a favor; but I do so much work for friends that I would quickly go bankrupt if I weren’t paid for it. I compromise: I charge them 20% less for labor. (Come to think of it, Michael never gave me a discount when representing me as an agent — I tend to short-change myself like this.)

The big danger in working for friends, however, is not money but professional standards. I don’t feel fear. I relax, and if I’m not vigilant I become sloppy in my work.

As I talk with Michael, it begins to rain. Among a number of projects, the immediate problem is that the kitchen sink is backed up. In fact, it’s been backed up for days.

I snaked that sink drain several times in the past, and every time I’ve told Michael that it needs to be rebuilt or else the problem will keep recurring. Today, at last, he seems receptive to the idea. He'll "think about it."

It’s raining hard.

We talk for an hour and fifteen minutes. That’s the problem with estimates: they can eat up your day.

I drive through the rain to the Barley estate. In the adobe house I sand and touch up the ceiling over the big old master bed. Then for the cottage I build a new windowsill, which takes me to noon.

It’s still raining.

I take a break, eat lunch and make some phone calls, but then I give up. I’m supposed to rebuild their deck this afternoon, but I’m rained out.

A long estimate. Then rain. Some days, it’s hard to make a living in this line of work.

Back at home, the rain stops. Annoying. It isn't worth returning to the Barley job, but I can spend a couple of hours working on my own roof. It's an ongoing, when-I-have-time re-shingling project. I set up the ladder, peel back the blue plastic tarp.

I'm placing step-flashing around the chimney, an awkward task. I should use roof jacks for safety, but this will only take a few minutes. The roof has a 1:1 rise-to-run ratio, which is carpenter talk for a roof that has a 45 degree pitch. I'm balanced on my butt while chiseling mortar for the flashing when something slips and I'm sliding face-first on my belly down the wet shingles. Toward the edge. Like a toboggan on a ski jump.

This is the moment when your entire life is supposed to pass before your eyes.

Somehow, it doesn't. I'm too busy trying to save myself. With my arms outstretched, a hammer and cold chisel still in my fingers, I manage to grab the rain gutter and come to a stop with my face in the dark water and damp leaves of the trough. My feet are uphill behind me. A sharp point of sheet metal — a section of step flashing — is poking into my ribs. Screws and nails and tools are spilling out of my tool belt and clattering over the shingles and down the ten foot drop to the deck. I almost went there, head first.

I have a cut elbow. Might need a stitch.

Can't complain. I'm alive.

I'll be glad when that roof is finished.

David Brookshaw's Tool Chests

2011-10-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Mini Tool Chest by David Brookshaw

Three years ago I wrote a blog post about a fantastic tool chest built by a Civil War vet named Henry O. Studley. In the post, I said, "We need more nuts in this world."

Well, here's another nut. Unlike the full-scale tools of Henry O. Studley, David Brookshaw builds miniature tools and miniature tool chests. If I had this guy's skills, I could cram a lot more items into my truck. (On the other hand, I'm not sure how I'd use a pipe wrench that's shorter than my pinkie finger.)

Thanks to Kari Hultman's Village Carpenter blog, which turned me onto this guy. She has more photos of his work.

If you click on the photo, you can see more detail

365 Jobs: The Zen of Aluminum Windows

2011-10-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day One

Tuesday, September 16, 1986

I shut off the engine. Suddenly there is silence except for the crackling of the motor as it cools. I’m scared.

Good. Fear inspires my best work.

I’m scared because there are hundreds of ways to goof up a job, and only one (or at most, a few) ways to do it right.

My first task is in “the cottage," which is the original house built on this land in the 1930's. Now the cottage is used as a rental. Two old wood windows are rotting. The tenant has stuffed newspapers into the holes.

It takes ten minutes to tear out the windows. They probably took hours to install plumb and tight. Makes me queasy. How easy it is to destroy a work of carpentry.

I'm no longer fearful. Like stage fright, it disappears as soon as you begin.

Gingerly, expecting the worst, with crowbar and screwdriver I pry the outside trim. Here’s a surprise: the wood doesn’t split. It’s virgin redwood, tight-grained, bone dry. Wonderful wood. Fifty years on this house, and not a trace of rot even though the nails within it have nearly rusted out. More durable than steel, this wood.

Probably the lumber came from a 600-year-old institution of a tree growing on this same mountain, felled in the desperation of the Great Depression. This vertical grain — clear heart — would be much too valuable to use as window framing today. Back then, they used redwood for everything.

The new windows are aluminum. Wood is better-looking and transmits less heat, but would cost in this case three times as much. Cost versus quality. It’s up to the owners.

Mr. Barley is a retired professional. He has 3 Irish Setters and wears a silver whistle on a lanyard around his neck. When he blows it, bedlam breaks loose as 3 dogs run to him and dance about, eager for a command.

Mrs. Barley is an elegant but easy-going woman, a gracious hostess with an east coast accent. She seems to make all the decisions when it comes to questions of taste. I told Mrs. Barley she could choose plain aluminum windows for $70, bronzed aluminum for $140, bronzed aluminum with thermopane glass for $270, or wood with thermopane for $600. Mrs. Barley sorts it out: Since the cottage is a rental, wood is out of the question. Since the rest of the cabin is uninsulated, thermopane would not make a great difference. But she chooses bronzed because it looks better. Aesthetics, in this case, are worth an extra $70.

I cover the edges with silicone caulk which states on the tube that it is “guaranteed for 50 years.” Total bullshit. The stuff was only invented a few years ago. Who knows how long it will last? And what if it fails after, say, 47 years? Can I tell by looking at a 47-year-old bead of caulk which company manufactured it? Do I bring in the original tube and cash register receipt, which of course I've been saving for 47 years? Will the company still be in existence? Will mankind? If I’m still alive, I’ll be 86 years old.

My next task is to install a screen door. I rip off the plastic and cardboard packaging which says “all hardware included.”

There is no hardware.

There is supposed to be a closer, a handle, and a package of screws. From this mountain, the store where I bought the door is a 30 minute drive.

I have screws. My truck is a miniature hardware store exactly because of situations like this. I can scavenge the handle from the old screen door. But there is no closer. For that, I will have to return on another day.

My next task is in the main house, which was built of adobe bricks in the 1950's on the side of a mountain overlooking the southern San Francisco Bay. A lovely spot. I can see over the smog of San Jose to Mount Hamilton and a tiny white dot on its peak: the Lick Observatory, 30 miles away.

A ceiling has been water-damaged. Mr. Barley says that the roof leaked but now is fixed. The damage is over a bed which is too heavy to move, so I cover it with a dropcloth. On the floor surrounding the master bed are 3 round dog beds. I slide them under the dropcloth. Then I place a sheet of plywood over the dropcloth to spread my weight over the mattress, and I stand on it.

Cutting out the damaged section of ceiling, I have two surprises: first, the drywall is 5/8 inch thick whereas I brought 1/2 inch drywall to replace it, and secondly the damage is directly beneath a bathtub drain.

I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the damage was caused by the tub, not the roof. I go upstairs and run water in the tub. I come downstairs and shine my flashlight into the hole. No water. I go back upstairs and run the shower. I come back downstairs and examine the hole: no water. I go upstairs and hold my hand over the shower nozzle so it splashes against the wall. Downstairs: water is dripping.

To pinpoint the source of the leak — the shower valve — it takes several trips up and downstairs. My knees are getting tired. On each trip my eye catches on a book lying on the staircase about a pet owl “the size of a beer can with the personality of a bank president.”

I explain the problem to Mrs. Barley. Plumbing problems are never pleasant, always unexpected, usually expensive. When the news is bad, blame the messenger. Which is why plumbers tend to be defensive people. Fortunately, Mrs. Barley has already weathered many a home-owning crisis, and this is a small one. “So can you fix it?” she says.

“Yes,” I say. And I do.

The other surprise, the extra thickness of drywall, I cope with by using extra joint compound as filler.

I love this house. The space is generous. The view, stunning. The furniture, comfy and worn. The walls are covered with weavings, macrames, and photos of Irish setters. There are dog scratches on the doors and floor. The fixtures, though old, are of high quality. Books overflow from shelves. The rooms are arranged for human interaction. The television in a corner of the bedroom appears to be an afterthought. There are magazines piled on top of it. I don’t even see a stereo.

It's been a good day's work. Nine hours. Satisfying. Useful. Somewhat hard on the knees.

I'll be back.

After the Barleys, I drop from the wealthy hills of Woodside to a little strip of Appalachia. It's an unincorporated area in a hollow at the foot of the mountain. This house belongs to a man named Rufus on a street called Rufus Lane. He says there’s no relationship.

I'm here to make an estimate.

Unlike the adobe house or its well-built cottage companion, here I see wood siding split and chipped, loose boards, a sagging fence overgrown by roses, and a general sense of the temporary nature of poorly built shelter. Inside, an old woman, Mrs. Rufus, is boiling potatoes.

Mr. Rufus shows me a fence and says, “She wants it fixed.” Then two doublehung wood windows: “She wants to replace them.” Apparently “she” decides what must be done. But it is his job to talk to tradesmen. He says, “What kind of window do you recommend?”

“Aluminum,” I say without a moment’s hesitation.

"Coffee?" He offers me a chair.

“No thanks,” I say. “I stiffen up if I sit down after a day’s work.” In a hard chair, I mean.

He nods. “Me, too,” he says. He’s 30 years older.

Listen to me! I'm 39 and I sound like an old man!

"I'll call you with an estimate," I say. Already we trust each other, a gut feeling.
"All right. I have to go to work now," Mr. Rufus says.

He's beyond retirement age and he works an evening shift. I can't resist asking, "What kind of work do you do?" He looks rough-edged like a longshoreman or a truck driver.

Mr. Rufus shrugs, his hands palm upward. He lifts his eyebrows as if the answer is a surprise even to himself and says with some puzzlement in his voice: “I’m an accountant.”

Ancient calendars decorate the walls. The Salvation Army would reject the furniture. On the floor is a magazine, Field and Stream. Mrs. Rufus in a calico apron and soft slippers is humming, boiling potatoes. The kitchen is warm and steamy. It feels like a home.

365 Jobs: A Boy on a Bike

2011-10-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

Friday, October 11, 1996

In the truck loaded with plumbing equipment I'm driving Will, my youngest child, to school. It's a wealthy private high school where he's the scholarship kid. He feels, shall we say, somewhat alienated. He's playing in a rock band, the Burnin' Biscuts (the misspelling is intentional) that is gaining local notoriety.We've argued about marijuana. We've argued about unchaperoned parties. Today Will is questioning why he should go to high school. Any high school. He wants to play music.

Since he's only 14, the law is on my side. But I'm thinking ahead: "I want you to go to college."

"Why?"

"Because it's okay with me if your career plan is to be a rock star, but I don't want you to be an ignorant rock star."

Which ends the conversation. It's a 25 mile drive to the high school. The remaining 20 miles pass in silence, Will fuming.

When you decide to have children, you're aware of how much work it is to take care of a baby. If you aren't aware, people will tell you. But nobody warns you that eventually you'll be dealing with a 14-year-old. Will is my third (and final) pass at this dealing, so at least I bring some experience to the task.

I spend the day repairing and rebuilding a shower stall.

Building a shower
all day getting dirty so
some people can wash.

Driving home, I take note of six boys in the bike lane ahead, single file, pedaling hard, apparently racing. Just as I catch up with them, one of the boys loses control. His front wheel wobbles.

Suddenly boy and bike shoot into the road directly in front of my truck.

The bike topples. On his side but still on the bike, the boy scrapes a half circle in the road and comes to a stop.

I've already hit the brakes. The wheels freeze. The truck goes into a skid. The tires screech. The boy looks up at me in naked terror.

Our eyes lock.

The truck jerks to a stop with its front bumper just inches shy of the boy's head as I hear the toolboxes in the bed crash against the back of the cab.

Then there's absolute silence.

I can smell the smoke of my tires.

The kid stands up. He's wearing a helmet. Road burn on one arm.

For a moment, the kid and I are staring at each other, separated by a windshield, not a word spoken. The kid has blue eyes. Fair hair. His stare transforms into a glare. He seems angry as if it's all my fault. No apologies and no thanks. He hops onto his bike and pedals furiously away.

For a minute I can't move. I'm shaking. Cars come up behind me, honk, then pass.

Now I can move. Slowly I drive home, re-examining my life.

What am I hustling for? Two kids in college, one starting high school. I'm writing huge checks and working harder than ever. Does it all come to this? I'd been driving 5 or 10 over the limit, pushing the edge on speed just as I'm pushing the edge on my career. That boy I almost killed will soon be 14 himself, angry, confused. I caught a glimpse of it in his eyes.

A thought is crystallizing, and it isn't coming from my brain. Something, some One, has spoken.

Back home when I walk into the kitchen my wife sees it right away. "What's wrong?" she asks.

I'm 49. She's 48. I say, "I want to have another child. Is it too late? Can we do that?"

"Wow." She checks my face for signs of a mental breakdown. None there. Water is boiling on the stove.

She considers for a minute. The air tingles. This is the essence of love.

"We can try," she says.

365 Jobs: Impaled

2011-10-10T14:18:00.001-07:00

October 1995

I'm installing ceiling hooks for a therapy practice.

It's attic work on a sunny day, probably 120 degrees up there. Dust hangs in the air. I plow through spiderwebs and shove itchy insulation aside.

I'm balanced on my knees over a joist. Tightening a nut, my sweaty hand slips from the wrench and comes down hard on something sharp.

Ow!

In the beam of my headlamp is a nasty chunk of wood broken from the top of the joist. Like a grainy dagger of Douglas fir, it is about 4 inches long coming to a point at one end. The point is embedded in my right-hand palm with the wood hanging down, pulled (painfully) by gravity.

Cautiously, I try to tug at the wood. It won't come out. When I pull at it, I see stars.

I crawl back to the trap door, step carefully down the ladder. Holly, one of the therapists, sees my hand and blanches.

"Ack!" she says.

"Little accident," I say. "Could you try to pull it out?"

"It'll rip you apart!"

