there is magic in concrete
if you believe
trenching,
building forms
at some point it’s inevitable:
you are on your knees in mud
your eye to the earth, your butt
to the air
for meticulous muscle-work
chop rebar in a shower of sparks
weaving steel rod, suspended
by wires, twist pliers
learn the names:
doughboy, waler
pier cage, stirrup
the mix, the pour
no second chances now
spread and level
wading in boots
shake the gray depths, vibrate
voids not welcome
then you work the surface
flat, in circles,
with the tool called a ‘float’
(because that’s what it does)
buoyant on a gray puddle
and here’s the enchantment
or else I’m just weird but
with fingertips on the handle you can
sense the wet concrete, the mojo
like a sleeping wet bear
solid in mass yet grudgingly liquid
sort of bouncy
as you stroke
hold the leading edge
at a slight upward angle
avoid plowing
pebbles disappear, embedded
the tool is sucking cement
a final thin film, a pretty coat
over guts of gravel and sand
for a finish, swipe smooth
or brush
or groove,
edging, an art
now hose the mixer, shovels, tools,
hose your hands and boots
as the water disappears, so shall you
unless you scratch a name
honor the skilled arms,
the corded legs and vertebral backs
the labor that shaped
this odd stone
sculpted, engineered
implanted with bolts
forgotten
half-buried in dirt
bearing our lives
©copyright 2015 by Joe Cottonwood. All rights reserved.
Showing posts with label carpenter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carpenter. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2015
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Cutting bookmarks
Today we began cutting bookmarks. On a table saw James Adams
ripped slivers from a redwood 2x6 that used to be part of Ken Kesey's
water tank. The wood is clear heart, vertical grain with mineralization
stains (of heaven knows what chemicals). I took some photos as he began.
After
cutting the long slivers into 8" pieces, I sanded their edges and then
commenced engraving "99 Jobs" into the individual bookmarks. James,
meanwhile, began cutting slivers from other pieces of lumber. I was
hunched over the trim router, engraving "99 Jobs" freehand over and
over, when James suddenly cursed and put his thumb into his mouth.
Guiding a piece of wood, he'd run the pad of his thumb over the saw
blade. The blade was set to protrude about 1/4" above the top of the
piece he was cutting, so he sliced a 1/4" gash into his thumb.
Immediately I helped wrap it in gauze and tape. His wife drove him to the Palo Alto Clinic, where he is right now as I write this (the accident happened about an hour ago).
James is one of the best woodworkers I know. He says this is the worst accident he's ever had in his shop. He's careful, and he has a lifetime of experience. Yet it happened.
There are spatters of blood on the table saw. Red stains in the partially sawed wood. No, I won't be including that lumber among the bookmarks—to which we will return in a few days, I hope.
Be careful out there.
Immediately I helped wrap it in gauze and tape. His wife drove him to the Palo Alto Clinic, where he is right now as I write this (the accident happened about an hour ago).
James is one of the best woodworkers I know. He says this is the worst accident he's ever had in his shop. He's careful, and he has a lifetime of experience. Yet it happened.
There are spatters of blood on the table saw. Red stains in the partially sawed wood. No, I won't be including that lumber among the bookmarks—to which we will return in a few days, I hope.
Be careful out there.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Wooden Bookmarks
James cut some samples. A bit of sanding, a bit of finish, an experiment with freehand writing using a router, and — wow:
So I'll be offering bookmarks as incentive rewards on Kickstarter, starting next week. Put a little lumber between your pages. Own a piece of legendary La Honda timber.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
365 Jobs: The Mojo of Concrete
Like
most beginning carpenters, I thought I would cut boards and whack nails
into them. I might even use a hand plane to shave a smooth curl from a
plank. Those are the symbols of carpentry: the hammer, the saw, the
plane.
What a load of crap. As a beginning carpenter on a small construction crew, I spent most of my time digging holes, mixing concrete, stapling insulation, hanging drywall, cleaning up garbage. If I touched lumber, it was to carry toxic rasty pressure-treated two-by-twelves from one pile to another, load by muscle-weary load. As for hand planes, entire houses got built without the use of one.
On a small crew, you do everything. You learn to like it, or at least to tolerate. Except insulation. Does anybody enjoy handling fiberglass batts? I accept digging holes or gathering garbage as part of the job. Drywall can be pleasant in a mindless, big-muscle way, and you get immediate, large results.
One
surprise, though, was my changing relationship to concrete. Slowly
over the years concrete is something I've learned to respect. Perhaps
even love.
In my novel Clear Heart I wrote about my education through the character of Abe, a high school graduate who takes a job as a beginner on a construction crew to earn some money — and, his mother hopes, to learn some discipline — before starting college at Princeton in the Fall. Abe is me. (Actually, most of the carpenters in that novel are some aspect of me at different ages and stages of my career.) (Though I never went to Princeton.) (But then, Abe isn't too sure he wants to go to Princeton, either.)
Here is Abe's first task on a construction site, guided by an old carpenter named Steamboat:
A little later, after pouring the concrete:
That's right: magic. I was surprised when I first wrote that word, but I knew instantly that it was right. You can feel the mojo when you run a floater over concrete. At least, if you have a certain personality. Which I seem to have.
On another day, Abe is involved in a larger pour of an entire raised foundation:
One of the forms breaks, and for a few minutes Abe is nearly Hoffaed, as they call it — drowned under concrete. He washes himself off with a hose and then is told he can go home for the rest of the day, but instead he returns to help the crew:
There, I used that word again: magic. Maybe I'm alone in this. Or maybe you've felt it, too. Maybe you've run a floater over concrete; maybe you, too, have sensed the mojo under your fingertips as the fragrance of cement — wet and yet oddly dusty — embeds in your memory like the bouquet of a fine wine.
