New Market Hardware, St. Louis

Monday, April 30, 2007

I'm only in St. Louis for one weekend helping my daughter and son-in-law remodel their bathroom.  St. Louis plumbing - at least, old St. Louis plumbing - is different from California plumbing.  Fortunately, there's an old St. Louis hardware store.

There's nothing "new" about New Market Hardware, and that's exactly the charm.  The store was bought as an ongoing enterprise by the current owner-family in 1914, so it's even older than that.  They moved to the present location in 1932. 

If you're ever in the mood to step back to 1932, just step into this store.  For a quick tour, there's a good video here.

The owner says, "We are fast."  Don't believe it.  Maybe they're fast by the standards of 1932, but when I buy one item there in 2007, it involves following a salesman down a rabbit warren of narrow aisles lined floor to ceiling with stacks of old wooden drawers the size of library card-catalog drawers, searching among several before finding the odd-size fitting I need, then a good ten minutes writing out the receipt by hand, looking up the sales tax by hand from a sheet of paper.

But then, have you ever gone to Home Depot for one item and spent 45 minutes crossing the endless parking lot, walking the endless aisles, trying to get non-existent "help" from some clueless clerk, waiting in an endless checkout line?  And Home Depot would never carry the obscure fitting I was seeking.  They have it - in drawer #872 or whatever - at New Market Hardware.  If I lived in St. Louis, I'd be there every weekend.

To be fair, my ten minute checkout might have been slowed by the fact that as the clerk is writing out my receipt, he sees that my address is in California.  Immediately I'm surrounded by three or four clerks who all want to talk about governor "Ah-nold" as they call him.  They think he's hilarious.  They all take turns imitating "Ah-nold" saying "It's not about me."  And that, too, is part of the charm of this place: personal service, which just might include ten minutes of Arnold Schwarzenegger imitations.

New Market Hardware is in the Central West End at the corner of Sarah and LaClede.  The neighborhood itself is classic St. Louis brick.

Go there and get a key duplicated.  Or buy a bit of plywood and watch them cut it on their one-hundred-year-old table saw.  Yes, one hundred years old.  It's an experience.

Peace of Mind

Tuesday, April 29, 1986

"I'm a little nervous about earthquakes," she says.  "I experienced a six point four quake in Santa Barbara.  Would you take a look at my foundation?" 

Her name is Marilyn.  She has a nice house in Los Altos. 

"Gladly."   

"And also tell me if you see any fire hazards?  My husband—"  Her eyes indicate a back bedroom.  "My husband is on one hundred per cent oxygen twenty-four hours a day.  I'm a little nervous about fires."

She's young.  She's gentle.  She has grade-school children.

I crawl under the house.  I return and report that her sills are properly bolted to the concrete.  No fire hazards, either.  Their home is already safer than 90% of the dwellings in California.  If she wanted to be any safer I could attach steel plates to the foundation posts where they meet the beams.  Right now the beams are toe-nailed, the weakest link.

"I want it," she says.  "But wait.  Let's run it by my husband.  I try not to completely emasculate him."

She leads me to the back bedroom.  A young man - somehow I can tell that he's young, though he looks like he's ninety - lies in bed, propped by pillows, with tubes up his nose and a big steel oxygen tank at his side.

I explain the situation, describe the steel plates as optional but something that might give them peace of mind.

"Fine," he says.  He looks at his wife.  "That's what I want for you.  Peace of mind."

In the hallway I have to stop, compose myself.  Marilyn glances at me and says, "You're right.  It isn't fair."  She offers no explanation of his condition, and I don't ask.

I spend the rest of the day on my back under the house banging 44 steel plates onto 44 foundation posts.  Upstairs, I'm sure he can hear - and probably feel - every strike of the hammer - pounding for peace of mind, the one thing nobody can give.

Filthy Mother

Thursday, April 28, 1993

You work with construction workers, you end up talking like a construction worker.  In a hardware store I'm buying springs for a garage door.  Hefting one in my hands, I remark, "Wow.  That's a heavy mother."

The salesman looks shocked.  "No, it isn’t a heavy mother.  What a filthy thing to say.  It’s a heavy spring.”

All I said was "mother."  But words have roots.  I'd forgotten I was speaking in code.  This salesman knew the code and reacted to it.

I'm sorry I upset him but - honestly - if he's that sensitive, he's in the wrong line of work.    He has to deal with Forkin' Freds all day.

My next stop is Men's Wearhouse, where I tell the salesman I need something dress-up.  Suit and tie.  I have nothing.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing formal."

"Is this for any particular occasion?"

"I'm receiving an award tonight."

"Ah.  And you want to show a little respect."

Respect.  Exactly.  The salesman recommends a blue blazer.  "That's your basic starter set."  He fits me out in a light blue shirt, dark blue necktie, tan pants.  I store them in the cab of my truck, a shopping bag full of respect.

Next stop is a house in Woodside where I scrape that spray-on popcorn glitter crap off a ceiling for an hour.  It's overhead work with hopefully nontoxic chemical flakes showering all over me.  Then I re-mud the ceiling to make it smooth, more overhead work.  Shoulders, neck, arms all dead by the end of the afternoon.