"Just try. Please."

She pulls gently at the stick of wood.

I see stars.

"I'll drive you to the emergency room," Holly says.

"Not yet," I say. "I want to finish first." I start climbing to the attic, still impaled, the piece of wood clattering (painfully) against the side of the ladder.

"You almost fainted when I pulled on that thing."

"Thank you for trying."

"You'll bleed all over the attic. The ceiling down here will turn red."

"I'll clean it up."

One thing about me: pain makes me stupid. It's happened before. Another thing about me: I hate to leave a job unfinished.

Crawling across joists, I nearly faint again.

Okay, I get it. I crawl back to the trap door and come down the ladder. Holly is standing there, scowling at me. "Get in my car," she says.

"I'll drive myself."

"You can't drive!"

But I do. The truck is stick shift. Changing gears, I see stars. Instead of the emergency room, I drive to the Palo Alto Clinic where I have medical coverage and a family physician who knows me. Of course, you're supposed to make an appointment weeks in advance.

There are 3 receptionists in the Family Practice Department. It's a busy place with a waiting room full of people. My face is smeared with sweat and dirt and cobwebs. I step to a desk and say, "Excuse me. I'm sorry. I don't have an appointment but is there any chance I could see Dr. Wisler?"

I hold up my hand for the receptionist to see. Blood is trickling down the chunk of wood and dripping onto the floor.

All 3 receptionists bolt from their desks running in different directions.

A minute later, one of them returns and says, "Dr. Wisler is seeing a patient and is supposed to go on lunch break after that, but he says he'll see you on his break. Now let's get you out of here."

Everyone in the waiting room is staring at me and my chunk of wood and the little puddle of blood at my feet. I suppose it looks like somebody attacked me with a wooden stake. Like I was fighting a vampire.

I follow the receptionist to Dr. Wisler's office, where I take a seat in an armchair. The receptionist places towels on my lap to catch the blood.

After about 15 minutes, Dr. Wisler arrives with a nurse. For some reason he doesn't move me to a treatment room but operates on me right there in the office, holding my hand over a towel draped over the blotter of his desk. The nurse squirts antiseptic while the doctor dislodges bits of skin. I'm seeing stars the whole time.

Dr. Wisler seems to be enjoying himself.

"I'm sorry to make you miss lunch," I say.

"This is better than lunch," he says.

The nurse and I exchange a look. She shrugs.

The whole operation takes a half hour. My hand is wrapped in white gauze.

Dr. Wisler orders me to take the afternoon off and to keep the hand elevated above my heart. So I do. I drive home steering and shifting with my left hand. Once when I was hitchhiking, I saw a one-armed man do this in a Volkswagen bug. You have to lean forward and press your shoulder against the steering wheel while you reach across to move the floor-shift. You tend to swerve a little each time you shift, so you change gears as little as possible.

At home I take a lengthy bubble-bath, my favorite recreational activity. My bandaged hand stays above water on the edge of the tub. While soaking, I read a book of poetry by William Carlos Williams. He was a doctor, so it seems appropriate.

My daughter (age 17) comes home from high school and finds me still bathing in bubbles. Talking through the door, she reminds me that when she injured her ankle, she was told to keep the ankle above her heart for a few days. Being a dancer, she could do that.

We all learn to adapt.

The next day, I return to work. You can do a lot with one hand.

365 Jobs: Starting Out

2011-10-09T16:59:00.001-07:00

1983

Starting Out

They look like kids,
so strong and fresh.
Bright paint in the kitchen.
Tattoos on young flesh.

A simple first home.
The radio rocks.
All worldly possessions in
one cardboard box.

At Plum Court Apartments in Sunnyvale the new carpets are too plush. The doors are dragging. I'm here to trim them. The entire unit was refurbished after an old couple moved out.

The newly-painted walls are utterly bare. The tenants have no furniture. No chair, no table, no bed. Nothing. The girl has one large cardboard carton; the boy, a backpack. There's an air of hasty arrangement in their move. Amid the high energy there's a gentleness between them, a constant checking of eyes. Little touches. Fingertips. They are totally in synch. Buoyant. Inspiring.

Besides the box and backpack, they have a kitten which is mewing and lapping water from a bowl on the kitchen floor. From a small radio, strange drums are blasting.

"Just married?" I ask.

"Not yet," the boy says.

The girl smiles at him, blushing.

"Oops. Sorry," I say.

"It's cool," the girl says.

They're so in love. So sweet. So simple.

So brief.

Are you pregnant? I want to ask.

The love may endure, but never so sweetly, so simply.

I overhear them talking. Trouble with parents. Her mom might help if her dad doesn't find out.

The boy works at Toys R Us, restocking shelves. He talks about kids, what they like, how one little girl visits every day to fondle one particular bear.

The young woman is counting their money: not enough for a pizza. "Top Ramen," she says, and she fills a pot with water. She glances at me. "Are you almost done?"

"I'll be out of your way in a minute," I say.

He squeezes her waist,
so happy, so poor.
Soon as I leave, they'll be tumbling
on the living room floor.

There's hope for us all.

.

365 Jobs: Hello, Old Dog

2011-10-07T17:36:00.000-07:00

September 1986

Hello, Old Dog

You smell so bad
and walk so slow,
lucky for you
you love old Joe.

I wrote that poem in 1984. Now it's 1986, Sunday morning. I’m the first to awake. Quickly without dressing I go upstairs and let out the dog: Quinn, age 14, arthritic, incontinent. This morning, I catch him before he pees in the house. He hobbles to the door, hesitates at the top of the stairs, looks back as if to say, “Do I have to?”

I nod. You have to.

Gingerly, sideways, he takes the first step. Next, the tricky part. At a 45 degree angle he takes the second painful step. Arthritis has welded his spine. Sometimes he has to drag his rear end. This time he sways but somehow stays on his feet.

I remember once when he was young, I was walking him at night on a leash. He took off after a cat and dragged me on my belly down a hill. I came home looking like I'd been on the losing side of a fight. Years later, my children held the leash without incident.

Now Quinn drags himself back up the stairs. Sometimes, climbing, he gets stuck. His hind legs lock straight out like a rabbit, and he can’t make them bend. This morning he makes it.

A few minutes later as I'm getting dressed, Will finds me. He's four. Will says, “Daddy, Quinn is throwing up all over the house.”

There’s a puddle in the kitchen, another in the dining room, two in the living room and one under the computer — foamy, oily, clear vomit with no grass. Sometimes he vomits his pills, which currently are an awesome pile: two Butazoladin, seven Medrol, two Epinephrine, and a vitamin E. But he hasn’t had his morning meds.

I invite Quinn to go out on the deck. There, if he vomits any more, I don’t need to clean it up — just hose it down.

He can’t get up.

Puppy Quinn

I carry him, 70 pounds of ribs and fur, out to the deck, set him down and shut the door. We only selected 4 of those pounds at the Philadelphia dog shelter. In his prime, he weighed 85.

My wife and I go for a run.

Returning home a half hour later, Quinn hasn’t moved. He looks up at me and smiles, panting, dripping saliva from his pink and purple tongue. He hasn’t vomited since I put him there on the deck. Gently, I hold his legs in a way that usually allows him to get mobilized. Nope. He can’t move.

Now for the first time, I’m worried. I guess it’s a sign of his decrepit condition that up to this moment, I wasn’t concerned.

Rose is stretching, post-run. Speaking softly so the kids won’t hear, I say, “Quinn seems to be paralyzed.”

We share a worried look. We’ve both been dreading this development.

Rose examines him. She knows tricks, therapy tricks, that can unlock his legs.

“He’s not paralyzed,” she says. “But his abdomen is distended and his gums are pale.”

Suddenly we both have the same thought: poison. A neighbor’s dog was poisoned two weeks ago. Time to move fast. I call the neighbor, Kurt, who owns a car repair shop and has, coincidentally, a German Shepherd who looks just like Quinn. What were the symptoms when his dog was poisoned?

“Bleeding from the nostrils,” says Kurt.

“Did his stomach swell up?”

“No.”

So that's not it.

Rose and I hurriedly talk it over. We're thinking: blocked intestine. Sometimes in big dogs they get twisted and nothing can pass. The problem occurred — or may have occurred — once before on a weekend when our regular vet was getting married. We took Quinn to the Emergency Vet in South Palo Alto. This man diagnosed intestinal blockage but nearly killed Quinn with anesthesia in the process. We later showed the x-rays to our regular vet, who said it didn’t look like a blockage at all.

Now, this being a Sunday, we are stuck with the Emergency Vet again. They have a terrible reputation, not just from our experience but from everybody we've talked to. We also doubt that Quinn would survive the 45 minute drive over the mountain. Rose wants to intervene, to help. I want to let nature takes its course. For weeks we’ve dreaded the prospect of having to put Quinn down. Now it seems that nature has stepped in to do the job for us.

Rose calls the Emergency Vet and describes the distended abdomen, the pale gums and vomiting. The woman who answers the phone says, “Bring the dog in right away or he will die a slow and painful death.”

Rose is dancing on hot coals. I point out that the woman is a receptionist, not a vet, probably doesn't know her ass from her elbow, and in any event she had no business making that kind of a statement.

Rose calls Fawn, a friend whose old decrepit Irish Setter recently died, who keeps horses and runs a 4-digit monthly vet bill, who above all has a clear head and will be less emotionally wracked than we are. Fawn comes right over. Good friend. Quinn, meanwhile, hasn’t moved. He lies there, looking up at us, panting, sometimes smiling. His eyes are getting cloudy.

Fawn’s first act is to put her arm around my back. I’m moved by the gesture because Fawn is not a touchy-feely sort of person — and neither am I. She says, “Quinn looks just like my dog on the day he died.”

Fawn knows of some vets who make house calls. Rose tries calling one and, miraculously, he answers the phone. He listens carefully and speculates that Quinn is either having congestive heart failure or “a tumor that has outgrown its blood supply and burst” (which I don’t understand, but which seems to make sense to Rose). The vet says it doesn’t sound like intestinal blockage because Quinn doesn’t seem to be in pain. It’s now 11 am. He’ll be home until 4 pm. We can call him again, or bring the dog in.

Bless you, unseen vet!

I bet it’s heart failure — possibly brought on by the Epinephrine which we gave him for bladder control but which is a stimulant and made him restless all night.

The children have been standing around, asking questions we haven’t had time to answer. Now we put it to them: Quinn is dying. He can’t move. We can’t fix him. All we can do is be with him and try to make him comfortable.

Will, though raptly attentive, doesn’t seem distressed. He’s silent, sucking thumb and holding his raggedy blue blanket for comfort.

My daughter is eight. She says she doesn’t want Quinn to die. She cries. Never one to repress her emotions, she gets it out of her system for the moment and moves on.

Jesse, age nine, gets very quiet. He brings out his old sleeping bag, one with a “4x4 Truckin” pattern, now oozing stuffing from multiple wounds. He lays it over Quinn’s rear legs and back.

Sometimes our job is just to be there. To bear witness. To comfort. We stay with our dying dog.

But nothing happens. Quinn gets neither better nor worse. My daughter wants to know if we’ll bury him. I say yes. Where? In the yard. I feel uneasy discussing his death as we kneel over him. He can hear us. He’s always known the sense of what we’re saying if not the words. But I’m sure he already knows he’s dying. And he seems calm about it. Maybe, I wonder, he feels relieved.

I’ve never witnessed a natural death before — only violent ones, or ones from sickness.

With nothing happening, the kids start wandering off. I go to the garage and start building a wall. Just yesterday, Quinn was out here helping — hobbling after me or sitting with his feet on his tail at the top of the driveway watching his favorite view: the parade of dogs and children and joggers and bikes on the road below.

I remember the time Quinn chased a burglar out of our house. A neighbor saw it. First the burglar alarm went off — which is probably the only reason Quinn woke up — then the burglar leaped over the balcony rail with Quinn biting his butt.

That’s the purpose of our burglar alarm: to wake up the dog.

When Jesse was a toddler, he used Quinn as an armchair.

When you have a 70 pound dog and a 10 pound child, you must have trust. And training. We only messed up once. Will has — and shall always have — a scar on his cheek where Quinn nipped him. It was our fault for letting Will crawl over to the food bowl and play with the kibble while Quinn was eating. Afterwards, the dog apologized endlessly. Go on, he seemed to be saying. Eat my kibble. You can have it.

You have to trust.

Other than that, he's been the kids' guardian. It's his job.

Quinn was always a lover of puddles, a chaser of birds, snapper of bees — if he caught a bee, he made a face but never seemed to get stung. When Rose and I quarreled, he’d stand between us — silently, solidly — as if to break it up. He’d wake us with a warm wet greasy tongue. If we tried to take a family photo, he'd always barge in front.

He had a big heart.

And now the heart was shutting down.

Rose calls to me where I'm working down by the garage: “You may want to come back,” she says.

Quinn’s eyes are sinking in. His tongue hangs down on the boards of the deck. His eyes glaze — and then suddenly he twitches. For a moment he acts alert. His ears prick. What does he hear? He tries to move, fails, and drops back on his side.

We watch. There’s no telling how long it will go on. The vigil begins to seem like an ordeal. We tell Jesse that he can go play if he wants. Jesse touches Quinn’s neck, the soft fur, the friend he’s grown up with who followed him and woke him with that same greasy tongue. “Goodbye, Quinn,” he says.

I remember the time I left Quinn locked in our car, and he destroyed it. At the body shop the manager said he'd only seen one other car shredded like this: by a bear at Yosemite.

I stay with Quinn. He seems to be slipping away. His breath is slowing down. There are pauses when he is breathing neither out nor in. His eyes, though open, are gone. I rub his neck.

The breaths come farther and farther apart. I’m still fondling his fur. Then, as I am wondering when the next breath will begin, I realize it won’t.

We cry.

Jesse removes Quinn’s collar with its jangly dog tags and fastens it around his own neck. When he moves, he jangles. It startles me.

We decide to bury Quinn in the sleeping bag which is still draped over his rear. I don’t cover his face. I want to look at him. He looks peaceful at last, jaws still open from his last clenching breath. He never got mean, never snapped at us, not even at the end.