Or maybe I'm weird.
Note: I borrowed the picture from a useful web site called concretenetwork.com.
What a load of crap. As a beginning carpenter on a small construction crew, I spent most of my time digging holes, mixing concrete, stapling insulation, hanging drywall, cleaning up garbage. If I touched lumber, it was to carry toxic rasty pressure-treated two-by-twelves from one pile to another, load by muscle-weary load. As for hand planes, entire houses got built without the use of one.
On a small crew, you do everything. You learn to like it, or at least to tolerate. Except insulation. Does anybody enjoy handling fiberglass batts? I accept digging holes or gathering garbage as part of the job. Drywall can be pleasant in a mindless, big-muscle way, and you get immediate, large results.
One
surprise, though, was my changing relationship to concrete. Slowly
over the years concrete is something I've learned to respect. Perhaps
even love.In my novel Clear Heart I wrote about my education through the character of Abe, a high school graduate who takes a job as a beginner on a construction crew to earn some money — and, his mother hopes, to learn some discipline — before starting college at Princeton in the Fall. Abe is me. (Actually, most of the carpenters in that novel are some aspect of me at different ages and stages of my career.) (Though I never went to Princeton.) (But then, Abe isn't too sure he wants to go to Princeton, either.)
Here is Abe's first task on a construction site, guided by an old carpenter named Steamboat:
“You need to know,” Steamboat said. “What looks simple, ain’t.”
And what could look simpler than building a rectangle out of two-by-sixes, then filling it with concrete? Abe noted the care Steamboat gave to all the details: He shoveled the ground flat, a little deeper around the perimeter, and then tamped it firm with his flat-soled boots. He made sure the form was square and exactly the right distance from the edge of the deck, measuring not once but twice. He leveled the boards with his fingers by pushing dirt under one corner, scooping some away from another, eye to the earth, butt to the air.
A little later, after pouring the concrete:
Steamboat showed Abe how to strike off the top with a screed board, which was just a regular old two-by-four, pulling it back and forth along the top of the form in a sawing motion, cutting off the high spots, backing and filling the low spots. With a running commentary all the while, Steamboat seemed quite happy to be slopping concrete in dirt, practicing a skill that until this moment Abe had never given a thought, much less any respect.
Steamboat showed Abe how to swing a wooden floater in circles, working all the stone into the mix so they dropped below the surface, holding the leading edge of the tool up slightly to keep it from plowing. The wet concrete had an odd quality under Abe’s hands, feeling both solid in its mass and grudgingly liquid on its surface, sort of bouncy, as the tool swept over. There was magic the way the pebbles disappeared, as if the floater was sucking smoothness from the mix.
That's right: magic. I was surprised when I first wrote that word, but I knew instantly that it was right. You can feel the mojo when you run a floater over concrete. At least, if you have a certain personality. Which I seem to have.
Steamboat nodded toward the landing. “Lookin’ good,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
Abe liked saying sir. He knew he didn’t have to, it was a joke, but he didn’t want to stop. He liked the ache in his muscles that would grow into strength. He liked the smell of wet concrete. He liked this work—so solid, so basic, so real.
On another day, Abe is involved in a larger pour of an entire raised foundation:
Abe lugged rebar. Without asking questions, he listened and absorbed the meaning and use of a doughboy, waler, pier cage, stirrup. He discovered—with stunning tension in his shoulders, fingers, and back—the difference in weight and stiffness between grade 40 #4 rebar and grade 60 #5. He saw the meticulous and muscle-straining preparation for what would become invisible, unbeautiful, mostly buried, and taken for granted. As Steamboat had said—and he seemed to mean it as an essential Law of Life and Human Development—Don’t fork up the foundation.
One of the forms breaks, and for a few minutes Abe is nearly Hoffaed, as they call it — drowned under concrete. He washes himself off with a hose and then is told he can go home for the rest of the day, but instead he returns to help the crew:
All the while, amidst the hard work and the pain and shock of nearly being buried alive, with heightened senses Abe was keenly aware of the smell of curing concrete. It was a wet and yet oddly dusty odor. It was a scent of possibility, of something you could briefly shape with tools, of impending permanence. Abe loved that smell: a magic force, so solid and quiet and strong. Concrete, he realized, has dignity. Maybe Abe had a law, his first, his very own: Honor concrete. Honor it, at least, until you come at it with a demo hammer.
There, I used that word again: magic. Maybe I'm alone in this. Or maybe you've felt it, too. Maybe you've run a floater over concrete; maybe you, too, have sensed the mojo under your fingertips as the fragrance of cement — wet and yet oddly dusty — embeds in your memory like the bouquet of a fine wine.
Or maybe I'm weird.
Note: I borrowed the picture from a useful web site called concretenetwork.com.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
365 Jobs: How Insurance Is Done
Isabella, my favorite decorator, sends me to a grand battleship of an Atherton estate, serviced by a flotilla of pickup trucks of which I am but one. Carol, the owner, shows me a gate post that was struck by a delivery truck. The post is a pagoda-like structure with cedar shingles. One of the shingles is damaged.
"Write me an estimate," Carol says. Then she shows me a number of projects: widening a doorway, building an elaborate bench around an oak tree. Classy work. I've struck the mother lode.
