365 Jobs: Grandpa's Pry Bar, Grandpa's Tractor

August 10, 2011

As I picked up my grandson Raj at childcare yesterday, we passed some construction work as we were walking to the car.  We stopped to watch. 

A man in a tractor was picking up sections of a felled pine and placing the pieces of tree trunk around the edge of a parking lot as a boundary and barrier for the cars.

"It has claws!" Raj said.

Technically, it was a Gehl skid steer with a bucket loader and grapple.  An assistant on the ground with a six-foot pry bar was helping to guide the heavy sections of tree trunk onto the loader.  Once the trunk was part-way onto the bucket, the driver would lower the grapple claws, gripping the trunk and lifting.  Then he'd steer it to an edge of the parking area and set it down.

It was fun to watch if you're of the male gender and of a certain age.  Raj and I qualify on both counts, though in different age categories.  Raj is three and eleven twelfths, as he will gladly tell you.  I'm sixty-three and eleven twelfths, though I usually omit the fraction. 

Raj and I took a seat on one of the sections of pine that had already been set in place.  While we watched, the driver would give us a thumbs-up sign each time he passed.  We'd give the same sign back.

Another boy leaving childcare stopped to watch, accompanied by a cute young mother who was dressed nicely and expensively for business.  Attorney, I'd guess.  I have certain mistreated friends who would argue that the words "cute" and "attorney" cannot apply to the same person.  I'm not so extreme.

The new boy was focused on the assistant holding the pry bar.  "It's like a light saber," he said.  "I want one."

"Actually," I said, "it's solid steel and very heavy.  I know because I have one."

Surprised, his mom looked at me with amusement.  She said, "Oh, you just happen to have one lying around at your house?"

"I'm a contractor," I said.  "I have all kinds of tools."

The boy gaped at me with a new respect.  That man has his own six-foot steel bar! 

The mom regarded me differently, too.  In her world people don't have funky tools.  In my world, some people have half a dozen pry bars in various sizes.

The woman and her son stayed for five minutes, watching the skid loader, giving a thumbs up when it passed.  Then they had to go.  They had things to do.

Raj and I had nothing better to do.  And what could possibly be better than this?  In warm sun on a log, we watched.  We observed a black squirrel clutching a pine cone, confused, wondering where the tree had gone.  We touched sticky sap oozing from the rings of our log.  We kicked our bare feet through a mound of soft sawdust. 

I told Raj that next time he came to my house, I'd show him my pry bar.  I told him I really like pry bars.  Some people are strange that way.  I knew one man who treated his pry bar like a special pet. 

Raj is more likely to grow up to be an attorney than a construction worker.  I'm doing my best to keep pry bars - and the whole funky world of honest-to-God labor - part of his life.

We watched the skid loader and the man with the pry bar for the next hour and a half until they had finished the job.  We talked to them for a few minutes.  They said the tree had to be cut down because its roots were lifting the sidewalk.

"Stupid!" said Raj.

"I agree," said the man with the pry bar.

A final thumbs up, and we call it a day.  

Back at Raj's house, I've brought a pile of new books from the library.  The stars must be aligned.  Raj selects one called Grandpa's Tractor.  

In the story a boy named Timmy goes with his grandfather (named, by golly, Grandpa Joe) to an abandoned farm which has mostly been obliterated by the new houses of an expanding town.  There Timmy finds a broken down rusty tractor.  (I have to explain what rust is.)  Grandpa Joe tells Timmy about the uses of a tractor and about his life as a farmer.  Timmy declares that somebody should restore that old machine to its former glory.

We agree.
 
The book is an affirmation of our day.  As I read the story aloud, we both are spellbound.

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.

365 Jobs, Day 217: Justin

August, 1983

Justin is a friendly man in a big house, living alone.  I install ceiling lights.  He fixes me a steak lunch.  He has the gift of easy conversation.  At 53 he's almost old enough to be my father.  His wife died five years ago.  He has two sons, both salesmen as is Justin himself.  "Runs in the family," Justin says.

"Not mine," I say.  "I could never sell anything."

"I don't sell," Justin says.  "I help people."

I believe him.  It's a great attitude for a salesman.

The people he helps are purchasing agents for high-tech weapons manufacturers.  The equipment they buy is classified, so Justin can't tell me anything.

He seems lonely, following me around in a three-bedroom house that is now empty of wife and children.  I appreciate his company, especially because he keeps praising my workmanship, exclaiming how good and how low-priced I am.  It's nice to hear after a few clients recently have blown up at me.  I like this man.

"Does it just roll off you, Justin, when people are nasty?  In your line of work, it must happen a lot."

"I try to figure out what is their problem and if I can help them.  Which," he laughs, "I usually can - by going away."