I’m amazed at how much water my eyes can make. My glasses steam up. I wipe them and they steam up again.

I find two shovels and a pick. Jesse, Will, and I dig a hole right where the ground is hardest on the hillside that we call our yard. Solid clay and rocks. We chose this spot because Quinn used to lie at the window and look out — for hours — on this ground.

The work feels good. I attack with a fury. We haul dirt away in a wheelbarrow. He was so full of life, it's hard to believe one small hole could contain him.

I wrap Quinn in the sleeping bag. He’s half stiff. I have to bend him — like unwarping a plank of wood — to fit him in the hole. Taking turns, we each take a shovelful of dirt and drop it on the sleeping bag. I bring some garden dirt we’d been saving in a garbage can. Then I bring a compost pile I’d created last year. Quinn’s grave will now be the richest soil on the hillside.

My daughter and Will pick wildflowers and lay them on the grave. Jesse finds a jagged slab of broken marble that I’ve had laying around for years and sets it on top of the mound of earth.

Once as an experiment I left Quinn in my neighbor's house, went home, closed the doors and windows. From my kitchen window I could see Quinn in the kitchen next door. "Quinn," I whispered. His ears shot up. Amazing! I repeated several times. Each time, he could hear my whisper across a hundred feet through the walls of two houses.

I go to bang on the garage. Hammering nails seems to be exactly what I need right now. My plan for the day had been to build this wall on the rear of the garage, meet with two people about estimating jobs, and finish repairing a shower for my next door neighbor, Mark.

Mark finds me nailing in the garage. He wants to know if I can work on the shower. I say I feel like banging nails. He understands. But then I snap out of it.

Finishing the shower means cutting and gluing a sheet of CPE plastic for the shower pan. The glue fumes are deadly. Mark opens windows until a cold blast is roaring through the bathroom. His family starts screaming that they’re freezing. I’m probably stoned from glue-sniffing, but I don’t feel it and I don’t care anyway.

Dinner. Sundays we make a point of having a special family dinner. It’s usually the only day we’re all together. Tonight we are all subdued. The windowsills surrounding the dining room are deeply scratched where Quinn used to claw at them, expressing his anger at dogs he could see passing on the road.

After dinner I go down to the garage and try to finish the wall, defying darkness.

For bedtime, we read That Dog to the kids — a story by Nanette Newman of a boy whose dog dies, who thinks he will never want another, then is won over by a puppy. Right now, it's hard to believe.

But it's true. It will happen to us. Quinn was my favorite dog in the whole world, and so will be the next one, and the one after that. We'll go through this cycle several more times until our own cycle has passed.

Tucking Will in, he remembers a puppy we met a couple of weeks ago named Litho. Only, Will calls him “Licko.” An excellent name. He also says we had “barkeley" for dinner (broccoli). Good names.

Standing at the back door I look out at the marble slab, the flowers, the mound of earth. "Quinn," I whisper. "You had a tough old heart."

I know he hears.

Quinn also makes an appearance in these posts:
Jim the Plumber
Bad Toilet
The Airplane Room Part Two.

365 Jobs: Warranties

2011-10-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

October 2002

As he opens the front door I say, "Hi, Lee. How are you today?"

"Not so good." He's a sun-spotted man with thin white hair. Stooping shoulders.

I've been maintaining Lee's properties for years. He's wealthy, retired, walks with a cane.

Today in his residence I replace a vent fan and a couple of light bulbs. He always has a couple of lamps that need changing. He could do it himself, but he waits until he needs me for some other job, then adds the bulbs to the list. I think it's just to make me linger a little longer. He gets lonely.

While I replace bulbs, we talk. Lee's always been a straight shooter, so I shoot right back. It's why we can get along even though, politically, we're polar opposites.

Lee says, "I've been told I have five more years here, so I hope you repaired accordingly."

"Are you moving? Or dying?"

"The latter." He laughs. "My warranty will expire."

I examine the carton. "Looks like the vent fan has a ninety day warranty."

"Ninety days? I've got ice cubes that last longer than that."

"Your old vent fan lasted twenty-five years, so this one probably will, too."

"What about the light bulbs?" Lee asks.

I examine the box. "Rated for two thousand hours."

Lee calculates for a moment. "That's even less than ninety days."

"Not if you turn them off."

"That's what I'll do. I'll sit in the dark." He laughs. "That way they'll last forever."

Five years pass.

And four more.

Lee is still calling me. I built a ramp to his front door, installed grab bars everywhere.

The latest. Lee calls: "I need a new water heater. What can you get me?"

"They come with five-year or ten-year tanks."

"Get me a one-year."

I don't say so, but I'll bring him a ten.

"Also," Lee says, "I've got some light bulbs burned out."

May we all outlast our warranties.

365 Jobs: Sunsets For Sale

2011-10-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

October 1984

Sunsets For Sale

"Oh! Would you look at that sky!" she says.

"It will cost three thousand,
six hundred and fifty dollars," I say,
"but if you will step over here
I'll show you how we can eliminate – "

"Oh! But just look at that sky!"

I glance. I haven't time.

She has white hair to my brown,
bright eyes to my lids hanging down.

I will never live that long.
She knows a better song.

To close one more deal
to pay one more debt,
I miss
one more sunset.

In this poem I'm a little too harsh on myself. But who says poetry has to be fair? I wrote it the way I felt it in 1984.

A woman asked me to do an unusual project: convert a sauna into an in-law unit. Her husband was the CEO of a Very Large Bank. She looked to be about 50 years old. Her husband, who was proud of her looks, said she was 72 (which irritated her). (And I hadn't asked.) They lived on a hilltop with a magnificent view over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

I was trying to give an estimate; her eyes were on the sky. Her husband and I were annoyed that she wasn't paying attention. As I drove home I started cursing myself for not joining her, not pausing to appreciate the splendor on display.

Sometimes, though, you need to keep your eye on the job.

A few years later — after I converted the sauna, after several more projects — I read in the newspaper about a car accident near Monterey. Their beloved old Mercury flew off the highway into a drainage ditch by a beanfield. Two field workers beat out the flames and ran from the cops, though it didn't matter. She and her husband were already dead. Instantly. The police speculated that the setting sun was in the driver's eyes, blinding her. I think I know what really happened.

"Oh! Would you look at that sky!"

365 Jobs: Hamilton Holmes

2011-10-02T13:15:00.001-07:00

October 1983

Hamilton Holmes

Hamilton Holmes has a heart condition.
You want to listen?
In his garage he found under a wheel
six hundred shares of U. S. Steel.
A broker would make him wait seven days.
He's in a hurry. How much will you pay?
See that Audi? Almost new.
Worth four grand. He'll take two.
The reason is, he needs surgery real quick.
Pay cash now. Then go for a trip.
You want it? You like him?
Don't fall for his art.
Remember he warned you:
he has a bad heart.

(Not his real name, by the way.)

I got a call from an apartment manager asking if I could break into a unit. A tenant had changed the locks.

As I've written before, carpentry is great training for a burglar. In this case, all I had to do was pry out the door stop and cut the deadbolt with a recipro saw. Unlike a burglar, I didn't have to worry about noise.

The tenant was gone and so was the furniture that came with the unit. So were the faucets, shower nozzle, toilet, light fixtures, schlock artwork, drapes, carpet, doormat, stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, and garbage disposal. He left the bathtub.

Now I had a couple day's work restoring this unit.

The manager said the guy had a British accent and a charming manner. He wrote a bad check late Friday afternoon which didn't bounce until Tuesday. The manager spent all day Wednesday trying to contact him. Thursday, the manager picked up the local paper and, by golly, the tenant's mug shot was on the front page. He'd been flim-flamming people all up and down the San Francisco Peninsula. A detective with the San Jose police was quoted as admiring the guy's work ethic: "He was tireless. He cheated people at six a.m. and he cheated people at midnight. The man never quit."

He'd been trying to raise money for a heart operation. The harder he worked, the more he needed it.

In prison, I bet he got the surgery. For free.

365 Jobs: The Rookie - Pea Gravel

2011-09-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

September, 1976

(This is the third part of a series that began with First Day, followed by Adolf and the "Crack" followed by Be a Mortician.)

All of a sudden Winston, father of The Architect, along with his senile wife and their Chicana maid started moving into the unfinished house. Chaos ensued. The kitchen had no sink; bathrooms were incomplete. The floors had been sanded but not yet sealed. The day Winston decided to move in, the sealing was supposed to begin. It was postponed.

We all worked in our stocking feet.

A king-sized bed was moved into the master bedroom with newspapers placed under its legs so it wouldn't mar the unfinished floor. A color television was set on some boxes in the den so The Architect's mother could watch KQED, whatever was on, from her wheelchair. She watched the news hour, Sesame Street, fundraising appeals.

The maid, who looked about 16 with big brown eyes and long fingernails painted blue, would hover near the mother picking up crumbs as they fell on the bare floor or brushing sawdust as it settled over the TV screen.

Several rooms were paneled with hardwoods — not the 4x8 sheets of ersatz "paneling" but real honest-to-God hardwoods, different species for different rooms, selected and arranged by Adolf, the master German carpenter. I had the job of sanding. I rented a Makita half-sheet flat sander, a heavy machine that made a pleasing vrummmmm as it ground its way up and down the walls.

It was gorgeous wood. I loved having contact with it, smoothing it to a soft glow. Adolf had selected and placed each board to blend into splendid patterns of grain just waiting for a touch of oil. The walls would be magnificent.

After a few hours, the 6 pound weight of the Makita combined with the vibration left my arms and shoulders aching. As I took a break, allowing blood to recirculate to my fingertips, The Architect and Pierce stepped into the room to inspect my work. The Architect never spoke directly to me. There was an annoyingly strict hierarchy.

The Architect ran his palm over a section I had sanded. "Okay," he said, frowning. "We can stain it now."

"Oh no!" I said. "Please don't stain it. Use a natural finish."

Immediately I knew I'd committed a grievous sin. I'd violated the hierarchy and, worse yet, I'd disagreed with the design decision of a hotshot architect. Me, a $5 an hour laborer.

The Architect nodded his head toward me, speaking to Pierce. "Take care of this," he said. Then he walked out.

I didn't even have a name. I was "this." The hotheaded rookie. I believed in purity of wood. I've mellowed since then, but that's how I felt at the time. Passionately.

Pierce said, "I'm supposed to fire you now."

"Sorry," I said. "My fault."

"What do you have against stain?"

"Stain is for cheap wood. Stain is to hide things. Stain is for mediocrity. This is fantastic wood. Oil will bring it out. Let it glow."

"What makes you an expert on stain?"

"I'm not. I'm just opinionated about wood grain."

"You've done a lot of woodwork?"

"Some. I built some furniture. Just a hobby."

"Unstained furniture?"

"You bet."

Pierce folded his arms across his chest. "Stain is also for color. Color sets a mood. This house isn't a museum. It's meant to be a functioning home with a color scheme and an overall design. It's not all about grain."

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"Just lay low for a while. Find something to do outside."

"I'm not fired?"

"Not quite yet."

I put on my boots, went out to the yard, and busied myself drilling holes and installing bolts for a trellis that was to be constructed out of redwood that had been rescued from the wreckage of an old warehouse. Salvaged! As much as I wanted to dislike The Architect — and his personality sucked — I admired many of his choices.

Jim, my fellow rookie, was given the job of completing the sanding. I don't know what conversations took place in my absence, but at the end of the day, dipping rags into a can, Jim began swiping the walls with linseed oil. No stain.

* * *

The garage was packed with furniture and boxes and incredible souvenirs from Winston's career as a chemist and civil engineer. He had carved figurines from Africa, ornamental stone from India, vases from China, an immense metal platter with intricate etchings. They were probably worth a fortune.

Winston strode about the house like a king ordering workers to drop what they were doing and vacate the room, contradicting the schedule and plans of his son The Architect, plans which had never been firm to begin with.

Pea gravel

A truckload of gravel was dumped in the driveway. With the departure of Kenneth for mortuary college, it became my job to shovel the gravel into a wheelbarrow, roll it to the back yard, and dump it into a pit for the graywater system.

After a couple of hours of my shoveling and wheelbarrowing, dapper white-bearded Winston wandered out and stared at the pit. "Stop," he said.

I was about to dump another load. I stopped.

"What is this rock?" Winston said.

"Gravel," I said.

"I specified pea gravel. This is not pea gravel. Pea gravel is round. Pea gravel will always have drainage. This is crushed rock."

"Pierce said it was drain rock."

Crushed rock

"PIERCE!" Winston shouted.

Pierce came over. Winston explained that this rock was not pea gravel.

"Yes, it is," Pierce said. "When you order pea gravel around here, this is what they deliver. I'll show you the receipt."

Winston's voice was cold fury. "I've supervised the building of dams in Africa. I built levees in India. Don't tell me about rock. This is not pea gravel."

To my amazement, Pierce said, "Yes it is."

"Don't tell me — "

"It serves the same purpose."

Winston closed his eyes. His shoulders and neck were taut — and then suddenly drooped. He opened his eyes and stared at Pierce with utter contempt. Then he walked away.

What use is it to be king when you are surrounded by insufferable fools?

I still had a wheelbarrow full of gravel. "What should I do?" I asked Pierce.

"Carry on," Pierce said.

* * *

The kitchen was designed with an island cabinet in the center which could be accessed from all four sides. A plumber — in his stocking feet, of course — installed a triple basin sink in the island and then informed The Architect that there would have to be a vent of inch and a half pipe running from the island to the vaulted ceiling, 12 feet overhead.

The Architect argued; the plumber argued back, each waving code books at the other. Finally The Architect accepted the fact that the open sight-lines of the kitchen would have to be interrupted by a 12 foot boxed-in plumbing vent.

A window-washer named Dan was roaming the house — also in stocking feet — with a bucket of foamy liquid and a long-handled squeegee. He set down the bucket for a moment to observe the kitchen vent argument, and when he picked it up he'd left a dirty soapy ring in the unfinished floor.