"Give me an idea what it'll cost," Carol says. "Something I can tell my husband." She winks. "Then once he's on board, we can build whatever we want. When can you start?"
"I can start next week. I'll write up some numbers."
"Don't write it up. Just tell me. Except the gate post. I need a written estimate for the insurance company. Fax it to me. Don't be cheap on that one. I'm in the insurance business, so I know how this is done."
She must sell a lot of insurance to own this estate.
So here's the game: She expects me to bid low for most of the work — a nonbinding oral bid, so I'm fine with that — and bid high for the insurance work. That evening, I write an estimate for the gate post.
Replace one cedar shingle: Labor $150, materials $50.It's an outrageous estimate. I'll do the entire job in fifteen minutes. The materials — one shingle, two nails — will cost less than $1. I'll make $10/minute on labor, with a 5000% markup on the shingle.
Total: $200.
I fax it to Carol.
She never responds.
Next week I call Isabella. "What happened to Carol?"
"She didn't like your estimate for the gate post," Isabella says. "In fact, she was furious."
"Yeah, it was grossly inflated. She told me, 'Don't be cheap.'"
"No. Not that. It wasn't high enough. Didn't she tell you she knows how insurance is done? She's always saying that to me."
"She wanted it higher?"
"More zeroes. Each number should've had one more zero."
"Can I change it?"
"No. She's decided you're an idiot."
Sunday, May 13, 2012
365 Jobs: Skateboarder
September 2001 to March 2002
Mordecai told me about some famous skateboarding movie (which I’d never heard of) that showed footage of him.
“So you’re a pro?” I asked.
“In my dreams.” He laughed and rolled his eyes.
I was wary, but I hired him. I could always use a teenage helper. It was September, 2001. My youngest son had just started college back East, leaving an emotional hole in my soul like a tiny suggestion of that smoking ruin in Manhattan.
For the first two days Mordecai took directions, worked hard, kept his shoes untied and his pants hanging low. He couldn’t stand still. He was a hothead, but somewhere within he was a nice Jewish boy.
It was a termite job. We were tearing out siding and spraying boards with borate.
His father called me after the second day and asked if his son was being useful.
“He’s good,” I said. “I like his hustle.”
“Hustle!” The father laughed. “That’s a benign way to describe it.”
On the third day Mordecai went home for a lunch break. While I was eating my sandwich, the phone rang. It was Mord: “Sorry, Doctor,” — he often called me Doctor — “but I’m leaving for Oregon. They’re picking me up in fifteen minutes.”
He’d just been invited to tour with some professional skateboarders.
A week later, he was back.
“How was it?” I asked.
“Sweet,” he said. And we resumed the work.
It was one of those jobs that just keeps growing. A small termite repair developed into replacing the roof on a garage, building a deck and stairs, a fence, a long string of jobs. Mordecai stayed with me for that whole depressing winter after 9/11.
I was happy to have a companion, erratic as he was. Mordecai would take the occasional week off — on ten minutes’ notice — to go skateboarding in Tahoe or L.A.
You come to know somebody through how they work. When I spray transparent stain onto house siding, I start at one corner and make my way methodically down and across to the opposite corner. Mordecai would spray scattershot in wiggles and circles, seemingly at random, until the entire wall was coated.
I said, “We need to make sure each board gets an even coat.”
“I get it even,” Mordecai said. “I’m a compulsive perfectionist.”
He was neither. But I said no more.
Though fearless on a skateboard, he was nervous about “sketchy ladder work.” So I started a scaffold job by myself. After watching for a few minutes, Mordecai came up, too. From then on he was fine, full of questions and restless energy.
Inanimate objects such as two-by-fours were “bad boys,” as in ““Do you want me to nail this bad boy up now?”
On a day when we were working on my own house, I told him to saw off the end of a one-by-six that was sticking out too far at the base of my chimney. “I’ve been meaning to cut that board for twenty years,” I remarked.
Later I learned that Mordecai had been quoting me to his parents and friends like I was some weird old geezer: “I’ve been meaning to cut that board for twenty years.” He thought I was hilarious. Another time, again working on my own house, I told him, “Pull off that rotten piece of siding, then take a five minute break while I puke.” The damage behind the siding wasn’t as sickening as I’d feared, but the quote spread all over town.
I showed Mordecai how to lay bricks, and he started building a pathway. I couldn’t supervise him closely that day. The next morning I told him he’d have to tear it out. “Okay, Doctor,” he said. Cheerfully on the second try he got it right. Then that night, he announced to his parents that he wanted to build a brick pathway all around their house.
He had transitory but instant enthusiasm, moving from one new skill to another as quickly as he could learn.
Somewhere along the line, I discovered to my surprise that this boy who I’d been treating as a teen was actually a college graduate with an evolving desire to go to law school. The plan seemed to grow in direct proportion to his time spent on skateboarding trips. I think he was discovering that it was a young man’s sport and that at age 22 he was no longer young. Or indestructible. He was also getting seriously involved with a certain young woman, which might also have made skateboarding seem like a less than perfect lifetime plan.
Mordecai asked me how I became a contractor. I explained the process, ending with the state licensing exam. That night Mordecai went home and told his mother, a schoolteacher, and his father, a doctor, that he’d decided not to go to law school. He was going to take a one-day class and become a contractor.
His parents were less than thrilled — though somewhat amused. Also he’d forgotten, or hadn’t heard, that to become a contractor you needed four years of experience in the trade plus a series of classes, then a big exam. Law school, at three years, is faster.