At a friend's house I shower the glitter off my body.  In San Francisco wearing the blue blazer and blue tie, watched by hundreds of the best and brightest, I receive the BABRA Award (Bay Area Book Reviewers Association) for children's literature. 

I give a little speech about the power a writer is granted by the reader - especially by children - a power to be used wisely.  Make careful choices in the stories you tell - and in the words that you use.

After the awards, a woman says she likes the glitter in my hair.  She means it as a compliment and sees it as part of my dress-up.  I don't tell her how it got there.  I'm glad I dressed up.  It's an evening of honor, something every writer should have at least once in their lives.  Bless you, BABRA.  Thank you.

Conversation is a feedback mechanism where we constantly monitor the effect of our words.  Sometimes it's hard to cross over from the construction world to the more dress-up world.  Sometimes the boundary is blurry.  Sometimes I cuss too much.  But on this evening of BABRA, I'm not even tempted.

As with buying a blue blazer when somebody is giving me an award, I try to show a little respect when it's due.  And when I wish to show disrespect, I try to use unambiguous cussing.  As a writer, I try to be careful with words.

"No, it isn’t a heavy mother.  What a filthy thing to say."

I've never used that expression again.

B Sharp Karma

April, 1969

To me Rob seemed the hippest guy in St. Louis—cool without effort.   He never put me down, but I always knew my place.  Like, one time, soon after meeting Rob, I made what I thought was a safely cool comment about Sam Cooke, calling the pop singer a sellout to white culture.  Rob just went "Mmm" as if pitying me, and he shook his head saying, "There wasn't a dry eye on the North Side the day Sam Cooke was shot."  So not only was I disagreeing with Rob, I was disagreeing with the entire black population of St. Louis.  It was intimidating.  Embarrassing.  Uncool.  

Another time we were talking about draft resistance.  I had applied to be a Conscientious Objector.  My local draft board had already rejected the application.  I'd filed an appeal.

"You'll lose," Rob said.  "Then what?"

"Jail," I said.

"Prison," Rob corrected.  I was the naive suburban muffin.  Of course Rob knew the difference between jail and prison.  And of course I didn't.

Rob was short, black, and built like a basketball.  He subsisted on a diet of White Castle hamburgers, which he bought by the dozen.  He was a poet, a playwright, and a sometime student.   

Rob was working through a greasy bag of White Castle hamburgers.  Rubbing one finger over his goatee, he winced at some thought he was having and said:  "You don't want to go to prison."

"Of course I don't want to," I said.  I thought I was a pretty tough guy, actually.  Idealistic and strong enough for five years in the pen. 

"Prison would break you," Rob said, wincing again. 

Somehow I’d been thinking of it as a five-year sabbatical spent meditating and reading books.

Rob was shaking his head.  “Mm-mmm.”

And so I had a change of plan.  I might go to Canada, or I might end up in Vietnam.  But prison was no longer an option.  Rob could do that to me:  summon his street cred, speak a few words, and change my life.

I had a student job at the university maintenance department.  I was a "junior electrician" with the permanent assignment of wandering around campus replacing burned-out fluorescent tubes.  Rob thought my light bulb-changing job was hilarious.  With his local contacts, he picked up small handyman jobs and usually made more money in one hour than I earned in a shift.

One day Rob came to me needing help.  A woman had asked him to move a bed out of her apartment on the third floor.  The bed was too large to fit out the door and down the flights of stairs.

"Couldn't we just take it apart, carry it out, and then reassemble it?" I asked.

"Glued.  Antique," Rob said.  "They hauled it up on a rope through a double window.  That's how we'll get it out."

So we walked over to the woman's apartment, Rob with a rope coiled over his shoulder.  On the way—because we happened to be passing—we stopped at the White Castle on Delmar Boulevard.  There was a white guy in front of us ordering five burgers.  "No, wait," he said.  "Make it ten."  He turned around, saw us behind him, the rope on Rob's shoulder.  He was tall, thin, red-haired, freckled.  He smiled.  With twinkling eyes he asked, "Who you gonna lynch?"

"Some old bed," Rob said.  "Heavy as a Buick.  Hey—you happen to know anything about knots?"

"The Buick knot?  I thought you'd never ask."

Rob doubled over in laughter.  I didn’t see how it was that funny.  But have you ever seen love at first sight?  This meeting was like that. 

“I’m Theodore,” the guy said.  “My friends call me Ted.”

“And your enemies?” Rob asked.

“The Odor.”

“I’m Rob.”

“And your enemies, Rob?”

“I got no enemies.”

Ted and Rob were the kind of people who drew your attention in a crowd.  They had harmonizing charisma.  Rob's was sharp and solid, drawing on black urban soul.  Ted's was goofy and broad, drawing on white pop exuberance.   

So the three of us downed some burgers, and the two of them smoked a joint—and then another—and an hour later we showed up at the woman's apartment.  Stephanie Friedman.  She was a bit too young to be called a shrew, but she was heading there in a sexy kind of way.  She was selling the bed because it reminded her of the ex-husband.  She was sucking a Benson and Hedges 100, pacing, an ashtray full of thin filters smeared with scarlet lipstick. 

The buyer would be arriving any minute and we were two hours late and the bed was worth fifteen hundred dollars.  Rob was charging thirty to move it to the sidewalk.

First we carried the mattress and box springs down the flights of stairs. 