Anybody could have seen it coming. If not the window-washer, somebody else would have spilled something, dropped something, scraped something.

The sealing of the floor had never happened. Production had simply moved on. The Architect — or Pierce — or Winston — somebody should have demanded that all work stop until the floors were sealed.

A construction crew functions like a temporary family. Ours had become dysfunctional.

The Architect blew up. First a vent in the kitchen, then a ring in his floor. His mother was becoming visibly more senile by the day, his father more crabby and authoritarian. His crew was an incompetent collection of hippies and surfers and a goddamn mortician; his foreman was a snot from Yale. He ordered everybody to get the hell out.

Outside I asked Pierce, "Are we all fired?"

"I don't think so," Pierce said.

I was coming to like Pierce. He was arrogant, especially in areas where he was ignorant, such as pea gravel. But based mostly on intuition he'd hired Jim and Kenneth and myself, three rookies who needed to start somewhere, and he'd protected us as best he could.

Pierce told everybody to return tomorrow. Everybody except the window-washer, who he told to get his van out of here and not to expect one cent from his half day of work.

The next morning when I showed up at 8 a.m. there were two police cars in the driveway. The garage door was wide open. Somebody had stolen Winston's lifetime collection of art from around the world. In addition the thief — or thieves — had stolen a case of jewelry and a restored 1930's vintage jukebox. Nothing else. They seemed to know exactly what they were looking for and where to find it.

A neighbor said she'd seen a van backed up in the driveway sometime during the night.

Pierce said the job was over. We'd all get paid in a day or so. He'd mail everybody a check.

And he did.

The check hardly mattered. For five weeks as a rookie I'd seen the creative stew of muscle and skill and personality — and I was part of it — and I loved it. I could do this for a lifetime.

Four days after the job ended, my first child was born.

There was so much to learn.

(This is the end of a four part series.)

365 Jobs: The Rookie - Be a Mortician

2011-09-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

September, 1976

(This is the third part of a series that began with First Day, followed by Adolf and the "Crack".)

The weather cooled and my energy surged. I was working outdoors for a week while a subcontractor installed a hardwood floor, maple with inlays of mahogany, most of it removed from old bowling alleys. To The Architect's credit — and he was ahead of his time — he incorporated used lumber whenever possible, even when he had to pay more to recondition it than it would cost to buy new lumber.

Another newcomer had joined the crew. Kenneth. As with me, Kenneth started the job pale, blinking as if he'd stepped out of a cave. He was on the pudgy side and wore big black eyeglasses. We were working together laying a brick patio while clouds of fine sawdust from the floor sanders billowed out the open windows of the house.

It took only a minute to see that Kenneth was careful and methodical in the positioning of bricks while I had a rougher hand. Quickly I ceded the job of placement to Kenneth while I kept him supplied with bricks and sand.

"Have you done this before, Kenneth?" I asked.

"No. I just got out of the Air Force. Now I'm collecting unemployment."

"And getting paid at a job."

"Yep. Unemployment is my Polish Guggenheim. I start school next week."

"What school?" Since he was joking about Guggenheim grants, I assumed he was an artist.

"It's in San Francisco," Kenneth said.

"San Francisco State?"

"No." Kenneth sighed. He set down the brick he was holding and wiped sweat from his eyes. "The College of Mortuary Science."

"Wow!"

"Yeah. I get that a lot."

"You like it?"

"Yes. Actually. You could say I really dig it." He smiled. "I found out in the Air Force that I didn't mind handling dead bodies, so that's what I did for three years."

"You know, I just finished three years of graveyard shift, but it was nothing like what you did."

"People make fun of me, but it's an art, you know. Not just a science. Morticians make good money. I'll do it for a few years, save up the bread and open a recording studio. That's what I really want to do."

"You could record the Grateful Dead."

I heard laughter. The Architect's wife.

The Architect's wife had settled herself nearby, leaning against a tree, arms folded, watching us. It unnerved me how often she seemed to be following me around at a distance. Often she was smiling at me, though, so it wasn't particularly threatening.

She approached me. She'd turned serious. "What do you really do?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're not a carpenter."

"I'm that bad?"

"You're a beginner. And that's okay." She was squinting at me. "What are you, really?"

I didn't know it yet, but I would be getting this question a lot. Somehow I just don't present what people expect in a carpenter. I have middle class manners, a large vocabulary, a face that seems to belong at a desk. "I'm a writer," I said.

"Oh no."

"You don't believe me?"

She seemed angry. "Writers are drunk and depressed. They work in universities. Or they get grants. Either way, they're sucking on a teat, and they hate it." She pronounced it the slang way, tit.

I was speechless.

"Did I shock you?" she asked.

"You seem to know all about it."

"My ex-husband is a writer." She furrowed her brow. "If you gave him a hammer, he'd write a poem on the handle. After five drinks." She looked me up and down. "Better what you do. Be a carpenter. Or —" she glanced at Kenneth, "a mortician. It's so much better."

Pierce was calling me. I began a new assignment: digging ditches, laying drainpipe from the downspouts for a graywater system. Another new skill to learn.

I set to work, shovel in hand...

After that conversation, The Architect's wife seemed to lose interest in me. At least, I didn't notice her watching me. Given how she felt about writers, I wondered how she felt about architects who frown all the time and draw in their breath with sharp whistles of stress.

I don't know what happened to Kenneth (not his real name). Maybe after a gig at a mortuary he actually opened a studio and helped create great art. Or maybe he remained a mortician, an art in itself.

As for my life over the next 35 years, I forgot about the advice of the Architect's wife.

I can't even say I agree with her. If I were offered a grant, I'd probably grab it. But I've never applied.

Whatever the reason, here's how my career played out: Construction work. Physical labor. No university. No grant.

And no dead bodies.

(This is the third installment of a series about my first job on a construction crew. To be continued...)

365 Jobs: The Rookie - Adolf and the "Crack"

2011-09-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

September, 1976

(This is the second part of a series that began with The Rookie: First Day.)

After my first day on the construction crew, I had a painful sunburn. Less than a week ago I'd completed my final shift on graveyard. I was like a miner emerging from three years underground.

In the next few weeks I did the grunt-work that a rookie was expected to do. There were bricks and lumber to be hauled, small batches of concrete to be mixed, dirt to be shoveled. There were impossibly heavy 4x8 foot sheets of Plexiglas to be carried to the central atrium, then lifted to the roof or tilted up to the side, caulked, and held in place. Muscles started rippling over my body. My sunburn peeled; then I turned bronze. I sweated buckets. I lost ten pounds.

Every chance I could, I watched Adolf. He was my silent teacher. Unfortunately I started badly with him: Pierce gave me the assignment of chipping some concrete from the surface of the driveway. A delivery had been sloppy; I was to clean up the hardened droppings, which looked like concrete turds. Pierce said, "You can just bang with a hammer and it will break off from the surface. The bond is weak. Just don't use your good hammer. Here." He handed me a big old hammer that had pock marks on the hickory handle and rust on the top. "I found this lying around. Use it."

Pierce was right. With a couple of blows, the hammer would break the bond and remove a turd. I was thinking about coprolites, which are fossilized dinosaur droppings. I'd bought one once from a rather strange store and given it as a birthday present to my brother Ed, who found it amusing. Suddenly I was shaken by Adolf's voice shouting: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY HAMMER?"

"It's yours? Pierce gave it to me. He said it was some old hammer he found lying around."

"Give me."

I handed Adolf the hammer. Indignantly he pointed to the letters engraved in the head: STILETTO. "This is the best hammer," Adolf said. "Pierce is arschkriecher. You want to be a good carpenter? Don't listen to Pierce."

"I don't want to listen to Pierce. Whatever you called him, it sounds about right."

"Good."

"Could I listen to you?"

Adolf smiled, surprised. "Ja," he said. "Follow me."

"I have to finish chipping."

"Forget Pierce. Follow me. No foss, no moss."

Adolf was hanging more doors today. He had a rolling home-made box on wheels containing chisels, screwdrivers, routing jigs, hole saws, drill bits, a Bosch drill and a Bosch router. I'd never seen anybody work so fast — or so precisely. He'd say, "Hold the door," or "Hand me the three quarter chisel," and I'd do as told. I felt like a nurse assisting an orthopedic surgeon.

When Adolf hung a door, he'd use one screw on each side of the hinge and leave off some of the trim. "Finish," he'd say. "No foss, no moss." And he'd roll on to the next. I'd install the remaining trim and make sure there were six screws in each hinge — no fuss, no mess. Then I'd dash to catch up. I had to work fast.

I soaked up skills at a rapid clip along with a few German swear words. My favorite was schnoodle noodle which meant, as best I could gather, "dick snot." Sort of.

Another day, Adolf was given the assignment of building a fireplace mantel. The Architect had bought several massive slabs of black walnut, rough cut with the bark still attached. He gave Adolf free rein to design and construct a mantel.

Adolf worked alone on this project, though I watched whenever I could. He spent three days cutting, planing, sanding, working and reworking the wood until he was satisfied.

At last, The Architect stopped by and studied the finished mantel.

Accompanying The Architect were his wife, his father, and his mother. They'd been around before. The house when completed would be occupied by the father and mother. The Architect saw the project as an opportunity to showcase his somewhat eccentric style. The father, a dapper little man with a white beard, was coming to see the project as yet another example of his son's overactive ego. I was coming to see that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. The architect's mother, meanwhile, mostly frowned and nodded. She was in the early stages of dementia.

"The mantel is wonderful," The Architect said. He pointed at one slit in the face of the top where the old walnut had split. "All we have to do is fill that crack, and it's done."

Adolf jumped to attention. "There is no crack," he said.

"It's right there," The Architect said, pointing.

Adolf studied the slit. "THERE IS NO CRACK!" he shouted.

We all could see it. Adolf wasn't to blame. Long ago, the drying walnut had developed a small check.

Adolf was shaking his head. "There. Is. No. Crack."

The father said, "Whatever you call that thing, a little epoxy will fix it," and he hustled off to the garage. There was a chest freezer out there filled with dozens of canisters the size of yogurt containers, each canister a different component of epoxy. The father, I was told, was one of the world's leading experts on epoxies. More than once on the job I'd already heard "Nothing a little epoxy won't fix," followed by a trip to the freezer.

The father produced a dark gray mix that was a close match to the color of the walnut. "I'll dab it in," the father said, turning to Adolf, "then when it's dry you can sand it down." The father smiled. "You're the only person I would trust with that task."

Adolf nodded solemnly.

The next day after the sanding, even knowing where it had been, I couldn't find it. There was no crack.

(This is the second installment of a series about my first job on a construction crew. To be continued...)

365 Jobs: The Rookie - First Day

2011-09-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

September 1976

You have to start somewhere. You have to be the rookie. They give you the worst tasks, and they test you. There's no other way.

A neighbor told her boyfriend-of-the-week that I was looking for a job. Pierce, the boyfriend-of-the-week, was a construction foreman. He strutted over to my cottage at Wagon Wheels and knocked on my door.

Pierce was a tall skinny guy with curly blond hair. A pompous bastard. He let me know first thing that he'd studied architecture at Yale. Then he interviewed me:

"Have you ever worked on a construction crew before?"

"No."

"Do you have construction experience?"

"Some. I rebuilt a couple of houses."

"By yourself?"

"Mostly."

"Do you have a Skilsaw?"

"No."

"Then I can't hire you."

"I have a power saw. Not a Skil."

Pierce smirked. "Can I see it?"

I showed him my Black and Decker worm gear saw.

Pierce said, "I didn't know Black and Decker made a worm gear saw."

"That's what everybody says."

"Doesn't Black and Decker make hobby tools?"

"This is tougher than a Skil. It's a bulldog."

"Looks like you worked the crap out of it."

"Uh huh." I didn't mention that I bought the bulldog used, and it was already beat-up from years of work. It made me look more experienced.

"Okay, can you start tomorrow? Bring the bulldog."

So most of the interview was about the saw, not me. If I'd had a sidewinder saw, Pierce wouldn't have hired me. In 1976 on the west coast if you were serious about carpentry, you had a worm gear, usually a Skil. It was like a law.

Pierce made the right decision to hire me — I'm a hard worker — but for the wrong reason — the Black and Decker. He flaunted Yale credentials, then invoked — not quite successfully — worm gear machismo. As a rookie carpenter, I'd be working for a rookie foreman.

* * *

First day, I worked with Jim, a short guy built like a pickle. Friendly. Jim had a dusty old Plymouth station wagon with a surfboard sticking out the rear window.

Jim was not far from being a rookie himself. He'd started a week before me. Together we spent the morning hauling pressure-treated 2x10s in the hot sun. "Rasty wood," Jim called it. The greasy poison soaked into our T shirts and cutoffs while smearing our exposed arms and legs. We hammered the rasty 2x10s upright to a frame, constructing the world's ugliest garden fence. The two-bys made it massive; the toxic ooze had a lethal smell. I suppose it looked gardenish, though, being green.

We broke for lunch. Jim told me he used to have a leather and glass shop in San Luis Obispo, “a bitchin' little town if you like small towns and don't mind everybody knowin' every time you take a shit or who you’re fuckin'.” Jim said he'd had a show in Aspen, selling his leather and glass. He came back to California — something about a surfing contest — but soon would be moving back to Colorado for an architectural job in Glenwood Springs.

"You're an architect, Jim?"

"Got the degree. Kept me in San Luis for five years."

Unspoken was the fact that right now Jim was working as an entry-level carpenter, probably for the same wage as me, five bucks an hour. I wondered how much architecture-trained Yalie Pierce was earning.

"Glenwood Springs, I'll mostly be emptyin' wastebaskets," Jim said. "Fetchin' donuts. But at least they're architects."

"Not much surf in Colorado."

"They got snow."

I asked, "Is everybody on this job an architect?"

"Are you?" Jim asked.

"No."

"Then I guess not everybody."

* * *

After lunch a man drove up in a Jeep Wagoneer. He was dressed in a pinstriped shirt, button-down collar, and scruffy blue jeans — the architect's dress code of that era. Above the waist, a businessman. Below the waist, casual and independent and arty.