The winter passes. By equinox the wildflowers are utterly spectacular while the weather is utterly unpredictable. Late March, I take a two-day job that balloons into two weeks, the kind of hard carpentry that makes my body hurt all over. Fortunately, I have Mordecai.
In Afghanistan US troops are slaughtering the Taliban. In La Honda my wife and daughter are preparing for my daughter’s wedding. Insignificantly in Menlo Park, Mordecai and I are installing signposts and a decorative fence in front of an office building. It’s a cold day with dark clouds rolling over the mountains in the west. There are occasional blasts of wind and quick splats of hard rain. Appreciating him, at this moment I choose to tell Mordecai that I’m giving him a raise from $10 to $12 an hour.
Looking embarrassed, Mordecai coughs — he’s been coughing a lot, lately — and says, “I should have told you. I’ve got a new job. I’m starting Monday.”
Today is Friday. It’s his typical short notice.
From digging post-holes, standing in mud, we’re saturated with the smell of damp earth.
“Actually,” he says with another cough, “I was supposed to start two weeks ago. I told them I wanted to stay with you. Finish up. It’s for the park service. I’ll be doing construction.”
“What are they paying?”
“Fifteen an hour. With benefits.” He coughs again, and when he removes his hand from in front of his mouth, the palm is spattered with blood.
“Go home. Right now.”
“Are you firing me, Doctor?”
“Of course not. You’re coughing blood. Go home, have some chicken soup and go to bed.”
I continue alone, getting drenched in an icy shower. And suddenly it’s all so clear: What a cheapskate I am. And how he must value working for me. I was paying $10 without benefits when he’s worth $15 with bennies to the labor market out in the real world. And yet he stayed with me, didn’t want to leave even when he had a better job, even when he was coughing blood.
He wasn’t mocking me, quoting that stuff about “meaning to cut that board for twenty years” or “take a five minute break while I puke.” The kid admired me, latching onto a role model as only the young can do.
It’s scary being that important to somebody. Maybe it’s better that I wasn’t aware. And yet I should have known. I’ve taken that role again and again, hiring teens (or who I thought were teens), training them not so much for carpentry but for life, witnessing the magic of creation, that look of pride when they see what they’ve built. And then they’re gone, and I go on.
Mordecai told me about some famous skateboarding movie (which I’d never heard of) that showed footage of him.
“So you’re a pro?” I asked.
“In my dreams.” He laughed and rolled his eyes.
I was wary, but I hired him. I could always use a teenage helper. It was September, 2001. My youngest son had just started college back East, leaving an emotional hole in my soul like a tiny suggestion of that smoking ruin in Manhattan.
For the first two days Mordecai took directions, worked hard, kept his shoes untied and his pants hanging low. He couldn’t stand still. He was a hothead, but somewhere within he was a nice Jewish boy.
It was a termite job. We were tearing out siding and spraying boards with borate.
His father called me after the second day and asked if his son was being useful.
“He’s good,” I said. “I like his hustle.”
“Hustle!” The father laughed. “That’s a benign way to describe it.”
On the third day Mordecai went home for a lunch break. While I was eating my sandwich, the phone rang. It was Mord: “Sorry, Doctor,” — he often called me Doctor — “but I’m leaving for Oregon. They’re picking me up in fifteen minutes.”
He’d just been invited to tour with some professional skateboarders.
A week later, he was back.
“How was it?” I asked.
“Sweet,” he said. And we resumed the work.
It was one of those jobs that just keeps growing. A small termite repair developed into replacing the roof on a garage, building a deck and stairs, a fence, a long string of jobs. Mordecai stayed with me for that whole depressing winter after 9/11.
I was happy to have a companion, erratic as he was. Mordecai would take the occasional week off — on ten minutes’ notice — to go skateboarding in Tahoe or L.A.
You come to know somebody through how they work. When I spray transparent stain onto house siding, I start at one corner and make my way methodically down and across to the opposite corner. Mordecai would spray scattershot in wiggles and circles, seemingly at random, until the entire wall was coated.
I said, “We need to make sure each board gets an even coat.”
“I get it even,” Mordecai said. “I’m a compulsive perfectionist.”
He was neither. But I said no more.
Though fearless on a skateboard, he was nervous about “sketchy ladder work.” So I started a scaffold job by myself. After watching for a few minutes, Mordecai came up, too. From then on he was fine, full of questions and restless energy.
Inanimate objects such as two-by-fours were “bad boys,” as in ““Do you want me to nail this bad boy up now?”
On a day when we were working on my own house, I told him to saw off the end of a one-by-six that was sticking out too far at the base of my chimney. “I’ve been meaning to cut that board for twenty years,” I remarked.
Later I learned that Mordecai had been quoting me to his parents and friends like I was some weird old geezer: “I’ve been meaning to cut that board for twenty years.” He thought I was hilarious. Another time, again working on my own house, I told him, “Pull off that rotten piece of siding, then take a five minute break while I puke.” The damage behind the siding wasn’t as sickening as I’d feared, but the quote spread all over town.
I showed Mordecai how to lay bricks, and he started building a pathway. I couldn’t supervise him closely that day. The next morning I told him he’d have to tear it out. “Okay, Doctor,” he said. Cheerfully on the second try he got it right. Then that night, he announced to his parents that he wanted to build a brick pathway all around their house.
He had transitory but instant enthusiasm, moving from one new skill to another as quickly as he could learn.