I had a bad feeling.  While Ted and Rob tied Buick knots around the sideboards of the bed frame, I examined the old wood.  Walnut, I'd bet.  There were cracks around all the joints.  The glue was dead.

"We could take it apart," I said.  "It's already..."

"Don't you dare," Stephanie said, grinding another butt into the ashtray.

"Okay," I said.  "I believe the agreement was for thirty dollars?"

Stephanie grimaced.  For some reason she’d taken an instant dislike to me.  And I to her.  But she opened her purse, glared at me, and handed three ten-dollar bills to Rob.

Ted, Rob and I lifted the massive walnut bed frame and staggered to the open window. We’d removed the bottom slats so all we had were the four sides.  Angling the headboard out first, we dented the top of the window trim and knocked a floor lamp which Stephanie caught as it was falling.

"Careful," she said.

"This is careful," Rob said, panting.

With a groan, and then a rush of ticking noises, the frame flattened upon itself—like squashing a box.  The headboard separated.  It hit the sidewalk with a sound like a splash. 

The remaining, folding sides of the bed wrenched out of our hands.  The weight pulled Rob, still holding the rope, stumbling toward the window.  He stopped with his feet braced against the wall—and I grabbed the rope—and the foot of the bed, now dangling outside the window, popped loose and sailed, spinning like a lazy Frisbee, to land at the edge of the parking lot. 

Meanwhile the two sideboards had gone vertical and slipped right out of their Buick knots, plunging like spears into the petunia garden.

I leaned out the window, transfixed by the wreckage, the rope still in my fists.  It was only a few seconds, but when I leaned back inside, I was alone with Stephanie Friedman.  Rob and Ted had disappeared. 

She was speechless. 

"Uh, sorry," I said, unconsciously bunching the rope against my chest.  “I’ll ... uh ...”  I ran down the stairs.

Outside, there were splinters and fragments of walnut among the grass.  Rob and Ted were nowhere to be seen.

I could guess where they'd be.

Sure enough, they were sharing a bag at White Castle.  When they saw me, they broke out in laughter.  "You even saved the rope," Rob said, and he handed me the thirty dollars.  "Man, it's all yours.  I never woulda thought to ask in advance."

Ted asked, "Did you know?"

"Not what I expected," I said.  "But the karma in that place was...  was..."

"Shit," Ted said.

And from then on, shit karma was a private joke, sort of a password among us.  But also from then on, I saw less and less of Rob.  He and Ted were instantly tight.  They became roommates, Mr. Cool and Mr. Clown, each a connoisseur of ways to get high. 

Then one day Ted the prankster, acting alone, broke into a ROTC building, painted slogans inside, and got caught.  Destruction of military property.  A felony.  Mug shots.  Lawyers.  Goofy Ted.  Who’d a thunk it? 

And Rob—who’d never been more than 30 miles from St. Louis and spoke no foreign language—got offered some kind of playwriting fellowship in Sweden of all places, starting next year.  How’s that for cool? 

It seemed as if some great hand was reaching into the campus and plucking us, one by one, into the real world.

Meanwhile, I got fired from my job.

The Washington University maintenance department—including Louie, my boss—expected me to work through school vacations.  I disagreed.  After Christmas, Louie chewed me out royally.  He warned me about Spring Break.  When I returned after Easter, Louie called me into his office with what was known in the department as the Beckon of Doom.

Louie was mad.  “You can’t just disappear when you feel like it.  You’re an employee.”

“I’m a student,” I said.

“I was hoping you were a man.”

That stung.  "Just let me work this one day," I said.

"Why?" Louie asked.

"I want to go out on a good note.” 

“D flat?” Louie asked.  He could be a stern boss but with a sense of humor.

I signed out the master key, slung a box of tubes over one shoulder, a ladder over the other, and I set out.  In a normal day, I might work two or three buildings and replace 20 or 30 tubes.  Expectations were low, and I met them. 

On this final day, I replaced 156 tubes.  I worked 14 buildings.  For my final act I went to Brookings Hall.  With the master key I unlocked the tower.  Brookings Hall is the face of Washington University.  In the center of the building is a lovely archway, and above the archway are four stone towers, the kind you'd expect on a fairy castle.  Nobody was allowed up there.  Spiral stairs wound upward and opened to a small turret with a magnificent view. 

The breeze ruffled my hair.  It was April.  The sun was low in the west.  Brookings and its towers cast long shadows to the east.  Beyond the shadows stretched the green swath of Forest Park.  Farther away, beyond the crumbling factories and gray offices of downtown rose the stainless steel rainbow of the Gateway Arch.  

When I had arrived as a freshman in 1965, the Gateway Arch had been under construction.  Each day I would stand in the breezeway of Brookings and check for progress, and each day the two edges of the Arch were closer together, section by section, a stunning piece of construction, a defiant act of beauty. 

I was near the end of my senior year.  As the Arch had grown and become a part of the life of St. Louis, so in a small sense had I.

People passed through the breezeway below me and down the wide entry steps, chatting, unaware of my presence above.

Now, two figures were descending the grand Brookings stairs side by side.  One was tall and thin; the other was built like a basketball.  So—news flash—Ted was out on bail.  I felt a twinge of jealousy.  Shit karma.  Part of me had always wanted to be Rob's best buddy, and Ted had just walked right in. 