Next his wife stepped out of the Jeep. Architects, having an eye for structure, always marry great-looking women. She glanced around the job site, caught my eye and held it. She smiled at me.

The Architect had a goatee and a worried frown. He strode over to our new fence and drew a sharp intake of breath that whistled with stress. He said, "This isn't what I want."

"Did we get it wrong?" I asked.

The Architect cocked an eyebrow at me. I was being told: Shut up, carpenter. He took another sharp intake of breath, another whistle of stress. "I'm making a field adjustment," he said. He told us to knock out every fourth 2x10 and reinstall it with a piano hinge so it could open like a vent.

It would break up the mass and provide an interesting, quirky detail. "Nice," I said.

Again The Architect cocked an eyebrow at me: I don't need your approval, it said.

Over his shoulder I saw that once again his wife was staring at me. No longer smiling, she was biting her lip, looking concerned.

I learned later that he was a well-known up-and-coming architect with an eccentric style. He considered a floor plan to be like a rough outline with multiple adjustments made in the field. His detractors — and building inspectors — accused him of making it up as he went along.

New architecture grads — in this case Jim and Pierce — would apprentice themselves to The Architect just for the experience.

I quickly caught on that the man never smiled or showed any emotion except irritation, which was constant, accompanied by sharp whistling intakes of stress. The way I could gauge his mood was to see how it was reflected by his wife. She in turn always seemed to be watching me.

* * *

After The Architect moved on, Pierce proudly showed us an antique tool he'd bought at a flea market. He'd haggled it down to twenty bucks. This was his first chance to try it out. Looking like a weird wedding between a pry bar and a riding crop, it was called a slide hammer nail puller. You place the jaws over a nail head, then slide the handle up and down to get a grip on the nail. Then you pry.

Slide hammer nail puller

Pierce tried it on a few nails. After five minutes and several failures, he actually removed a 16d nail. "There's a learning curve," Pierce said. "Have at it." He tossed the antique to Jim, then drove off to a hardware store to buy some piano hinges.

Jim studied the slide hammer skeptically, then passed it to me and brought out his crow's foot nail puller. I examined Pierce's tool and could see that the jaws were chipped so they couldn't get a good grip on the nail head. It might've been a wonderful tool at one time. Now it was crap.

I brought out my own crow's foot. By the time Pierce returned, we'd removed all the nails from all the vent boards.

"How'd you like it?" Pierce asked.

"Nice tool," Jim said.

Pierce beamed.

* * *

There were 14 boards to be hung on piano hinges. Each bright brass Stanley hinge was 6 feet long with screw holes every 2 inches on each side of the hinge. For this little task, Jim and I would need to drive 980 bright brass screws. Slot head screws.

I don't know when cordless drills/cordless screwdrivers first went on the market, but nobody had them in 1976. Most screws were slot head, and mostly you drove screws by hand.

Pierce, as it happened, had another flea market bargain: an old Yankee screwdriver which operated by a push-pull spiraling ratcheting action. Jim tried it. For the Yankee to work, the screw couldn't offer much resistance. The slot had to be deep enough to keep the blade from sliding out. With these rasty boards, the tool jammed; the blade slid out.

Yankee screwdriver

Besides Jim and myself, there was one other carpenter on the job, and he was the real thing: a German master carpenter named — I kid you not — Adolf. No mustache.

Adolf could hang a door in 6 minutes flat. Jim and I were in awe of him.

Adolf wandered out on a break just in time to see Jim struggling with the Yankee driver. Adolf studied the tool. "Scheisse," he said. He held out one cupped hand. "Give me your hammer." Borrowing Jim's Vaughan framing hammer, Adolf looked around to see if anybody was watching, then whacked a screw. One whack, one installed screw. No pre-drilling, no twisting. Just whack.

It held tight like a ring nail, but you could back it out with a screwdriver.

"No foss, no moss," Adolf said. Then he wandered away.

Together Jim and I whacked 980 screws in less than an hour.

(This is the first installment on a series about my first job on a construction crew. To be continued...)

365 Jobs: Junior Electrician

2011-09-21T14:43:00.001-07:00

September 1968

I got hired to change light bulbs. The maintenance department at Washington University in St. Louis advertised for a "Junior Electrician," and I showed up.

My job was to walk around campus with a cardboard box of fluorescent tubes on one shoulder and an 8 feet stepladder on the other. I was the guy who made all the clanking noise in the library setting up the ladder, opening the casement, dropping 20-year-old dust on your table when you were trying to study. I wasn't allowed to replace ballasts or cut any wires — that was a job for a "Senior Electrician."

Washington University had a large campus. Changing light bulbs was a full time job.

Franklin showed me what to do. He'd been promoted to "Senior Electrician." I was his replacement. Franklin was about my age, maybe a year older. I was white; Franklin was medium brown.

First day, in the stifling St. Louis heat walking across campus to our assigned building, Franklin asked me how I'd spent my summer.

"Long story," I said.

"Go ahead," Franklin said, stopping under the shade of a tree. "We got all day."

I gave Franklin a brief synopsis of my summer. It included being turned down for a summer job at Jack-In-The-Box — thank God! — hitchhiking to California and somehow winding up in a hippie commune in Big Sur, hitching back, a Hells Angel, a man who owned 7 brothels, a stolen truck, a night alone in the middle of the desert, a drunk cowboy, a day in the Winnemucca, Nevada jail, a Mormon missionary, hopping a freight train, joining my girlfriend in Colorado and driving her beat-up old VW bug to a ghost town in New Mexico and then to Vancouver, Canada and then across Montana to Madison where at a party we met Miss Wisconsin who was tripping on LSD, and then to Chicago just as the National Guard was pouring in for the Democratic National Convention, and then to Washington DC to see our parents, and back to St. Louis. And so here I was. "What about you, Franklin? How'd you spend your summer?"

"Right here," Franklin said.

And there it was: I was working my way through college; Franklin was just working.

We started in Dunker Hall. Franklin parked the ladder under a fixture, climbed up, opened the casing and began my training on everything there is to know about changing a fluorescent tube. Two minutes later, Franklin said, "Okay, you got it."

Next, Franklin showed me how to hide from Boss-Man: a little storage closet tucked into a wall of the English Department. The closet was about 4 feet high and 8 feet deep — just big enough to hide inside. Franklin said when he had my job, he used to go in there and stay all day.

There was no light in there. It was a wooden box. You close the door, and you might as well spend your day in a coffin. Actually, a coffin would be better: at least it would have bedding.

I'd rather do a day's work. So I said, "Um, not today, but thanks, Franklin."

"Can I ask you something?" Franklin was scratching his chin.

"What?"

"Why do you want a beard?"

"Girls like it," I said. Not true, actually, but it was an easy answer.

"Girls, huh." He turned and started walking. "Follow me."

He took me to the Art School building — Bixby Hall, I think — up to the top floor where in another hallway there was a metal door to an air vent. Franklin held the door open. "Go on," he said.

"Why?"

"Live models," he said. "Naked." Franklin climbed right into the air vent.

"I dunno, Franklin..."

"Would you shut up and get in here?"

I followed. What can I say? Adventure beckoned.

The air vent was about 3 feet across the bottom, 2 feet high, sheet metal. It smelled like stale dust. It rumbled and creaked and boomed like thunder when you moved. (And it was probably full of asbestos — but who knew at the time?)

"You have to slide yourself real easy," Franklin whispered, and he started squeezing along this tunnel that was angled slightly downhill. Cautiously, I followed.

Probably everybody in the entire Art School could hear us moving around up there.

The tunnel made a transition from rectangular to round. At the bottom of the round section was a circular metal grate. This grate, Franklin said, looked out over the art studio. Franklin was on his stomach, slowly sliding feet-first down toward the grate. I was a few feet behind him, facing forward. I was wondering how Franklin expected to see anything if his feet were where his eyes needed to be.

At about this point it dawned on me that Franklin had never actually done this before. He was just trying to impress me.

The last 10 feet or so was at a slightly steeper angle, and that's where Franklin lost his grip. The metal was slick and there was nothing to grab.

Franklin went booming feet-first down that air tunnel and came up hard against the grate. There was a CLUNK and then a POP. All this time I was leaning forward trying to grasp Franklin's outstretched hands. Franklin was desperately looking up at me and waving his hands around toward me and couldn't see that the grate had popped off. He was starting to slide out.

Now, imagine you're in the art class. You're the basic zoned-out art student. It's one of those big airy studios with skylights and a high ceiling.

You hear this odd noise.

You look up, and this big metal grate comes popping off the wall 20 feet above you. You scramble out of the way. There's a crash and a clatter and a WUNK WUNK WUNK as the grate hits the floor and settles to rest.

You look up again and see two feet sticking out of the air vent kicking wildly. Suddenly — this is where I finally catch hold of Franklin's desperately flapping hands — the feet zip back inside the vent. You hear a RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE as Franklin and I scramble back up the vent and into the hallway. You run out of class to see what is going on. You run up the stairwell just as two dusty guys are running down a different stairwell with all the adrenaline that comes from sheer terror.

We ran all the way across the parking lot. We ran up the grandiose front entry steps to Brookings Hall. We ran across the glorious grass of the quad. We ran back to the English Department where we opened that little wooden door and climbed into that hard dark space and shut the door and lay there with the box of fluorescent tubes between us.

Never have I been so glad to spend an hour in a coffin. A dog wandered into the building and started sniffing at our door. You could hear students and professors walking by. Just outside the closet, a conversation developed between a grad student and a whiny-voiced professor, and it became clear that they were having an affair, that neither of them were enjoying it, and that it was going to end badly for both of them.

Nobody caught us. Officially, that is. Larry, the gray-haired "Master Electrician," seemed to always be suppressing a smile as he ordered us around. Ever after the incident, Larry assigned Franklin and me to opposite ends of the campus.

Before the year was up, Franklin got drafted. On his last day all the electricians chipped in and gave him an envelope of cash, about a hundred bucks, as a going-away present. It was a tradition there. Franklin gave me his old pair of linesman's pliers with a nick in the handle where it had touched a live wire that sent him jumping.

I never saw him again. I lost the pliers when somebody stole my tool box.

Many years later, visiting Washington DC with my kids, I touched Franklin's name on the Wall.

Franklin was my first buddy in the trades.

365 Jobs: The Kid

2011-09-19T21:32:00.001-07:00

Starting in 1963

I met The Kid in the summer of 1963. He was a lanky 14-year-old with a friendly, unimposing, almost naive manner. I was 15 years old. The Kid and I bunked in the same cabin at Hawkeye Trail Camp. We were both escaping the heat to spend a summer in the Adirondacks.

Sharing an interest in science and a scorn for bullshit posturing, we loved canoe trips on the Saranac Lakes and hiking up some of the lesser-known mountains, especially a rugged little gem called Catamount. We weren't close friends, but we were summer camp friends.

When that summer ended, we went our separate ways and never saw each other, never tried. The Kid was eager to make his way in the established world pursuing his love of science; I was increasingly anti-establishment pursuing the end of war. It was the Sixties.

When you're young, the world keeps expanding larger and larger. As you get old, it starts shrinking. In that smaller world I met The Kid again, in the year 2001. The summer camp where we'd first met had died and been split into parcels. The Kid had bought one parcel including the cabin where we had bunked together. My friends Duncan and JK had bought another parcel including the Blue Heron, where they allowed me to stay.

In the 38 years since I'd last seen The Kid, he'd earned a Ph.D. and pursued a career in scientific research. Then he'd run for congress and, on his second try, won the election. He still needed a place in the Adirondacks to escape the swelter of Washington where the heat, these days, is mostly political.

The Kid who I encountered in 2001 remained friendly and unimposing. He actually seemed small and sort of shy for a congressman, not the backslapping power guy who walks in and dominates a room.

For ten summers now our paths have occasionally crossed as we each return to the old camp on our separate schedules. We've shared dinners. One year The Kid helped me take out my dock, another year I helped take out his. I've seen him and his wife spend an entire weekend up on the roof of their funky old cabin tearing out, then re-roofing, working together.

One summer day my son and his college friends — a mix of boys and girls — were with me on the dock. Hesitantly my son asked, "Uh, Dad, would it be okay if, like, we all went skinny-dipping in the lake?"

Just at that moment from the neighboring parcel we heard a screen door slam and two voices laughing. A second later The Kid and his wife, both in their sixties, went running bare-ass over their own dock and dived into the cool water of Silver Lake.

"Yeah, it's okay," I said.

I remember one particular dinner with The Kid and his wife and some friends. The Kid revealed that one of their grand ambitions was to climb Catamount, that rugged little gem, and spend the night. There's nothing like the sunset vista from a mountain top, the starry night, the orange dawn.

View from Catamount

Over red wine I asked The Kid if he felt people in congress — present company excepted, of course — were as cynical and corrupt as they are often portrayed in the media.

"No," he said. "Of course we've got some bad apples. But I believe the majority of congresspeople serve for altruistic and idealistic reasons. At first. Unfortunately I also believe that most of us, once we've become incumbents, tend to view getting reelected as an end, not a means."

"Have you?" I asked.

The Kid looked at his wife. "Have I?" he asked.

His wife is an independent spirit. "Not yet," she said. "But I'm watching you."

It was a lively and thoughtful evening. We sparred over policies, respectfully disagreeing. The next day, the unpredictable weather of the Adirondacks turned glorious, followed by a starry night. I wonder if The Kid and his wife achieved their Catamount dream. I haven't seen them since that dinner.

It's good to meet politicians face to face when the cameras and microphones are off. Amid all the hate-speech of talk radio and the internet, it's good to remember that we're all human beings, we all start out as kids. We share the wonder of life on this earth. Whatever your age, whatever your politics, there's nothing like the joy of jumping bare-ass into the cool water of a mountain lake. May we never forget that.

365 Jobs: Drilling

2011-09-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

September 2006, Adirondack Mountains

The truck, a drilling rig on wheels, creaks slowly down the narrow driveway, de-branching a few maple trees. Daniel Barton, the driver, maneuvers to the chosen spot 20 feet uphill from the old house.