Somewhere along the line, I discovered to my surprise that this boy who I’d been treating as a teen was actually a college graduate with an evolving desire to go to law school. The plan seemed to grow in direct proportion to his time spent on skateboarding trips. I think he was discovering that it was a young man’s sport and that at age 22 he was no longer young. Or indestructible. He was also getting seriously involved with a certain young woman, which might also have made skateboarding seem like a less than perfect lifetime plan.
Mordecai asked me how I became a contractor. I explained the process, ending with the state licensing exam. That night Mordecai went home and told his mother, a schoolteacher, and his father, a doctor, that he’d decided not to go to law school. He was going to take a one-day class and become a contractor.
His parents were less than thrilled — though somewhat amused. Also he’d forgotten, or hadn’t heard, that to become a contractor you needed four years of experience in the trade plus a series of classes, then a big exam. Law school, at three years, is faster.
The winter passes. By equinox the wildflowers are utterly spectacular while the weather is utterly unpredictable. Late March, I take a two-day job that balloons into two weeks, the kind of hard carpentry that makes my body hurt all over. Fortunately, I have Mordecai.
In Afghanistan US troops are slaughtering the Taliban. In La Honda my wife and daughter are preparing for my daughter’s wedding. Insignificantly in Menlo Park, Mordecai and I are installing signposts and a decorative fence in front of an office building. It’s a cold day with dark clouds rolling over the mountains in the west. There are occasional blasts of wind and quick splats of hard rain. Appreciating him, at this moment I choose to tell Mordecai that I’m giving him a raise from $10 to $12 an hour.
Looking embarrassed, Mordecai coughs — he’s been coughing a lot, lately — and says, “I should have told you. I’ve got a new job. I’m starting Monday.”
Today is Friday. It’s his typical short notice.
From digging post-holes, standing in mud, we’re saturated with the smell of damp earth.
“Actually,” he says with another cough, “I was supposed to start two weeks ago. I told them I wanted to stay with you. Finish up. It’s for the park service. I’ll be doing construction.”
“What are they paying?”
“Fifteen an hour. With benefits.” He coughs again, and when he removes his hand from in front of his mouth, the palm is spattered with blood.
“Go home. Right now.”
“Are you firing me, Doctor?”
“Of course not. You’re coughing blood. Go home, have some chicken soup and go to bed.”
I continue alone, getting drenched in an icy shower. And suddenly it’s all so clear: What a cheapskate I am. And how he must value working for me. I was paying $10 without benefits when he’s worth $15 with bennies to the labor market out in the real world. And yet he stayed with me, didn’t want to leave even when he had a better job, even when he was coughing blood.
He wasn’t mocking me, quoting that stuff about “meaning to cut that board for twenty years” or “take a five minute break while I puke.” The kid admired me, latching onto a role model as only the young can do.
It’s scary being that important to somebody. Maybe it’s better that I wasn’t aware. And yet I should have known. I’ve taken that role again and again, hiring teens (or who I thought were teens), training them not so much for carpentry but for life, witnessing the magic of creation, that look of pride when they see what they’ve built. And then they’re gone, and I go on.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
George Nakashima: The Soul of a Tree
In preparing my profile of James Adams, James mentioned that he was trying to follow in the path of George Nakashima. Naturally, I had to get my hands on a copy of Nakashima's The Soul of a Tree. I've just read it, and it's changed my life.
What an inspiring man — both for the life he lived and the works he created. I've written before that the Shakers were a source for my woodwork and for my method of writing. Now I add George Nakashima as a spiritual guide, a man who once joked: "I am a Japanese Shaker."
He is best known for his tables made of large wood slabs joined by butterfly joints. The tops are smooth while one or more edges are the natural rough edge of the tree.
I'm fascinated by his two-legged, leverage-defying conoid chairs, which must have fantastically tight joints:
As with poetry, a reviewer can best let the book speak for itself, in word and image. Here is George Nakashima:
What an inspiring man — both for the life he lived and the works he created. I've written before that the Shakers were a source for my woodwork and for my method of writing. Now I add George Nakashima as a spiritual guide, a man who once joked: "I am a Japanese Shaker."
He is best known for his tables made of large wood slabs joined by butterfly joints. The tops are smooth while one or more edges are the natural rough edge of the tree.
I'm fascinated by his two-legged, leverage-defying conoid chairs, which must have fantastically tight joints:
As with poetry, a reviewer can best let the book speak for itself, in word and image. Here is George Nakashima:
 |
| "Resurrection" |
On resurrection: "This slab was cut from one of the great trees of England... A deep furrow remains, giving its surface a sculptured look. The usual market for fine timber would not find much use for such a slab, practically a reject of nature. I have sometimes rescued these great slabs from the dump heap and sometimes, with luck, seem to give them a second chance at life as good furniture. The natural forms with all their bumps and 'warts' survive. To fashion such a piece of wood into fine furniture is almost an act of resurrection."
On cutting: "Usually, cutting across the crotch produces the finest figuring [on left]. This cut also provides the greatest usable width. Cutting along the crotch [on right] results in a somewhat triangular piece of lumber with less surface area to work with. The figuring is less intense, too. At the point where a tree branches freely, three or more crotches may be found. The result in the lumber can be truly extravagant figuring."
On cutting: "Usually, cutting across the crotch produces the finest figuring [on left]. This cut also provides the greatest usable width. Cutting along the crotch [on right] results in a somewhat triangular piece of lumber with less surface area to work with. The figuring is less intense, too. At the point where a tree branches freely, three or more crotches may be found. The result in the lumber can be truly extravagant figuring."
"I make any number of preliminary drawings in chalk to get a feeling for the proportion of the object we are creating. It's easier to make a final decision where to cut if there is something to see on the board."