None of us knew it, but the campus was heading for a year of tragedy, the burning of a building, arrests, the killings at Kent State, a complete shutdown of classes and a canceled graduation.  Today though, all lay calm in a cooling breeze.  The long shadows of the city, the gleam of the Arch, the Laurel and Hardy partners descending the stairs, all seemed at peace.  It was a season of hope.  Of new growth.  And suddenly I realized—as I should have from the start—that I must return those thirty dollars to Stephanie Friedman.  I was obliged.  If I could find her.  If I could face her.

I climbed down from the tower.  In the maintenance building the radio was playing Sam Cooke.  Darling you, you you you, send me...  I returned the master key, reported my totals on the form they shove at you after each shift.  Louie raised his gray eyebrows.  Nobody had ever replaced 156 tubes in one day. 

“So am I leaving on a good note?” I asked.

“B sharp.”  Louie was never effusive with praise.  “Good luck,” he said. 

We shook hands.  "Thanks."  I held his hand.  "Really."

"Really what?"

I couldn't say what I suddenly knew:  I loved this stupid job which no longer was mine; I loved this old city which soon I would leave.  I loved growing up.  "Thanks for so much."

Leather Tool Belt (Part Three)

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

(This is a continuation of a loosely-connected thread that began here with Part One and here with Part Two.)

 I still wear it.  Yesterday I modified a picture frame, re-hung a door, and tried to re-shape the couplings of wooden toy train tracks that my dogs have chewed. 

Wearing a tool belt when I show up at somebody's house - or at my wife's therapy practice, where I'm the maintenance guy - if there is a boy between the ages of 2 and 10, I'm a god.  I've destroyed more than one therapy session simply by walking through the room.  It's the tool belt bristling with screwdrivers, chisel, big fat pencil and cordless drill.  It jingles when I move, nails clinking in pouches, drill slapping my leg.  The boys follow me around asking, "What are you doing?" and "Can I help?"  Not all of them, but many.  It comes with the Y chromosome.  Girls, rarely.  And not over the age of 10, by which time most kids in the Silicon Valley have figured out that real life is on a flat screen.

The answer to "Can I help?" is usually "Yes."  Depending on age or on my instant reading of their impulse control, they can wield a cordless drill or at least help me select the right size of screw from a handful of miscellany. 

The old leather tool belt is in sorry shape.  I bought it in 1976.  We've shared many an adventure.  I've washed those bags with saddle soap, sewn them with dental floss.  The web of the belt is fraying, and I don't know how to fix that.  Maybe duct tape will work. 

The pockets of a tool belt tend to fill up over time.  Every once in a while I remove every tool, every last screw and nail.  I hold the tool belt upside down and give it a good shake.  Sawdust, a dead spider, little strippings of insulated wire will fall out.  And - once - my missing wedding ring.  It had broken, and I was taking the ring to a jeweler for repair, but when I got there I couldn't find it.

When that belt frays out, maybe a jeweler can repair it.  It's that precious.

Leather Tool Belt (Part Two)

(This is a continuation from yesterday's post.  It will make more sense if you begin there.)

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

I did my first job for Demetri in 1984.

When I met Demetri he was newly wed; now he has two daughters in college.  He's a multi-millionaire venture capitalist who has stayed in the same house with the same wife for all the years I've known him.  He's the kind of customer you treasure: he trusts you; you trust him.  Even better, you like him.  It's taken me 30 years to build up a core of clients like that.

He's called me to repair his backup generator, which I installed about 20 years ago.  Before I can start, he asks me to check out a leak in his ceiling.  So up on the roof I go.  It's another gorgeous day.  From the roof there's a great view of the horse pasture next door, the green rolling Palo Alto foothills. 

Near the chimney there's some questionable flashing.  From above, I can't be sure it's the problem.

Inside the house, I crawl into the attic and shine a flashlight overhead.  There's the leak!  Beneath the flashing the plywood is rotten, dripping wet, limp as a towel.  Just a few minutes earlier, I'd been standing on shingles over that same plywood.  The only reason I didn't plunge through and break my leg - or balls, if I'd straddled it - was that I'd happened to stand over a rafter, which bore my weight.  Sheer luck.

Back on the ground, Demetri's gardener tells me a rabbit lives in the generator.  I remove the shroud.  Sure enough, rabbit droppings cover the base.  To examine the wiring there's only one place you can put your head. 

Blur.  All blur. 

My eyes will not focus at that distance.  I test a few wires but I simply cannot see what I'm doing.  It's the same generator I've been maintaining for 20 years, but now I just.  Can't.  Focus.  No amount of light is enough.  This much I know: rabbits with better eyes than mine have been chewing the wires.

Fuck. 

Fuck fuck fuck.

After anger comes shivering.  It's like a cold wind, this fresh sunny day.

In April of 2006, I'm 58 years old.  My eyes have been declining for a while, various symptoms with three-word Latin names.  I've been turning down more and more jobs lately.  Giving vague excuses.  Never explaining honestly to my clients.  I wasn't honest with myself, either. 

I was in denial. 

Look at me.  This is what happens.

I tell Demetri I can't do it.  I don't want to do a bad job, so I'd rather do no job at all.  No charge.  I'm sorry.  It's been a great 22 years.  We shake hands. 