I greet Daniel. We shake hands and, with the quick glances of construction people, we size each other up. In Daniel I see a proud man with a firm handshake and not a flicker of self-doubt. Just backing that truck down the overgrown dirt trail of a driveway took plenty of skill.

What Daniel sees — or what I'm sure he has prepared to see — is the hippie surfer insufferable contractor from California, here to look over his shoulder and protect the owner's interests. It takes him about two seconds, the duration of a handshake, to get over that.

"Nice rig," I say.

"Yeah," he says.

We'll be fine.

For a New Englander Daniel Barton is, in fact, a chatty man. Over the next two days I receive a gruff seminar on drilling in the Adirondacks.

Daniel gives me a tour of the machinery and shows me the drill bit, which looks like something you wouldn't want to drop on your body. Then with his assistant Bob, he starts drilling. It makes a racket. A river of sandy foam starts spewing from the hole, spilling over the lawn like glacial debris.

The drill quickly drops through sandy soil and then stops, chattering and grinding.

"Boulder," Daniel says. "Boulders are a driller's worst nightmare." He concentrates on the drilling, fingertips on the controls, watching and listening to subtle changes in the progress of the drilling rod.

Suddenly he's through it. The drill plunges quickly and then stops again. Daniel frowns. Another boulder. More fingertip control. Then he's through it — another plunge — and then a slow, steady grinding.

Daniel drills only 35 feet. He and assistant Bob set the casing and call it a day. "I just wanted to be sure I was in bedrock," Daniel says. They only need casing until bedrock. From here on, he can penetrate bedrock at a rate of one foot every minute or minute and a half. He might have to go 200 feet or 600 feet. In any case, he wants to finish tomorrow.

"I hope it's not six hundred feet," I say.

"Yeah," Daniel says.

The next day Daniel drills steadily. Every 25 feet he has to stop so that Bob can add another drilling rod, like a link in a chain.

Between 180 and 200 feet the drill hits 2 fractures and gets a flow of 7 gallons a minute. Pretty decent.

Daniel thinks he should go deeper. He thinks he could do better.

Is it a hunch? A distillation of years of experience? This is where you have to trust your professional. I trust Daniel.

There's sizable money involved. Drilling is billed at $15 per foot. Daniel could drill another 200 feet at a cost of $3000 and find no more water. They've already got a workable flow.

I call the owners of the Blue Heron (which is the name of this house). After consultation, they say, "Go for it."

Daniel goes another two rods, 50 feet. He hits another fracture and gets 12 gallons a minute. It's a gusher.

An inch of sticky gray sludge covers the front yard. Amazing. All that slime used to be solid bedrock.

The economics of drilling are not rational. The extra 50 feet of drilling took 45 minutes and earned Daniel another $750. If beyond the 50 feet he'd had to drill another 150 feet, he would have earned another $2250 for another two and a half hours of work. That's $15 a minute.

Daniel has fixed costs with each job. First, he has $900,000 in capital equipment sitting here to do the job, and it's a day's work to set it up and tear it down. He has to pay his one assistant, Bob. And yet he doesn't charge a setup fee. For the same amount of transportation and setup, he might drill 100 feet or 1000 feet. For two or three days of work he might earn $1,500 or $15,000.

"Charging by the foot is asinine," I say upon learning all this.

"Yeah," Daniel says. He shrugs. "But that's how it's done."

Daniel shows me rock chips among the sludge on the lawn, a guided tour of the geology beneath our feet. First he penetrated 35 feet of soil and 2 boulders. Then he went through 150 feet of granitic gneiss, which is a metamorphic rock — that is, it contains crystals formed under high pressure. I love this stuff — I was a rock collector as a kid, and then I took some geology classes in college not out of any career plans but just for the fun of it. Granitic gneiss, by the way, is the correct name for what we commonly call granite. True granite is something else.

Daniel shows me a black, coarsely grained rock. He says that below the 150 feet of granitic gneiss, he hit 10 feet of gabbro, which is an igneous intrusion. The gabbro entered the granitic gneiss as molten rock and then cooled, shrinking as it cooled, forming fractures where water gathers.

Awesome! Mysteries below us, revealed. Molten lava, twisted and frozen. Rainwater from years, perhaps decades ago, coursing beneath immense dark masses of rock. I feel I've taken a submarine voyage, shining light into oceanic depths. The Adirondacks are an ancient seething mass of volcanoes, earthquakes, seabeds and ash, now solid stone.

Daniel crossed the first 2 fractures between 180 and 200 feet. The extra drilling crossed the third fracture which brought the flow to 12 gallons a minute. Daniel says you could go 400 feet around here and get only a half gallon a minute. Just a quarter mile from here he drilled a well to 600 feet and got only one gallon a minute. What a crap shoot.

The top layer of gabbro is horizontal. There's a fracture at the top of the gabbro and another at the bottom, both yielding water. The second layer of gabbro, Daniel says, seems to be vertical. He can tell by how the drill bit behaves as it's striking the fracture. With a horizontal fracture the drill bit suddenly drops an inch or so as it crosses the water layer. With a vertical fracture the drill bit stutters as it tries to bite into an angular surface. Since it was a vertical layer of gabbro, there was no telling how far he would have had to go to punch through it, and we are getting plenty of water, so it was prudent to stop.

Daniel shows me some whitish chips. Calcite. There was also a layer of calcite in the water layer, which is simply mineral deposits from the water. Which I suppose means it's hard water.

On the Northway near Keeseville, according to Daniel Barton, there's a roadcut that exposes rock similar to what he drilled through here - dark bands of gabbro in granitic gneiss. I tell him I'll check it out.

The conversation wanders. We talk about fishing. I tell Daniel that last week a nine-year-old boy was fishing from the dock here. He caught a perch. As he watched, a bass swam along and swallowed the perch. The boy jerked the line to set the hook, as he'd been taught. The perch popped out of the mouth of the bass. The bass went swimming away, probably somewhat puzzled by the whole incident. The boy reeled in the perch. He's only nine, and already he's got a great fish story.

We talk about our kids. Daniel is opposed to liberal arts college education. His daughter went to Middlebury, tried English, switched around for a while and ended up with a major in math. Daniel says the most common phrase spoken by English majors is “You want fries with that?” He says he took his daughter to lunch, and the waitress said exactly that: "You want fries with that?" They both broke out laughing. The waitress was a third year English major.

I tell Daniel I served fries when I was in college, and I was an English major. It's just a college job, just as it was for that waitress he was laughing at. I tell him all three of my kids majored in liberal arts, and then two of them went on to professional schools — medicine, engineering — and that liberal arts will make them a better doctor and engineer.

Once again Daniel and I are taking each other's measure. Respectfully.

Daniel worked in Hong Kong for a while. I'm thinking, but don't say, There's your liberal arts education.

Daniel says he has a house in Vermont built so tight, “You can heat it with a candle.” He's an environmentalist who would never use that word.

Then he's gone. A hush returns to the north woods. On the lake, a loon is warbling. A house built shortly after the Civil War finally has a water well. I have a few rock chips to add to my childhood collection.

Two minds have met, and sparred a bit, and we each have learned something from the other. A good two days of work.

365 Jobs: Universal Language

2011-09-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

September 17, 1983

Universal Language

The man tells me in Chinese
with gestures
how the water drips from upstairs
into his kitchen.
I understand.
I tell the man in English
with gestures
how I repaired the tub.
He understands.
The water doesn’t speak
or understand.
We hear it, though,
still dripping.

365 Jobs: The Devil's Grip

2011-09-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

Monday, September 16, 1974

It's 1974 and I'm operating computers on graveyard shift, but also I'm a handyman for Jan, my landlady. Today I promised to clean out and prop up the rotten old garage where her husband Ray used to repair his taxi fleet and where he dropped dead 20 years ago. Heart attack. With the clean-out, Jan is finally ready to move on.

After riding the bike home from work, I fix the usual breakfast of 3 eggs and hash browns cooked in the grease of some ground pork sausage of questionable vintage. You could say I had a healthy appetite but not-so-healthy diet.

I start hauling decomposed tires and smelly rat nests out of the dirt-floor garage and come upon an old wooden soda box full of hand tools. Woodworking tools: a brace and several bits, a couple of try-squares, big slot screwdrivers, several planes — all with wooden handles burnished by the grip of Ray's fingers so long ago. I have to pause and appreciate this treasure.

Of course I never met Ray, but I know him. He's the man who married and attempted to tame my spunky kittenish landlady. He's the man who constructed an elaborate plank multi-level walkway for raccoons to come to his kitchen window where Jan still offers them food every night. If Jan forgets to close the window, the coons come right inside and trash the place. He's the man who ordered and assembled four Montgomery Ward cottages, one of which is my home. He's the man who collected dozens of old wooden wagon wheels and lined them along the fence, giving this acre its name: Wagon Wheels.

Ray must have been a practical jokester. By the creek at one edge of this property there's a metal lid, like the top of a small garbage can. Painted on this lid are the words:

THE SPRING.

Everybody who sees it for the first time (including me) lifts the lid, expecting to see a natural spring, some gurgling water, something lovely. What everybody finds is a concrete-lined hole with a metal bed spring embedded in the bottom.

Ray must have dug that hole, formed that concrete, embedded that spring. A lot of work for a laugh.

I can almost feel Ray's ghost, peering over my shoulder. The sunlight is fractured by the spiderwebs and broken glass of the window over the workbench where I stand. My fingertips sweep over the corroded blade of a try-square. Would naval jelly restore it?

Suddenly I bend over clenched in pain. Have I been shot? Stabbed? No. Cramps. It's my stomach. No — my chest. Holy shit I'm having a heart attack. No. Food poisoning. It was bad sausage.

I stagger to the cottage next to the garage and pound on the door. Steve Marks is a medical student, and he's home. I start blabbering that I have no idea how to treat a stomachache and I'm embarrassed to go to a doctor when probably all I need is something simple like Pepto-Bismol or something — but what? I don’t want to take the wrong thing and make it explode. Maybe I need my stomach pumped? The pain is getting worse every second.

Steve says, "You must be uncomfortable."

I admire that. By choosing understatement, he's seizing authority. He's calm, doctoral.

Steve fetches a stethoscope and listens to my chest. "You know I can't practice medicine yet," he says. "But your heart sounds okay."

Again I try to explain the symptoms. Steve says, "If it's a tummy ache you could take some baking soda."

Tummy ache. I admire that. Steve wants to be an oncologist. He'll be a good one. I say, "I don't think I can swallow anything. This really hurts, Steve. It hurts to just breathe."

"It could be pericarditis," Steve says.

"What's that?"

"You should see a doctor."

"I am."

"Cheapskate. See a real doctor."

My wife is at work. I don't think I can drive in this condition. One thing about being sick, though: it makes you stupid. Unable to operate a car, suffering chest pains, I decide I can ride my bicycle to the clinic, which is about 5 miles away. On the bike I wobble out the driveway past the wagon wheels, turn onto the side of Alpine Road, advance about 20 feet and topple over.

Abandoning the bike, I teeter home and fall onto the bed. I'm sound asleep when my wife finds me an hour later. Steve had called her.

"Are you okay?"

"No. I'm being tortured. And I'll tell them anything. Tell them he's hiding in the crypt."

"What?"

She drives me to the clinic where I lie on a sofa curled up in fetal position. A nurse calls Dr. Perkins to come out and look at me.

Perkins dashes out and stops short, next to the sofa. He gives me a tender look, which seems unusual for a doctor, and asks if I can walk.

"Walk? I can ride a bike."

My wife is shaking her head. She and Dr. Perkins help support me as I walk half-bent in pain to an examining room.

"Steve thinks it's pericarditis," I say. "He's a med student."

Dr. Perkins looks amused. He pokes and listens and then says, "Not a bad diagnosis for a medical student." He explains that I have epidemic pleurisy. The medieval name for the ailment is ‘the devil’s grip’ because it feels like the hand of the devil clutching your heart. It's a virus that inflames the muscles of the chest wall.

Dr. Perkins says I'm the second one today with this condition. A kid this morning was sitting in class at Foothill College when he had a sudden attack. He gasped and fell to floor, rolling and groaning, clutching his chest. The teacher panicked. A counselor drove the kid to the clinic.

Somehow this makes me feel better.

Dr. Perkins gives me a painkiller and a sleeping pill. My wife drives me home. I sleep painlessly though stiffly for about 13 hours and wake up at 5 a.m. A new moon is rising. I'm pain-free but weak. I have this weird feeling that I just swam the English Channel.

I eat a small, cautious breakfast: toast and water.

As the day brightens, I seem to be okay. Back to the garage! Twenty-four hours, lost. That's all. I'm ready to work, to clean up after Ray. If he will just leave me alone.

365 Jobs: Summer Snapshots

2011-09-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

Summer 1997

June 1997:

This fresh young couple, the Bebes, just half my age, want me to convert an atrium into a home office. Lucy Bebe is pregnant, expecting twins, and wants the work completed before the due date in September. Her husband needs the office because his company is growing so fast that they can't provide space for everybody.

"What's the company?" I ask.

"It's called Enron," Lucy says.

"Never heard of it."

"That's what everybody says." Lucy smiles. "But you will."

We are a family of five, and for the summer we are all working. My older son Jesse, age 20, is spending another season as counselor at Plantation Farm Camp, teaching kids to milk cows and smash machines. My daughter (let's call her Ruth), age 18, found herself a job at Walgreens in Palo Alto. My younger son Will, age 15, is working for me.

This is to be my summer of Will. We've been drifting apart. I hope to mend that. Will smokes marijuana and plays in a rock band. He hangs out with older kids, dropouts. He hates his high school which is full of rich kids who don't need summer jobs.

It's been a tough school year for both of us. I'm newly, stridently anti-drug, which is a tough position to advocate when Will knows I used to smoke pot myself. I tell him that 30 years ago, the stuff I smoked was only 1/10th the potency of what they sell now. I know because I recently tried it, and it knocked me flat. This amuses Will. I also remind him that the girl next door, who we've known since she was a toddler, is now strung out on heroin. What a waste. What a fucking waste.