"There is drama in the opening of a log — to uncover for the first time the beauty in the bole, or trunk, of a tree hidden for centuries, waiting to be given this second life."
"There is drama in the opening of a log — to uncover for the first time the beauty in the bole, or trunk, of a tree hidden for centuries, waiting to be given this second life."
"The key man in the process of cutting logs is the sawyer, one of the
great craftsmen of our age with steady nerves and experienced judgment.
It is necessary to have an almost silent dialogue with this sawyer.
Few words are spoken, but thickness, the direction of the cut, the
positioning of the log — all must be decided with precision."
On the soul of a tree: "When trees mature, it is fair and moral that they are cut for man's use, as they would soon decay and return to the earth. Trees have a yearning to live again, perhaps to provide the beauty, strength and utility to serve man, even to become an object of great artistic worth."
"Each flitch, each board, each plank can have only one ideal use. The woodworker, applying a thousand skills, must find that ideal use and then shape the wood to realize its true potential."
 |
| Rough design, bookmatched walnut root |
 |
| Finished bookmatched walnut root table |
"The object is to make as fine a piece of furniture as is humanly
possible. The purpose is usefulness, but with a lyric quality — this is
the basis of all my designs."
On hand versus power tools: "Our approach is to realize a synthesis between the hand and the machine working as a small unit."
"As much as man controls the end product, there is no disadvantage in the use of modern machinery and there is no need for embarrassment... A power plane can do in a few minutes what might require a day or more by hand. In a creative craft, it becomes a question of responsibility, whether it is a man or the machine that controls the work's progress."
On nature: "Once I was pulling a fairly large branch and it suddenly gave way, knocking me breathless to the ground. As it fell, two long shards of wood broke off, each fifteen to twenty inches long and as sharp as a spear. I was wearing heavy rubber boots with leather tops. One of the shards pierced one boot's heel, while the other slashed through it. Lying on the ground, I waited for the pain to start, for it seemed as if I'd been crucified. But as my senses returned, I realized the wood had gone through the boot, but not my foot: all I had were scrapes on my sole and heel. Nature is compassionate."
Part of my feeling of kinship with the man comes from the remarkable facial resemblance between him and my own father, who was neither Japanese nor a woodcrafter.
On hand versus power tools: "Our approach is to realize a synthesis between the hand and the machine working as a small unit."
"As much as man controls the end product, there is no disadvantage in the use of modern machinery and there is no need for embarrassment... A power plane can do in a few minutes what might require a day or more by hand. In a creative craft, it becomes a question of responsibility, whether it is a man or the machine that controls the work's progress."
 |
| A butterfly key of rosewood joining two pieces of walnut. |
On nature: "Once I was pulling a fairly large branch and it suddenly gave way, knocking me breathless to the ground. As it fell, two long shards of wood broke off, each fifteen to twenty inches long and as sharp as a spear. I was wearing heavy rubber boots with leather tops. One of the shards pierced one boot's heel, while the other slashed through it. Lying on the ground, I waited for the pain to start, for it seemed as if I'd been crucified. But as my senses returned, I realized the wood had gone through the boot, but not my foot: all I had were scrapes on my sole and heel. Nature is compassionate."
Part of my feeling of kinship with the man comes from the remarkable facial resemblance between him and my own father, who was neither Japanese nor a woodcrafter.
 | |
| George Nakashima |
After relocating to New Hope, Pennsylvania: "After a year of doing general farm work, it was quite clear to me that chickens and I were not compatible."
On building his house in New Hope: "At no time did we have more than fifty dollars in cash, but by scrounging materials, gathering stones off the property, digging foundation by hand, and working evenings and weekends, I was able to build a rough structure by Thanksgiving. … Our first winter in the house was bitterly cold, and the faucet froze in the kitchen."
"We built, quite literally, on the principle of laying stone upon stone. We had considerable stone on our land, and it was simply a question of hauling it by wheelbarrow to the building site."
On architecture: "There is a wonderful feeling to be had in erecting a stone wall. There is a sense of order and permanence. A good wall will last for generations and even millenia."
"The decline in quality of modern furniture is probably due in part to the use of the quick, easy and cheap dowel joint. The decline of modern domestic architecture can be traced to the popularity of the stud wall put together with hammer and nails, a type of construction calling for no joinery at all. By contrast, the early American house and barn with their excellent joinery still represent the best we have produced and will greatly outlast contemporary buildings."
Nakashima built several innovative structures at New Hope, blending traditional Japanese and American styles with modern materials. This photo shows the interior of the Minguren Museum, which has a roof that is a hyperbolic parabaloid. "The span of the room is thirty-six-by-thirty-six feet, but note that there are no trusses or beams."
 |
| Ceiling, stairs, Minguren Museum |
"The stairway is made of three-inch thick oak planks cantilevered twelve inches into a fieldstone wall." I wonder: With one end anchored in stone and the other hanging in free air, how much do they bounce?
 |
| The reception house |
On local salvage: "I call our reception house a sanso, or 'mountain villa,' in Japanese. I built it … entirely with materials cast off from my workshop. Castoff though the building materials were, they were quite unique since the rich and rare woods that I normally use are not generally obtainable. The floor, for example, is made of red birch and walnut boards with extraordinary figuring. Most of the outside construction was done with a single dead elm. This elm, about five feet in diameter, could not be lifted by one huge forklift, but required two. The elm had been cut into two-and-a-half-inch-thick boards. Once cut, there seemed to be no client demand since the wood was light in color and not unusually grained. So, we happily used it in the reception house."