I'll never see Demetri again.  I was useful to him as the guy who can do everything.  Now, I can do some things - which is enough for a lot of clients, but not this one.  I don't want to hang around as a charity case, though Demetri would probably offer.  I'd rather make a clean break.

 "Got these carpenters' bags slung over my shoulder.  My father used to wear them before he got older..."  In the end it isn't the sore knees, the painful back, the frozen shoulder that make me want to hang up the tool belt.  It's the eyes.  And some damn rabbits.

(Continued tomorrow...)

Leather Tool Belt

Monday, April 24, 2006

First thing in the morning, the phone rings and it's Stan.  Uh oh.  I repaired his kitchen faucet yesterday, and when a client calls you at 7:15 a.m. after a plumbing job it can mean trouble.  Spectacular, spraying, floor-flooding trouble.  Actually, it's only happened to me once, but for the rest of my life I'll have PTSD - Plumbing Trauma Screwup Damnation.  Thirty years later, I still dream about it.

But not today.  Stan says, "I just want to thank you for coming to my place on a Sunday."  Stan is one of my core clients.  I have a key to his front door.  Heck, I installed his front door and the lockset that controls it.  In fact, I drew up the design for the entry and created a sand-blasted pattern for the glass.

Stan is an insomniac, so I guess I'm lucky he didn't phone me at 3 a.m.  He's still talking: “You know, I look around this house and see all the nice things you put in, and I just want you to know that you’ve made this a great place to live, and I appreciate it.”

Which is nice to hear except that it's almost like an elegy.  He's an old man.  Yesterday, Stan was dropping hints that he wasn't making any long-term plans.  He's a wealthy real estate developer, my polar opposite in politics, but we respect and trust each other - which you could say about all my core clients.  I hope he's okay.

My day's task involves setting up planter boxes and generally sprucing up the entry to an office building.  After a week of rain, it's a sunny day.  I'm attaching a flower box to a stucco wall - hammer drill, molly bolt, spirit level, caulk - when it comes to me: I love this work, this simple but skilled puttering in a pleasant place in cheerful weather.  All the nice things you've put in.

At one point there's a commotion.  A bearded man in layers of old clothing is walking down the center of Menlo Avenue followed by a Menlo Park police car with flashing blue and red lights.  Staggering slightly, the man ignores the cop car and the oncoming traffic.  He's homeless, crazy, and high.  He veers from the street and walks straight toward me.  Two policemen approach on foot, grab the man, and place him in handcuffs while the man looks directly in my eye and shouts “LOOK AT ME!  THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS!” 

Do I know this guy?  I don't think so. 

Back home my son Will has come for dinner and brought a couple of friends.  Will lives in San Francisco now.  He plays a new song he's recorded which begins: "I am a carpenter, and I'm trying to get back home..."  It's an autobiographical song mentioning the successful careers of his brother and sister while he is still a struggling musician working as a carpenter.  All true.  In the chorus there's a line: 

"Got these carpenters' bags slung over my shoulder.  

My father used to wear them before he got older..."

Ouch.  Also true.  I gave him my old leather tool belt when I could no longer cinch it around my expanding waist.  I'm taking fewer jobs because - yes - I'm getting older.  Look at me.  This is what happens.  I do have a new belt with built-in lumbar support and a nice holster for my drill, but it's made of some kind of nylon polyester crap, and I've never warmed to it.

Will apologizes for making it sound as if I'd retired and for saying I'm too old.  "I had to do it for the song," he says.

I understand altering reality in pursuit of truth.  I should; I'm a writer.  And I understand the other thing, the underlying, unspoken message of the song: a carpenter is a failed musician.  Or a failed writer.

A writer who is still mounting flower boxes.  I've lost weight.  Maybe the old belt would fit. 

"Hey Will.  Can I have the old tool belt back?"  

No elegies yet, please.

(Continued, sort of, here...)

(Note: You can hear part of Will's song at the beginning and end of each podcast episode of Clear Heart.  You can hear the complete song at the end of the final episode.)

Superhero

Saturday, April 23, 1983

I'm repairing a dishwasher at an apartment complex in Palo Alto.  I've removed the front door panel when suddenly a voice is shouting "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?"

He's a big burly guy with a toolbox.

"I'm Joe."

"WELL I'M RED AND THIS IS MY JOB!"

The apartment manager, a little thin man, is standing behind, looking frightened.  "I'm sorry," he's saying.  "My wife called Red.  She didn't know I'd called you."

In a wrestling match, Red would have me by 75 pounds and a mean streak.  "It's all yours, Red."  I pack up.  I can tell from the look of the apartment manager's wife that Red may have won the battle, but he's already lost the war.  I leave the door panel detached - no point undoing my work - but while Red is outside berating the apartment manager, I plug the dishwasher's electric cord back into the outlet and turn the water shutoff back on.  It just seems like the right thing to do.

A week later, I'm back.  The dishwasher remains unrepaired.  "What happened?" I ask.

"We'll never call him again," the manager says.  "First thing he does is stick his hand in there, and he nearly electrocuted himself.  Then a minute later he flooded the kitchen.  Then he messed around for an hour and never figured out what the problem was."

Rarely does life work out so well. 