I take a test in Newsweek which calculates that I'll live to age 78. As the summer begins, I'm 49. Just 29 to go.

In Ruth's second day working a checkout register at Walgreens, a customer calls her an idiot. “Thank you. Idiot.” The woman in line behind leaps to Ruth's defense, saying “You must be a really unhappy person.”

I have more construction jobs than I could handle in two summers. With a headful of details hanging, with the atrium conversion about to begin, I decide to do what’s right: I take Will backpacking for three days on the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail. On the second night some raccoons steal our remaining food, so we hike out to the ocean on our third day without breakfast or lunch. Meanwhile Will and I heal our differences the guy way: we don't talk about them. After three days with no mention of drugs, we're ready to work together.

July 1997:

At the Bebe job Will digs dirt, drills holes in concrete, and tears out drywall. He's a good worker. I give him a raise.

Ruth makes friends with all the ethnic workers at Walgreens, especially some Filipina women who keep giving her food.

At the end of each day Will and I drive home together in the truck listening to blues music without talking. Most days we are filthy, sweaty, tired. Each day as we step in the house, Will is buried by dogs — just two, but they're big — and he lies on the floor accepting their waggy licky love. Welcome home.

After a couple of weeks of hard work, falling behind schedule, Will suggests we take a few days off and backpack in the Sierra, just him and me. I jump on it.

In the high country for five days and four nights of wonderfulness, we speculate if anything has happened while we've been away from society. Will says, "For all we know, L.A. may have been invaded by aliens and we haven’t heard the news."

I point out, "L.A. was invaded by aliens years ago. They took over, and nobody noticed."

This amuses him.

We descend along a beautiful rushing creek, patches of snow in mid-summer, a meadow, little lakes. All is glory. Will starts talking about another student at his high school who took a summer job. She took a life-guarding gig not to make money but to meet guys. Will imitates her Valley-speak: "Oh my God there's a guy who's like totally drowning and he's so cute!"

This is how we talk about high school and drugs. Avoidance. A few jokes. And bonding. We’re tired, dusty, sun-burnt — and satisfied. Nearing the lot where the truck is parked, crossing the San Joaquin on a footbridge, we encounter a group of men and women who are naked except for flip-flops, hiking on the trail to Rainbow Falls. We are back in California.

Back home I discover I’ve lost 3 pounds - an inch of waistline.

With Will I frame walls, floor, ceiling. By now Will is a terrific helper. He looks for ways to be useful, has good craft skills and attitude. We put in ceiling joists, a skylight, roof sheathing. I make Will do the tasks that are up top in the heat. After work I drop him off for band practice or, once, at a Further Festival at Shoreline Amphitheater.

Ruth spends most of her evenings on the phone. Her Filipina coworkers need constant help — evictions, boyfriends who beat them. She is the sympathetic ear, the calm voice amid storms of drama.

August 1997:

Will and I lay the subfloor and then hang drywall. I measure and cut; he glues and screws.

In the back of my truck are drywall tools, 2x4s, fiberglass batts — and a drum set. The band is getting notice. Often after work, Will has a practice or a gig.

I arrive home at 8:30 or so, stopping at the La Honda Post Office where I step out into twilight, mountain stillness, dark silhouette of redwoods, and the sound of bluegrass from the patio of the Merry Prankster Cafe — so nice and clean and fresh after a day in the valley. At home Ruth is on the phone. One of her coworkers attempted suicide. She's up most of the night, talking. Often she comes home with gifts: orchids or exotic dishes.

Will now has a learner's permit. After a few lessons getting the feel of the clutch, I let him take the wheel of the truck for the drive home. He almost runs a red light, skids, stalls out, restarts the motor and says, “Thank you for being calm.” Calm is a deliberate choice of mine — a survival tactic.

One day Will stays home while I run electric wires at the atrium/office. I tell Lucy Bebe, "I'm so glad for this job this summer. Will and I had been growing estranged, but working together was perfect. It's been great for us."

To my surprise, she starts crying. And smiling.

If you want to melt the heart of a pregnant woman, tell her she's helped a father and son.

One of Ruth's coworkers just had $10,000 stolen by her lesbian lover who when confronted, tried to kill her. Ruth is right there, helping her friend sort it out. I warn Ruth about people with endless needs who suck you in and drown you. She listens but is not concerned. She thrives on what I see as underground third-world soap opera.

In August I turn 50. Just 28 to go. Ruth turns 19. She's decided she wants to major in English and Philosophy, then go to grad school in Psych with a specialty in cultural differences. At 19 she's found a talent and a passion.

By the end of August, my Summer of Will is over. I carry lasting images: Will thanking me for being calm; tears flowing after he hammered his thumb; strolling with his backpack at 9000’. The atrium is now an office. We've made good money.

September 1997:

In early September I repair somebody's fence and build a gate. It's pleasant, sweaty carpentry with good results. After work I drive the pickup to Will's high school, where a teacher tells me tradesmen are supposed to park in the rear lot. I'm wearing cruddies, speckled with sawdust.

I watch the last minutes of Will's varsity soccer practice. Well-dressed mothers gather in a group, casting glances at me. Will is not the only one who doesn't fit in here.

After practice, Will brings a couple of his teammates over. "This is my dad," he says. No shame. Pride, in fact.

In the mail I receive a final check from Lucy Bebe along with a photo of the twin girls and a note:

Thank you and Will both for all your good work!
:-)
Guess what? We've been transferred to Seattle!
:-(

A few years later when Enron unravels, it occurs to me that the company was paying for that atrium-to-office conversion. I should've charged double. I can't complain, though: I may be one of the few people who actually walked away from Enron with a profit. And it was more than money.

365 Jobs: From Russia With Luck

2011-09-12T15:02:00.000-07:00

September, 1985

I'm installing a light outside an office in Palo Alto. A small man with stooped shoulders is watching. He wears dumpster clothing with a Giants baseball hat.

I'm pulling wires through thin-wall pipe known as EMT, or Electrical Metallic Tubing. It's a two-man job, but I'm working alone. As I'm pulling wires at one end of the EMT, the little man goes to the other end. Without asking he starts guiding the wires into the pipe, which is exactly what the second man should be doing.

In 3 minutes, it's done. Working alone, it would have taken 30 as I walked end to end, over and over, pulling then guiding, pulling then guiding.

"Thanks," I say. "You knew just what to do."

"Got smoke?" he asks. He smiles. Gold teeth.

"No. Sorry."

"In Russia," he says, "I do this."

"You were an electrician?"

"Da." He handles my rusty old fish tape that I bought at a garage sale. I'm using the fish tape as a wire puller. The little man frowns and says, "In Russia they got this. Not so good. In Russia, everything, not so good." He fingers an EMT coupling. "In Russia, do different. Not so good."

"Are you an electrician here?"

"Garden. I garden."

"Are you asking me for a job?"

"Da."

I almost never need an electrical assistant. Today is a rare exception. "Next time I need somebody, I'll give you a call. How can I reach you?"

"I be around."

"You have a phone?"

"I be around."

I am so lucky to live in the USA.

"Here." I give him a five dollar bill. "For smokes."

"Spas-ee-bah," he says, or something like that. Whatever, he clearly means "Thank you."

I'll never see him again.

365 Jobs: Graveyard Shift, Tilt-slab Ghetto, Mountain View

2011-09-11T17:51:00.000-07:00

1973-1976

For three years I worked the graveyard shift. Again I was operating computers, this time running a hospital information system in Mountain View, California. The hospitals that employed us didn't appreciate the g-word, so when the suits were around we tried to remember to call it "night shift." Mostly we forgot, and mostly the suits were scared to mess with us because graveyard workers tend to be cranky, anti-social — and hard to replace.

I was one of a half dozen unshaven, badly dressed, all male crew operating a gaggle of computers, printers, tape drives, disk drives, and a decollating machine from midnight to dawn. In the hospitals that we served, no doubt each night had drama: babies born, heroic surgery, blood spilled, and last breaths sighed — but we had no idea. In our sealed climate-controlled empire, the only drama came from the little TV in the decollating room.

The decollator took a printout on five-part paper and separated it into five stacks of one-part paper while disposing of the carbons between each layer. Though noisy, dirty, and dull, the decollating job was popular because it kept you in front of the TV. One of the San Jose stations ran three or four old black-and-white movies every night interrupted by Dodge commercials and a corny host who would urge people not to commit suicide. Apparently it really bugged him that so many people killed themselves while watching his flicks.

In my three years on graveyard I got an education in the oeuvres of James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Jimmy Stuart. Everybody on graveyard could quote most of the good lines in, say, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. We'd drop what we were doing and gather to cheer the grapefruit-in-the-face scene in The Public Enemy.

For some workers, graveyard was temporary — an entry level, or a final demotion. They soon moved on, or out. For others, it was a lifestyle. For myself, I took graveyard for the 10% salary bonus and the short hours. We worked a six and a half hour shift from 12:30 to 7 a.m. with no scheduled breaks — although in actuality we took breaks all the time.

We never left the building — why would we? This wasn't North Beach. This was a tilt-slab Silicon Ghetto. If you aren't familiar with tilt-slab, it's a valid and useful construction method. Concrete walls are formed and poured flat on the building site, then lifted — tilted by cranes — into an upright position, quick and cheap. The result is a rock-solid structure, though ugly and lifeless. Perfect for computer work.

Tilt-slab

At midnight I'd strap lights onto my legs and ride my old red Raleigh bike through the Stanford campus and the sleepy streets of south Palo Alto to the tilt-slab ghetto in Mountain View. The ten mile ride at night was peaceful and meditative except when I got mooned by three men in a convertible or the time I got ambushed by water balloons near the campus. Mornings, I'd ride home in the rising sun as drivers sipped coffee waiting at red lights.

Maintaining a marriage took some adjustments. The moods didn't mesh. I'd arrive home feeling chatty and wired just as my wife was groggily trying to wake up. Or likewise she'd come home charged up from her day job just as I was awaking grouchy and stupid.

Days off were equally out of sync. When my wife was off I'd try to stay up all day, which was the equivalent of taking an all-nighter. On my days off I couldn't sleep at night, though I tried. I'd take walks at 3 a.m. feeling like a criminal skulking the empty streets. Many nights off, I'd take my dog walking into the summer-dry foothills to return at dawn reeking of pennyroyal and sage. One night, walking across the Stanford golf course, the sprinklers suddenly came on. I tore off my clothes and streaked the course, my dog and I, wet and joyous and totally alone.

In the winter rains I'd hang out at all-night restaurants. At Kazu's Koffee Kup I shared a few silent breakfasts at the counter with pro football quarterback Jim Plunkett of all people. He was an early riser. We had an unspoken agreement: I'd never ask him about football, and he'd always borrow my sports section, The Sporting Green. For some reason he never seemed to buy a newspaper. Later I learned his father had been a news vendor with progressive blindness.

Other nights, I'd just sit at my desk and write. I'd listen to country music. I loved all-night trucker's radio from KOB Albuquerque. I felt akin to the long-haul drivers all over the West. A lot of that trucker vibe found its way into the novel I was writing, Famous Potatoes.

I became a friend of the night sounds: the distant freight train, the chuk-chuk of sprinklers, the owl perched in the oak outside my study. From a hilltop of the cow pasture across the street from my cottage, I watched the winking of radio towers and descending lights of airplanes, the blackness of the San Francisco Bay ringed by silent street lamps. I became a friend of the sunrise: the purple sky, the slowly surging energy of suburban flatlands as cars filled the streets and children walked to school.

Sunrise over Stanford

After 3 years of graveyard, my brain and body started sending unmistakable messages that all boiled down to this: Stop fucking with your circadian rhythm. Besides, I'd seen all those movies 2 or 3 times. I could have donned a necktie and switched to day shift, but for me the day culture at a computer shop would be a disaster. For better or worse, I was solidly counterculture.

Meanwhile I wanted to get out of the easy money and easy work of computer operation and into something harder, something that seemed more real to me: building stuff. Construction, repair and rehab. A lot of people would consider it a downward career move, like a banker choosing to be a welder. For me it seemed right. My wife was pregnant. I wanted to work with my hands in a life that allowed for time off, for raising a child, for working part time so my wife could also work at a job she loved. If I didn't get out of computers now, I'd never escape.

The day I gave notice, they took it kindly. In fact, everybody said the same thing: "I'd like to get out of data processing, too." On my last night, they gave me going-away presents of all my favorite things: a jar of peanut butter, a bag of peanut butter cookies, a box of It's-Its, a six-pack of Coors.

For the last time I rode my bike home as the sun rose.

Late in the afternoon I woke up depressed. To my surprise it was suddenly clear to me that I liked that job. I'd come back part time if I couldn't find enough construction work.

Graveyard screws up your life but it gets in your blood. How weird. I was going to miss it.

365 Jobs: Swing Shift, San Francisco

2011-09-08T22:13:00.001-07:00

1970-1971

Different cities, different rhythms. Working swing shift in San Francisco was very different, indeed.

I was still operating a computer. The job was still:
    Mostly physical.
    Easy money.
    Unreal.
Instead of brain waves I was now processing credit card charges. In those days there were no telephone transactions, so every purchase arrived in the form of a flimsy credit slip that had to be read and sorted by an IBM 1419 sorting machine. If I remember correctly, the 1419 converted each charge into a punchcard which we would then feed into a card reader which in turn would go through the IBM 360 computer to end up on magnetic tape.

Larry at the 360

If a punchcard jammed in the reader, the first question we asked was "Is it data or is it money?" If the card was data, we'd throw it out. Usually data meant some new person applying for a credit card. Who needs 'em? If it was money (that is, somebody's credit card charge), we'd retrieve every little piece of the card and send it back to the reconciliation desk.

When I saw how many things could go wrong, I opened up a MasterCharge account for myself. Sure enough, a couple of items that I bought never appeared on my bills. Another punchcard had been mangled beyond recognition.