There's so much more: Drawings by Nakashima's own hand. Chapters about species of trees, their spiritual and practical uses. Pages about where to cut, and why. Architectural commentary. Gorgeous photos of Nakashima's stunning original designs that are so lovely, you'll want to run your fingertips over the paper. Slabs of trees that make a woodworker's heart race. A genius of a man who enriched our lives, even if we never knew him.
The original edition of the book is out of print (I borrowed mine from the library). Used copies are fetching enormous prices (as are his furniture), but a new edition of the book has been released by Kodansha. I've just bought the Kodansha version and am pleased to report that it's of excellent quality. The man deserves no less.
Note: If you're interested, here's a link to the Kodansha edition at amazon.com:
The Soul of a Tree: A Master Woodworkers Reflections.
The original edition of the book is out of print (I borrowed mine from the library). Used copies are fetching enormous prices (as are his furniture), but a new edition of the book has been released by Kodansha. I've just bought the Kodansha version and am pleased to report that it's of excellent quality. The man deserves no less.
Note: If you're interested, here's a link to the Kodansha edition at amazon.com:
The Soul of a Tree: A Master Woodworkers Reflections.
For more about George Nakashima, here are some links:
Links to some other books I've reviewed:
Religion in Wood: A book of Shaker Furniture by Edward Deming Andrews and Faith Andrews
With our Hands: The Story of Carpenters in Massachusetts by Mark Erlich
The Mind at Work by Mark Rose
Tools of the Trade: The Art and Craft of Carpentry by Jeff Taylor
A Splintered History of Wood by Spike Carlsen
Reverence for Wood by Eric Sloane
Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine by Lou Ureneck
Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine by Lou Ureneck
Monday, April 2, 2012
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Poly-euw
Diary of a Small Contractor
Monday, November 3, 1986
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.
Monday, November 3, 1986
All dayI'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.
shaping lumber with a
clear heart.
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.
Friday, November 11, 2011
365 Jobs: Good Craftsmanship is the Lack of Botch
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.
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.
Friday, October 28, 2011
365 Jobs: Afterwards, It's Still There
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Monday, September 26, 2011
365 Jobs: The Rookie - Adolf and the "Crack"
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...)
(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...)
Sunday, September 25, 2011
365 Jobs: The Rookie - First Day
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.
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.
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...)
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 |
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 |
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...)
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
365 Jobs: Watch Them Grow
July-August 1995
Around the age of 13, boys become useful. My oldest son Jesse was 13 when I first hired him to help me with a construction job. Now Will, my youngest, is 13 and helping me lay plywood floors at Dolly's house.
He hammers. I tell him I want a nail every 6" around the edges, every 12" in the field. It's a tedious though strenuous test. After an hour alone, I check his results with a tape measure. He never stretched, never wandered. Okay, passing grade. As a reward I let him drill holes and drive screws.
He proves to be a good worker and a good companion.
He's also illegal. The law prohibits hiring 13-year-olds. There's an exception for a family business (which of course this is) but even in a family business 13-year-olds are forbidden to operate power equipment or work in hazardous situations. Is hammering hazardous?
I'm not exploiting the kid. I'm teaching him skills. He enjoys it. Give a teenager a real job and watch him grow - it happens right before your eyes. I don't let him operate the power saw or the router. The big power drill, yes. Cordless drill/driver, yes.
When we return home, there's a package at the doorstep. Will's order of guitar parts has arrived from Stewart McDonald. As a summer project before starting eighth grade, Will is building an electric guitar. It was all his idea.
In the guitar project, the roles are reversed: he's the boss; I'm the helper. Together we've already shopped the intoxicating warehouse of a hardwood supplier and brought home a solid block of mahogany plus a sheet of walnut veneer. At school Will's shop teacher, Mikel Kovach-Long, helped him cut the body with a band saw following Will's carefully-drawn design. At home, I cut the neck with my radial arm saw. Together, we veneered walnut to the body - with insufficient clamps - and botched it. The veneer came out wrinkly. Will scraped it off.
With our package from Stewart McDonald, we're ready to move on. We cut a groove for the truss rod and glue the neck to the body.
Our two jobs done for the day, Will goes to a friend's house to play drums and spend the night. I'm alone. My daughter is in China on a tour that was sponsored by someone at her high school. Next year, she'll graduate and then leave home for college. My older son, on summer break from college, is working as a counselor at Plantation Farm Camp. With mixed emotions I'm watching my kids take wing.
My wife comes home from a staff meeting and finds me in the bathtub with a mug of tea and a portable telephone, reading and taking notes in the margin of a book while listening to a Giants game on the radio. Observing my bathing setup, she says “You’ll adjust better to life without kids than I will.”
Will and I return to Dolly’s where we spend a full day laying another floor. Dolly is making up her house plan as we work, deciding which room will be art studio, which will be study as we are lifting bookshelves and desks. To Dolly, relocating furniture means relocating memories of her husband who recently died, so we have to deal with an emotionally fraught situation. It takes patience.
At night, Will and I work on installing the truss rod inside the guitar neck. It's trickier than we expected.
The next day I take Will to San Francisco to catch a 6:30 a.m. bus to Camp Unalayee where he will trek in the Trinity Alps for a couple of weeks. An hour later, I pick up my daughter at the airport where she has just returned from China, arriving an hour earlier than she departed through the magic of time zones. Driving down the chaotic Bayshore Freeway, she remarks on how calm it is here. She sleeps for the next 22 hours.