I return to Justin's house a few days later to complete the job.  This time he has a companion who he introduces as "my lady friend."  She has a long firm body and hard old eyes.  She frowns as Justin feeds me croissants, strawberries and cream, bacon and eggs while telling me again how great I am.

When I go into the attic to run wires, I hear a few sharp words exchanged between Justin and his lady friend.  When I come back down, she's gone.

Justin says, "Hey, I've got some Swiss cheese that'll blow your mind.  Let me cut you a slice."

"I'm stuffed already."

Justin cuts a slice of cheese.  Grinning, he hands it to me.

He's right.  It's fantastic.

He nods his head toward the front door.  "I'm fine," he says.  "I meet people.  I'm easy.  More?"

"Yes, please."

Justin slices.  "I hope your wife never dies."  He hands me two more slices.  "That's all."

365 Jobs, Day 216: The Community of Parents

Summer, 1977

Her name was Betty.  She had a broken water heater and a de-hinged door.  The heater just needed a new thermocouple.  The door had been closed with a broom handle wedged into the hinge side, ripping it off the wall.  I rehung it.  I probably only charged her about $20.  I was a beginner handyman, working cheap. 

I liked Betty immediately, and I could tell she liked me too.  We were about the same age - I was 30 - but she was ahead of me in the child-raising department.  I had one boy, 9 months old.  She was divorced and raising 3 boys of 8, 10, and 12 years who had nearly destroyed her house - the broom in the door being only the latest escapade.

Betty offered me a cup of coffee.  We talked in her kitchen.  She lived in an Eichler in South Palo Alto.  Eichlers were 1950-era tract houses.  Betty's was typical: cinderblock walls with big windows, a flat roof, and an open floor plan that gave an airy feel in spite of the chunky construction.  It sat on a concrete slab with radiant heat pipes built into the floor.  She said, "Eichler was notoriously cheap.  All the houses are badly built."

"So you don't like it?"

"No, I like it.  The trade-off is that I could buy it at low cost.  And I love the open design.  From the kitchen I can see the living room and the yard and which boy is killing who."

One thing she didn't like was the radiant heat.  She slept on a waterbed for her bad back.  In winter the heat from the floor kept the bed too hot, so even with an electric fan it was a muggy southern night on top of the covers.  She said, "It's like something out of a Tennessee Williams play."

Words fail to describe the interaction between man and woman.  The glance held just a moment too long.  The distance between bodies as we talk.  The twitch of a lip.  The tiny beads of perspiration, the sudden wave of pheromones, the gesture of tucking one's hair behind one's ear, the fluttery feeling at the pit of one's belly.

Somehow Betty had hinted - without actually saying - that she slept naked on top of her waterbed, sweating next to an electric fan.  Was she flirting with me?  She looked abashed, as if she hadn't intended. 

She had a boyfriend; I had a marriage.  Neither of us were looking for a relationship.  I was new to parenthood but already aware of the changed rules, the more cautious behavior where the stakes are higher.  I'd entered the alternate world of mothers and fathers.   

A month later, Betty called me back.  She wanted my ideas for an inexpensive way to spiff up her kitchen.  The original Eichler cabinets were cheapo metal, ugly.  She wanted wood cabinets but suspected she couldn't afford them.

I suggested refacing the cabinets with simple wooden doors and drawer fronts.  She couldn't afford it.  Then I suggested just refacing the drawer fronts.  She went for it.  Meanwhile, I couldn't help but ask why there was a massage table in the kitchen.

"I'm taking a class in massage," Betty said.  "I'm draining the waterbed right now.  Then I'll put in a smaller bed so there will be room for the table."

"For your back?"

"Yes.  Of course I need a partner.  You can't massage your own back."

"I've always meant to learn massage."

Our eyes met.  A moment.  Betty said, "You'd need a partner.  You and your wife should take a class together."

Had we flirted again?  Had I put a move on her?  If so, it was uncalculated, spontaneous.  Neither of us wanted it.  We were separate members in the community of parenthood which is built like a tract of Eichlers: solid blocks but fragile windows, cozy homes with an open feel, vulnerable to broom handles and shoddy construction.

I took measurements in the kitchen and went home to build the drawer fronts.  As I was cutting wood that evening, I heard the news:  Sierra had drowned.

Sierra was a little girl living at Struggle Mountain, a hippie commune in the hills above Palo Alto.  I'd dispute the words "hippie" and "commune" to describe that place, but in the popular mind it was.  In any case, the people who lived there were my friends.  Sierra's father, Kim, had been watching her when somehow his truck caught on fire.  In the five frantic minutes of putting out the fire, Sierra had climbed - or slipped - or fallen into a pool.  She was at Stanford Hospital on life support.

A few days later, they took her off life support.  In blazing afternoon heat I returned to Betty's Eichler and installed the new facings.

The house was baking.  Betty was flushed.  For some reason she was wearing a rag around her hair.  "You seem quiet today," Betty said.