The dishwasher had two glitches, the timer and the float valve.  Red got confused because it's harder to diagnose multiple breakdowns.

"I'll fix it," I say.  I'm the Super Handyman.  My cape is brown and slightly soiled.  At this moment on this day, I could fix any problem.  Sometimes the power strikes you like a beam of light.  "Anything else I can do for you?"

The Jogging Bandit

Friday, April 22, 1983

His name was Bob Bullitt.  He liked to run in rich neighborhoods.  He volunteered at the La Honda school, coaching kids to run long distance.

He called me one day.  He lived in a crummy little shack behind the La Honda grocery store.  "I need an estimate for wiring a kiln," he said, meeting me at the front door, blocking entry with his body.  He showed me the kiln in the back yard.  220 volt.  Above his roof I could see the weatherhead for the electric service entrance, but no panel box.

I said, "I need to see your circuit breaker box."

"It's fuses.  Old stuff."

"Okay.  I need to look at your fuse box."

"It's inside."  He doesn't move.  "Maybe some other time," he says.

In the yard are two rabbits, fifty pigeons, one cat.

Nutcase, I thought.

About a month later, he was arrested.  They called him the Jogging Bandit.  His house was the Louvre of La Honda.  No visitors, no guests.  Within mildewed walls under a leaky roof he ate off gold plates.  With Queen Ann silver.  On rare oriental rugs. 

He never burgled La Honda.  It wouldn't be neighborly.  Besides, nobody in La Honda had what Bob was seeking: the good life of old money.

He wore gloves and could vanish like a quark.  He didn't steal stereos.  He took art.  Antiques.  And a cat.

The cat did him in: an Abyssinian worth two grand, hanging around the grocery eating scraps, scratching fleas.  Some flatlander on the way to the beach stopped for potato chips and recognized a valuable feline.  When the cops arrived, Bob ran like a fox among redwoods.  They hunted him down.

He was convicted in 1983 of 21 counts of burglary and was suspected of ripping off about 500 homes along his old jogging route in Atherton, Woodside, Portola Valley, Stanford.

The loot was worth $2,500,000. 

He couldn't sell it.  He would've done better stealing televisions.  But Bob is not the first to suffer hardship in the pursuit of art.

A year later, April 22, 1983, I'm called to snake a sink drain in another run-down La Honda shack.  Molly Bullitt, a pretty woman, dark-haired with girl-next-door freckles, lets me in.  The name should have tipped me off, but I don't recognize her until I see a gold plate on the plastic table.

"Is that - ?"

"Please don't tell," she says, smiling shyly.  Behind her, two kids are clutching teddy bears.  "It's the only one.  It's all I've got."

She's living on food stamps.  Even if she wants to sell the plate, she can't.  It's the same problem Bob had.  Likely, she's safe here.  Who would turn her in?  La Honda is at heart an outlaw town.

We chat.  "He didn't jog," she says.  "That isn't how he did it.  They were looking for a jogger, which is why he got away so many times."

But of course!  You can't jog with an oriental rug in your arms.  A framed Monet.  A kiln. 

"Then how did he do it?"

She smiles again, shy and secretive.  No answer.

I give her a break on the labor charge.  Licking her fingers, counting out bills, she pays cash.

A Bear and a Blue Jay

Friday, April 21, 1989

Eugene is something of a bear.  He's gruff, but he's direct which is easy enough to deal with.  He wants somebody to remove cork tile from a living room wall, then repair and texture the plaster.  He doesn't want any fuck-ups. 

He wants references.  I give two names.  One is a recent client; the other, an old friend.  He hears the surnames and says, "Two Jewish women.  I like that." 

Whatever. 

I go home. 

photo by Linda Gast

A pair of crested Steller's jays are trying to build a nest on a high double beam outside my back door.  The beam supports a second-floor deck.  The two boards of the beam are separated, bolted to opposite sides of a post.  For a week now the jays have brought more and more moss, twigs, bag ties, and paper scraps, most of which fall through the gap between the two boards onto the entry stairs.  There's enough debris on those steps to build five nests - but so far, no nest on the beam. 

As I pass under them, the birds cuss me in jay language cheek-cheek-cheek.  Actually, cussing is the only language a jay knows - like some carpenters I've met.  The birds are incompetent builders.  No, unfair.  They need a few tips on how to bridge a gap.

Eugene calls me: "Those women sound like your mother and your sister.  You're hired."

Over the weekend, when the blue jays are out gathering moss and car-flattened plastic drinking straws, I lay a few twigs across the crevice of the double beam.

On Monday I scrape the cork tiles from the wall, repair the drywall surface and try skip-troweling.  Badly.  I've always considered skip-troweling to be the low class solution, a cheap alternative to the skill and extra labor of creating a smooth wall, so I've never done it except in small repairs where I was matching an existing pattern.  Now, in this high class Woodside home, Eugene wants this large, prominent living room wall to be skip-troweled. 

There's a first try for every task.  Sometimes you get help.  Sometimes you give help.

Needing more mud, I go to Orchard Supply Hardware where as it happens a man in white overalls covered with plaster is buying supplies.  I ask him about skip-troweling, and he tells me to buy topping compound, not the regular joint compound, and to "mix it kinda wet."  Have a light touch, let it set on the wall for a few minutes, then flatten it a bit with a second pass.  "Use lotsa drop cloths because it's drippy."