Continuing alone at Dolly's house, I finish the floors, hang doors, build a nice little sink cabinet and hang bank after bank of shelves. The nice thing about Dolly is that unlike many clients, my standards are higher than hers, so she’s always pleased with my work.
After two weeks, Will returns from camp: tall, tan, and hungry. Meeting him at the bus in San Francisco, I tell him the news: Jerry Garcia has died. As we drive to La Honda, Will is in tears. I had no idea it would touch him this way. I tell Will about the time I sat right next to Jerry at a club called the Keystone. "I never got to see him," Will says sadly. "Now I never can."
Rummaging through my tapes, Will finds Workingman's Dead and pops it into the player. He listens, not talking, the rest of the long drive home. We all deal with loss our own way.
Will gets a big greeting from the dogs - and from his brother and sister. My older son Jesse has completed his summer job, so we'll all be home together for a week or so. My daughter has cooked fish with lots of garlic. Everyone finishes dinner and then watches Will continue to eat. After polishing off everything on the table, he goes to the refrigerator for more.
When dinner is over, Will asks if I've done any work on the guitar.
"No," I say. "I don't know what to do."
"Let's take a look," he says.
I follow Will down the stairs to the basement. I'm eager to help, eager to learn.
Around the age of 13, boys become useful. My oldest son Jesse was 13 when I first hired him to help me with a construction job. Now Will, my youngest, is 13 and helping me lay plywood floors at Dolly's house.
He hammers. I tell him I want a nail every 6" around the edges, every 12" in the field. It's a tedious though strenuous test. After an hour alone, I check his results with a tape measure. He never stretched, never wandered. Okay, passing grade. As a reward I let him drill holes and drive screws.
He proves to be a good worker and a good companion.
He's also illegal. The law prohibits hiring 13-year-olds. There's an exception for a family business (which of course this is) but even in a family business 13-year-olds are forbidden to operate power equipment or work in hazardous situations. Is hammering hazardous?
I'm not exploiting the kid. I'm teaching him skills. He enjoys it. Give a teenager a real job and watch him grow - it happens right before your eyes. I don't let him operate the power saw or the router. The big power drill, yes. Cordless drill/driver, yes.
When we return home, there's a package at the doorstep. Will's order of guitar parts has arrived from Stewart McDonald. As a summer project before starting eighth grade, Will is building an electric guitar. It was all his idea.
In the guitar project, the roles are reversed: he's the boss; I'm the helper. Together we've already shopped the intoxicating warehouse of a hardwood supplier and brought home a solid block of mahogany plus a sheet of walnut veneer. At school Will's shop teacher, Mikel Kovach-Long, helped him cut the body with a band saw following Will's carefully-drawn design. At home, I cut the neck with my radial arm saw. Together, we veneered walnut to the body - with insufficient clamps - and botched it. The veneer came out wrinkly. Will scraped it off.
With our package from Stewart McDonald, we're ready to move on. We cut a groove for the truss rod and glue the neck to the body.
Our two jobs done for the day, Will goes to a friend's house to play drums and spend the night. I'm alone. My daughter is in China on a tour that was sponsored by someone at her high school. Next year, she'll graduate and then leave home for college. My older son, on summer break from college, is working as a counselor at Plantation Farm Camp. With mixed emotions I'm watching my kids take wing.
My wife comes home from a staff meeting and finds me in the bathtub with a mug of tea and a portable telephone, reading and taking notes in the margin of a book while listening to a Giants game on the radio. Observing my bathing setup, she says “You’ll adjust better to life without kids than I will.”
Will and I return to Dolly’s where we spend a full day laying another floor. Dolly is making up her house plan as we work, deciding which room will be art studio, which will be study as we are lifting bookshelves and desks. To Dolly, relocating furniture means relocating memories of her husband who recently died, so we have to deal with an emotionally fraught situation. It takes patience.
At night, Will and I work on installing the truss rod inside the guitar neck. It's trickier than we expected.
The next day I take Will to San Francisco to catch a 6:30 a.m. bus to Camp Unalayee where he will trek in the Trinity Alps for a couple of weeks. An hour later, I pick up my daughter at the airport where she has just returned from China, arriving an hour earlier than she departed through the magic of time zones. Driving down the chaotic Bayshore Freeway, she remarks on how calm it is here. She sleeps for the next 22 hours.
Continuing alone at Dolly's house, I finish the floors, hang doors, build a nice little sink cabinet and hang bank after bank of shelves. The nice thing about Dolly is that unlike many clients, my standards are higher than hers, so she’s always pleased with my work.
After two weeks, Will returns from camp: tall, tan, and hungry. Meeting him at the bus in San Francisco, I tell him the news: Jerry Garcia has died. As we drive to La Honda, Will is in tears. I had no idea it would touch him this way. I tell Will about the time I sat right next to Jerry at a club called the Keystone. "I never got to see him," Will says sadly. "Now I never can."
Rummaging through my tapes, Will finds Workingman's Dead and pops it into the player. He listens, not talking, the rest of the long drive home. We all deal with loss our own way.
Will gets a big greeting from the dogs - and from his brother and sister. My older son Jesse has completed his summer job, so we'll all be home together for a week or so. My daughter has cooked fish with lots of garlic. Everyone finishes dinner and then watches Will continue to eat. After polishing off everything on the table, he goes to the refrigerator for more.
When dinner is over, Will asks if I've done any work on the guitar.
"No," I say. "I don't know what to do."
"Let's take a look," he says.
I follow Will down the stairs to the basement. I'm eager to help, eager to learn.
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