I told her about Sierra, that she had just died.

At arms length, Betty put her hands on both my shoulders.  Standing like that, she cried.  Silently.  A few tears, mixed with sweat.  Then we stepped apart.  We had evolved - there was no longer any chance of flirtation, whether calculated or not.  And yet we were bonded.

That simple fix, just a few wooden drawer fronts, enlivened the whole kitchen.  I was proud.  Betty was delighted.  I charged her $200.  Looking back, I can't believe I worked so cheaply.  Standing at the front door before leaving I said, "That was a fun job.  Thank you for letting me do it."

How could I speak of fun when Sierra had just died?  It happened.  I did.  The world doesn't stop.  Betty's youngest boy set off a string of firecrackers that hopped into a trash can and accidentally set some papers on fire.  I grabbed a frying pan from the sink and dropped water, drowning the flames.  Then I left.

A while later Kim, Sierra's father, gave me a Tibetan prayer flag.  Kim was giving them to all the young parents he knew.  There were many.  Our friends were of that age, bearing children, settling down.  I couldn't read the symbols, but Kim said the flag was a prayer for the good health and well-being of children.  The wind would spread its blessings.

Maybe it worked.  I hung the flag to the outside wall of my Montgomery Ward cottage.  When we moved to La Honda, I moved the flag as well.  Today, 34 years later, it's still hanging outside my kitchen door.  It's dirty after all those years - never washed - and shows the track of a slug who recently passed over it.  It's such a permanent feature that I stopped noticing it long ago.

I guess things went well with Betty and her Eichler and her massage partner.  I never heard from her again.  Her boys must now be 42, 44, and 46.  My children are now grown, independent, flourishing. 

Today Sierra would be 36.  Her spirit is in the wind.

365 Jobs, Day 214: Five Premium Studs

It's August.  The whole world is on vacation except you.  You work all day in the hot sun.  Your body is a sweat factory.  You drink a quart of iced tea, two quarts of lemonade, three quarts of water, four quarts of Gatorade.  Your brain is fried.  You sing to yourself.  Loud.  You might make up your own songs.  You don't give a shit who hears.  Nobody cares.  It's the Silly Season.

I went to the lumberyard,
I said if you please,
I want five
    premium
    studs.

I want fifty-seven screws
‘cuz I’m coming unglued.
I need five
    premium
    studs.

This ain’t no stickup
Just load my pickup
With five
    premium
    studs.

We can hammer all night
build a house of delight.
Keep it level and true
so we don't get sued.
If the order’s too large
put it on my charge.
Give me five
    premium
    studs.
That's five
    premium
    studs.

Nice Review of Four Dog Riot

Somebody just posted this review on Smashwords:

Review by: Paul Swearingen on July 31, 2011 :
Joe Cottonwood gets it - that new teens, those who have just turned 13 and 14, can skip a couple of decades at the speed of a Hair Galaxy and pop right into their 40's.

And yet they can be light years apart - like Mimi, who harbors a deep, dark secret inside her but radiates power and manipulative ability, and tiny Jaz, who has yet to find out who she really is. Or little Hoot, who is mostly clueless about life and couldn't harm a fly, and big Bowie, who has known the rough side of humanity nearly all his life and knows how to protect himself and his home, even if it involves using a priceless triple-ought-forty-five C. F. Martin guitar as a weapon.

Cottonwood has captured all the emotions that are possible to run through teens, and his characters are almost larger than life in this novel, which is as masterful as those penned by Walter Dean Myers, Gary Soto, Paul Zindel, and S. E. Hinton. It's a powerful piece, and I recommend it without reservation.

Price Reduction

The July Sale at Smashwords has ended.  The results were amazing. 

Smashwords sends me an email whenever a book is sold.  I'm used to receiving one or two a day.  For the two weeks of the sale, though, I was receiving 20 or 30 emails a day.

I get a little thrill every time one of those emails appears.  A new reader!

Thank you to all those new readers.  I feel the appreciation.  I love it.

From the response to the sale, I get the message: people want to read my books, but in these tough times $4.99 is a bit too much.

My blogs are free and carry no advertising.  Maybe I should permanently give my ebooks away for free, also.  But I'm not ready for that.  There's something wrong with a culture that will pay $2.00 to the mighty Starbucks MegaCorporation for a cup of coffee but won't pay $1.99 to the lowly Joe Cottonwood Unincorporated for several hours of reading pleasure.

As a compromise, I've reduced the prices of my ebooks.  The two "adult" books, Clear Heart and Famous Potatoes are now $1.99.  All the books involving children (though frequently enjoyed by adults) remain at $0.99.

I love spreading my books around.  I love getting new readers.  But other than the occasional special offer, I believe people should pay at least a tiny sum.  Writers deserve that small amount of respect.

We'll see what happens.