When I return, Eugene greets me at the door and says the wall looks like crap.  I say I haven't finished.  Then Eugene says I left a trowel in the kitchen sink.  "Be professional.  Don't use the kitchen sink."

Somehow I sense that he's speaking for his wife, who I've never seen though I know she's home.  He's the bear protecting his mate.  And it's his mate who's upset about the sink and who is pre-judging the wall.

The next day, Tuesday, I find the zone.  Skipping that trowel over the wall feels oddly like conducting a symphony with a baton.  Stroke, stroke, stroke, trying for a random pattern while being systematic. 

When I finish, Eugene says he's happy.  I'm less happy.  Once you start scrutinizing a skip-troweled wall, you start seeing unintentional patterns, the repetitive strokes. 

Back home, the blue jays have finished the nest - or perhaps, better put, they have abandoned all hope of improving it - and mama jay is now sitting on spotted green eggs.  Even after my help, their home is a lopsided pile of twigs.

While mama sits, papa jay tries to attack me through the window glass.  He pecks.  Cusses.  Scratches.  He will defend his imperfect nest.  And who am I to sit in judgment?  Maybe to him it's beautiful, like a skip-troweled wall.  Or maybe next time, he'll do it better.

So will I.

The $4.17 Sermon

Friday, April 20, 1979

On this drizzly day a great big truck pulling a tractor-driven drilling rig shows up at my building site.  They're costing me $400 per hour.  The quiet hillside becomes a bedlam of growling engine, chewing tractor treads, smelly diesel exhaust - and then the powerful grind of the drill. 

For the foundation we need 11 holes, 12" in diameter, extending to whatever depth the soil engineer - at $100 per hour - decides we need to go.  The engineer in white hard hat studies the clay and rocks as the steel blade screws them out of the hillside.  Eleven feet deep for this hole, 13 feet for the next.  We never strike bedrock - often in La Honda bedrock is 30 or 50 feet down, and not all that solid anyway - but the engineer decides that a dozen feet of "skin friction" will support the piers.  (Nowadays, standards are higher.) 

This is to be my house. 

At one point, a pile of dirt needs to be moved.  The only construction machinery on this hillside is the blue-painted drilling rig.  It's a task for a man with a shovel.  Me.  I start digging.

The rig operator is a young white man wearing a yellow hard hat and a T shirt that says MALCOLM DRILLING.  He leans out of the rig and sneers, "Where's your Mexican?"

Shit, that's ugly.  I'm familiar with bigotry - I grew up in southern Maryland - but this kind of casual gratuitous racist insult always seems to catch me by surprise. 

I glare at the rig operator.  Surprised, he glares back.  Muscles twitch.  Bystanders - the truck driver, the engineer - watch expectantly.  It's one of those hair-trigger moments.  And it passes.  We've got jobs to do.

At $500 per hour, I'm not going to take the time - and the futility - of engaging in a teach-in on the subject of Brotherhood.  Best estimate: a 30 second glare.  Which cost me $4.17 at the going rate.

Nothing is changed.  Or maybe, ever so slightly, something has.  The operator makes no more comments.

We move on.

The Bill (Part Four)

Friday, April 19, 2002

Isabella, my favorite decorator, wants me to install lights for a new client.  "White carpets, no kids," she says.  This is code.  A warning.  Children are the great leveler.  Clients without kids sometimes suffer the delusion that perfection is possible.  They have the free time to obsess over it and the money to try to buy it.  Clients with white carpets, same delusion.  Combined, it's double trouble.

To install the downlights I have to move a sofa out of the way, place a drop cloth, set a ladder.  Running wires, I cut a hole in the ceiling, then patch it.

She's a whiner.  While I work she complains about the crows in her mimosa tree, the declining quality of Coca Cola, the daffodils that refuse to bloom.  The house is immaculate.  She's a former stewardess for United Airlines, successful in her marriage quest, now dwelling in a wealthy enclave with no job, no children, a life of shopping and lunches and serving one high-flying man.

By this stage of my career, I'm a pro.  If you aren't careful, a retrofit downlight will be wobbly, not quite flush with the ceiling, expose chipped edging around the hole, get a scratch on the trim, or it can overheat if you don't clear the insulation.  Here, I do a damn good job. 

I carry the ladder back to my truck, pick up the drop cloth, and am about to move the sofa when she says, "There's a stain.  On the carpet."

Yes, there is.  A pale brown stain in a white carpet.

"That stain is all dried out," I say.  "It's brown.  I was using white plaster, and anyway the carpet was covered by a drop cloth."

"Then how'd it get there?"

"It was hidden by the sofa.  It's been there a long time."

I write up a bill.  The stain, I'm thinking, is the color of old Coca Cola.

"I'll mail you a check," she says.

"I have a policy."  Actually, I don't.  "I have to get a payment before I leave."

She squints at me.  I don't move.  It's a silent argument.  There's body language in my stance, nonthreatening but nonyielding.  What I'm counting on is her desire for order, to be alone once again in her almost perfect, slightly stained little world.  When she was six miles above the earth stewarding the aisles in search of marriage material, a tradesman was not what she was seeking and she does not want another minute of my presence in her domain.