We were blue collar labor doing blue collar chores: feeding punchcards, changing paper in the printers, unloading massive printouts, dismounting and mounting tapes, swapping those heavy disks that looked like a stack of phonograph records. My fellow workers were like a Central Casting cross-section of San Francisco:

Bernie was an Irish alcoholic. With dimpled cheeks, white hair and fuming breath, he could recite thousands of limericks. Soon he was fired.

Charles looked like a cute clean-cut white boy. He had a big dong (so he said). Charles acted in porn films which apparently didn't pay well but had other benefits. A dark-haired man, he underwent electrolysis to have all his facial hair removed. He'd show up with Band-Aids on his cheeks and neck and chin. With a silly grin Charles would operate the 1419 sorter for 8 hours, stoned, while describing strange sexual encounters. He was fired.

Bill drove a VW microbus with GROOOVE painted on the side. With ponytail and mustache Bill was an articulate college dropout whose parents were psychoanalysts in Manhattan. He'd offer a joint to anybody (off hours) but never smoked himself while everyone around him got wasted. Bill was a magnet for straight women. He had a flexible sense of time. The day he was fired, he raised a huge stink until finally they allowed him to return to the computer room, under guard, so he could repay the $20 he'd borrowed from me. "I don't want you to think I'd rip you off," he said, and then the guards escorted him out of the building.

Sho, the angry Black Panther, would occasionally punch the metal side of the 360 with his fist talking about how "the man owes me" this or "the man owes me" that. He wasn't fired. Nobody dared.

Kate was Chinese-American and at first seemed as normal as noodles. She had lovely long black hair, a quick smile, and never took a single day off. Her job was to manage the "library" — a vast vault of computer tape — which she guarded with obsessive/compulsive zeal. If we brought back one of her tapes with a "data check" — meaning the computer couldn't read some part of it — she'd become angry. She took it as a personal affront. Data checks, incidentally, were a nightly occurrence.

Roger, the mama's-boy shift manager — the only suit on the shift — had a crush on Kate the neurotic tape librarian but never asked her out.

Bob was a dignified bespectacled Chinese-American who wasn't too bright but was dependable and hard-working, which is really all you need. Computer operation is basically factory work. Software programmers are the brains (and highly paid); operators are the brawn (and paid accordingly).

Then there was Sigrid, a gorgeous Scandinavian woman who always wore a shiny silver crucifix around her neck. Tight-lipped, scowling Sigrid had the social skills of an insect — and, it was rumored, the sexual habits. She was known as the Praying Mantis.

And then there were a couple of normal guys: Larry and Steve. And me. I was pretty normal — that is, by swing shift standards.

Larry wore cashmere sweaters, had a gentle voice, gentle manners, and drove a big bad car with big fat tires.

Steve Chambers

Steve had a weird sort of psychodrama father-son antagonistic relationship with Roger, the supervisor, though Roger was only slightly older.

Most operators were non-collegiate and upwardly mobile. They got into computer operation as a smart career move and, I hope, stayed on to rich success. It was a great time to enter the field.

For a Christmas bonus, each employee received two jars of Smuckers jelly. Nobody could accuse MasterCharge of largess.

Working swing shift, my lunch break was at 8 p.m. The computer center was at the edge of North Beach near Fisherman's Wharf. Most nights I'd dash up to Columbus and Broadway where Carol Doda and all the topless ladies danced while barkers barked on the sidewalks: "Naked college coeds! Yes! They're totally naked!" From the doorway the barkers held back the curtain for a flash view. The show might be fun for men in groups. Alone, it would make you more alone.

Columbus and Broadway

I'd grab a cappuccino at Cafe Trieste. I'd browse in Discovery Books for used novels or next door at City Lights Book Store for new ones. Once I met Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was churlish (but I was nobody). Maybe he was having a bad night. Another time I stumbled upon Alan Ginsberg, who exuded a surprising generosity mixed with self-obsession. I met Richard Brautigan, who was playful. Most electrifying, I met Neal Cassady and of course couldn't get a word in edgewise. He had charisma. When Neal was in a room, everyone else faded.

Haight Street in those days was a death zone. I stayed away.

At midnight I'd drive home. One night I narrowly missed a head-on collision with a screaming Porsche. Another car wasn't so lucky. Six people died.

Clement Street, home sweet home.

Returning to our flat in the Richmond District, I'd walk the dog while foghorns blatted and moaned, then have a glass of wine with my amazing wife. We'd sleep until noon. Afternoons, we'd take the dog to the beach down by Playland and the Cliff House. One time on that beach we came upon Janis Joplin doing cartwheels in the wet sand next to the surf. Then she dashed to a van waiting in the parking lot saying she had a gig in L.A. Two months later she was dead.

There were a couple of intriguing cults forming in San Francisco at the time, and we felt drawn toward each of them at least to check them out. Stephen Gaskin's Monday Night Class was wonderful, but before we could become attached, the entire group departed on a cross-country bus caravan. Having just finished a cross-country adventure of our own, we wanted to settle down for a while right where we were.

Across town, an attractive church was forming with a charismatic leader by the name of Jim Jones. The vibes were a little weird there, and we decided it wasn't for us.

At 4 p.m. I'd go to work, a simple ten-minute drive. Like a tide the job would draw me in, then send me back.

The days had rhythm like a song. The melody was San Francisco; the harmony was North Beach; the tempo was full tilt boogie. That was swing shift.

365 Jobs: Swing Shift, St. Louis

2011-09-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

1969-1970

Residential construction work doesn't usually have "shifts" as in day, swing, and night shift. I've done evening and even late-night construction projects, but the occasional job isn't the same as shift work.

Shift work is an alternate world. It makes you an outsider. In business, shift work defines you as Labor. Management — the suits — work days. In personal affairs, it takes you outside the rhythm of normal life. You sleep at odd times. You shop and play when most people are working.

Swing shift is the twilight realm. It begins in daylight just as the suits are heading for the parking lot, then grows progressively more ... strange.

In the 1960's while I was in college I took a full-time swing shift job. I was operating a primitive computer that with peripheral equipment filled an entire room but had less brainpower than the cell phone I carry today. The work was:
    Mostly physical.
    Easy money.
    Unreal.
The computer was located in a mental hospital in St. Louis. Wires ran to an electroencephalograph which was attached, via more wires, to the head of a patient who had received a dose of the drug-of-the-day, sometimes LSD. Through the computer an EEG would be plotted while a clunky printer would chock out numbers.

Meanwhile, the patient was supposed to be sleeping. When the drug was LSD the subject rarely wanted to sleep and sometimes had to be strapped down. Have a nice trip.

Giving LSD to crazy people was, um, unhelpful to their mental health. This was obvious to everybody except the doctor who was conducting the experiment. By 1969 he certainly should have known better. Fortunately I rarely had to interact with the patients except when they wandered into the computer room with wires dangling from their heads.

Siv, a college classmate of mine and a free-spirited soul, had recommended me for the job even though I had absolutely no experience operating a computer. "You'll learn it in an hour," she said. "I did."

She was right.

"It's like entering an alternate world," she said.

She was right about that, too.

When Siv moved up to programming, the operating position opened. Siv's boss, Tammi, thought I looked a bit ... scruffy. I'd showed up for the interview wearing flip-flops and sporting scandalously long hair that almost reached my eyebrows. Plus a beard. Tammi agreed to hire me, on one condition: "You have to wear shoes."

Tammi was a good-looking 30-year-old virgin. She was the suit in our wing of the hospital and indeed she often wore actual suits. Of course she worked a conventional day shift and appeared to be a conventional midwesterner.

Tammi had a boyfriend named Roy who was becoming a little frustrated. One time Tammi asked Siv, "Do you really do all those ... married things ... with your husband?"

"Uh-huh," Siv said.

"How do you stand it?"

Siv, of course, told me. Siv was still a student like me. To accommodate her classes, Siv worked a schedule that overlapped the end of day shift and the beginning of swing, so she stayed in touch with both worlds.

Another time Tammi asked Siv, "Before you met your husband did you ever do ... those things ... to yourself?"

"Every night," Siv said.

"Okay," Tammi said.

"Okay what?" Siv asked.

Tammi changed the subject.

Later Tammi broke up with Roy. Siv said Tammi became much easier to work with. Maybe some people are just meant to be single. Or different. Maybe Tammi should try swing shift.

One patient, Bonnie, was mute. She had curly hair, a cute face, and never spoke except to giggle. Bonnie was at home in the foggy realm of swing shift. She wasn't a subject of the experiment but seemed to have free run of the hospital, sort of like a trustee in a prison. As a teenage girl she could approach a man, run her hands up and down his arm, and flash a wicked grin. Doors seemed to magically open.

Bonnie was sweet on Johnny. A Vietnam Vet with a Tennessee accent, Johnny was supposed to be monitoring the experimental subject of the night while the subject in turn was supposed to be sleeping. Nights when Bonnie came around, subjects tended to go unmonitored for a while.

Johnny smoked marijuana on the job and talked about Pee Eye (Philippine Island) whores. He said they were the most loyal women in the world. I tried to convince Johnny that he shouldn't mess around with Bonnie who was after all a mental patient — and jailbait — but Johnny had a somewhat ... detached ... attitude. You never knew whether he actually heard anything you said, though he'd talk a blue streak about whatever was on his own mind — usually pickup trucks or Pee Eye adventures. Never 'Nam. That subject was closed.

One day, the same day when Bonnie was discharged, Johnny without warning didn't show up for work. Nobody at the hospital ever heard from them again. It's an incomplete story for which I can imagine many endings, some good, some bad, all passing through the twilight realm.

Working swing shift, I'd ride my bike after classes from the Washington University campus through Forest Park. In the late afternoon I'd pedal through the little insular neighborhoods on the south side of St. Louis, brick row houses, mothers on stoops, kids playing ball. I loved it.

Before the Interstate was complete I'd cross Route 66, Gravois Avenue, at a traffic light where the long-distance trucks and overstuffed station wagons were trapped — puzzled, or simply furious — among city traffic.

Most nights, after running a few punchcard programs through the card reader, I could study for uninterrupted hours — and get paid for it — with occasional breaks to change paper in the printer or reboot the temperamental IBM 1620 CPU. Every two minutes the printer would go chock-chock, printing two more lines of numbers which presumably explained what was happening in the patient's brain while the CalComp plotter would go scritch-scratch, placing another line on the graph.

After midnight, I'd ride home through those same little neighborhoods, each with its own ethnic group — all white, this being the south side — Italian, German, or hillbilly — with its own little tavern and its own little grocery. Then I'd pedal among the amazing stillness and fog-halo lights of Forest Park to the tougher streets of the north side where I had cheap rent. I lived above a liquor store on Delmar Avenue in a black neighborhood.

Working swing shift in the relative isolation of a computer room in a mental hospital, you start to feel somewhat removed from the real world. Returning after midnight through city streets, you feel like an alien, an observer. Which, as a writer, I was.

Note: For another brush with LSD experiments, go to "Plumbing and LSD."

365 Jobs: A Happy Clean-cut Angel of Death

2011-09-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

September, 1987

At a traffic light in Redwood City, I'm in my pickup, waiting for green.

When the light turns, I look down the road to see if anyone is coming. Sometimes I do this; most times I don't.

This time, a flatbed Dodge with a load of steel culvert comes barreling along from the left. He runs the red light neither speeding nor slowing as if he never sees it.

If I'd started without looking, I'd be dead. He'd have struck me broadside.

A happy, oblivious, clean-cut young man was at the wheel, my almost angel of death.

Glad I looked.

365 Jobs: The Road Not Taken

2011-08-30T11:07:00.001-07:00

August, 1982

The client paid cash. The job was illegal. No permit; no records. I'd been happy to oblige.

I stopped for gas. In my wallet I had 30 one-hundred-dollar bills.

Across the street was a sign:

I held the gas nozzle thinking: north.

At least once in your married, child-raising life, who hasn't had the thought?

The old truck had new brakes, good tires, a tank full of gas.

In three days, maybe four, I could be in Alaska alone with a truck full of tools. Pipeline work. No questions asked. Cool mountains, clean rivers. Free, strong, and ... thirty-four. Or was it five?

I paid for the gas. Rose had asked me to pick up some strawberry yogurt on the way home from work. And — what was it? Oh yeah. Laundry soap.

365 Jobs: "Do the math."

2011-08-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

Monday, August 29, 1988

I start the day with a visit to the orthopedist for my knee, back, shoulder. He says, "No ladder work. No overhead work. No deep knee bends. No kneeling, period."

I reply: "That's like saying 'No working.'"

"You don't see many fifty-year-old carpenters."

On this day, I'm forty-one.

Next stop, a townhouse in Los Altos. Bud is a white-haired man with penetrating eyes and a no-bullshit attitude. I climb up and down my ladder to his attic running wires for new electric outlets. I reach overhead. I crawl. I place the weight of my body through my knees onto 2x8 joists.

When I finish, Bud offers a glass of lemonade and says, "I used to teach at Saint Francis High School. First day of class I wrote on the blackboard: 'Do the math.' I kept it up there all year."

"Um. Okay."

"What I mean is, I saw you wincing."

"Sorry."

"We break down," Bud says. "I always figured I'd live at least to age seventy-six. That's the average, and we're all above average, right?" He takes a slow sip of lemonade. "I died last week. I was having surgery. For three minutes my heart stopped. They brought me back."

He's a no-bullshit guy so I ask, "Being dead — what was it like? Do you remember anything?"

"All I remember is waking up with a heavy head. I had a feeling I'd dreamed something."

"Did you see light?"

"You mean the tunnel? Everybody asks that." He pauses, considering. "I keep trying to put it there, but it wasn't. No tunnel of light. Not that I can remember." He laughs. "You never know. Until you do. And then it's too late."

On the way home I stop at California Shingle & Shake. I need to reroof my house. I want to live in that house the rest of my life. There's a choice of 20, 25, 30 or 40-year shingles.

Easy. I buy 40-year Sierra Brown shingles and haul them home — slowly, shakily — in my pickup.

At home that evening, my back aches. My knee feels like it has gravel inside. But I'm not complaining. I'm busy; I'm thinking; I'm doing some math.