Let's for a moment acknowledge what I do, entering women's houses, working among their private places.  Call it metaphor or call it Freudian, it's the same thing.  At least on a subconscious level, most women are aware of it. 

She writes a check.  And I'm gone.

Baseball and the Pope

Friday, April 18, 1986

In Los Altos Hills I install track lighting for a woman named Mary.  On the wall hangs a gilt-framed photo of Mary and her husband with the Pope. 

Mary is tentative, decision-averse.  She can't make up her mind exactly where I should install the track.  She wants reading light, but she also wants to spotlight some paintings - and the Pope photo - on the wall.

I tell her that track lights, like all ceiling lights, aren't particularly good as reading lights, but they're great for spotlighting art, so she should place the track where it will do the best job of lighting the wall.  Or have two separate tracks.  Still, she dithers.  Finally - and she knows the clock is ticking on my labor charge - she chooses to put the track half way between where it would be best for the wall or for the sofa.

I start to install it.

After an hour her husband strides into the room.  He's a little man with a big presence.  With one glance at the track, he says, "That was a mistake.  Why'd you put it there?"

I explain the issues.

"We should have two tracks," he says, and he marches out.

The man is CEO of a big Silicon Valley company.  He controls a room the moment he enters.  He makes you want to salute. 

In this case he's right.  Firm, clear, fast.  But is he infallible?  He isn't the Pope.  What happens when he's wrong?  Can you appeal?

Twenty-five years later, I still remember how he could walk into a room and start barking orders.  

The company went bankrupt.  

He made millions in his failure.  Could it ever enter his mind - the tiny seed of self-doubt - thinking all things considered, he should have been a major league umpire?  

He would have been great.

Rage in a Small Package

April 17, 2011

Little chestnut birds
dive bomb, peck
at windows for days, attacking
my house.  No
damage, but fury.
Does the carpenter planing
pine earn such
chickadee karma?

Poets Pounding Nails

Today after 106 consecutive daily posts about my own work life (with the emphasis on "life"), I'm going to take a break and talk about other authors who write about working in the building trades. 

There are several authors I've read and quoted and reviewed in my Clear Heart blog.  Some of the writers are tradespeople themselves, others are observers.  Most are poets.

If you want to read about work in the trades, here are some people to know:

Joseph Millar, poet:

"Red Wing" from Fortune.


"Fat City" from Overtime.


"Tools" from Fortune.

"Telephone Repairman" from Overtime.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)


Mark Turpin, poet:

"Gene Lance" from Hammer: Poems. 

"Before Groundbreak" from Hammer: Poems. 

"Last Hired" and "The Box" from Hammer: Poems.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

Gary L. Lark, poet:

"Becoming a Librarian" from Men at the Gates.

"Getting By" from Men at the Gates.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

"Driving Nails" from Getting By.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

"Men at the Gates" from Men at the Gates.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

Sue Doro, poet:

"Red Dust" from Blue Collar Goodbyes.


 
"Where's My Hammer?" and "Paper Napkin Poem for Larry" from Heart, Home & Hard Hats.








Clemens Starck, poet:

"Changing the Alternator Belt in your 504" from Journeyman's Wages.

"Putting in Footings" from Journeyman's Wages. 

"Journeyman's Wages" from Journeyman's Wages.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

"A Brief Lecture on Door Closers" from Traveling Incognito.  (In the Writer's Almanac blog.)

Terry Adams, poet:

"Last Draft" from Adam's Ribs.


"Pieta" and "The Dump" from Adam's Ribs.



Jody Procter, carpenter, actor, memoirist:

Toil: Building Yourself 



Support the poets.

Buy their books.

Keep them writing.

Breaking Your Heart. Or at least, Your Plumbing.

Friday, April 16, 2004

Jemma, the live-in caretaker, calls.  Ed has lost bladder and bowel control.  She's upset.  "I've grown attached to old Ed," she says.

I'm attached to him, too.  He's my big brother.  He's slowly dying of dementia. It's hell to watch.  Jemma's been threatening to quit because it's hell for her, too.  

I'm Ed's guardian.  It's a 90 minute drive to his house, so I try to manage crises by phone whenever possible.  Jemma says Ed's weak and slow to respond.  I suspect he's over-medicated.  I call a nurse.  She says she'll check him out.

I take my dog for a walk.  I happen to meet Lulu walking her dog.  She has a well-behaved Australian shepherd.  I have a rambunctious mutt.  We often meet because we both like to walk our dogs at sunset, following a trail to the top of a hill in La Honda where there's a sweeping view of mountains, ocean, sky.  Over several years of occasional walks, we've come to know each other pretty well.  Her husband helped my son find a summer job.

Today Lulu asks why I'm so pensive, and I tell her about my brother.  Lulu works for a senior center, so she understands.  Then, smart woman, she tells me to think about something good that's coming.  I say my youngest son is about to graduate from college.

Lulu studies my face.  "If that's good, why do you look sad?"

"It is good.  I'm proud of him.  I'm proud of all my children for graduating college and finding their lives outside the nest.  But it also makes me feel lonely."

Lulu's a pretty woman, tall, athletic, about 20 years younger than me, childless, married to a great guy.  As we stand at the top of the hill gazing at orange and purple clouds while fingers of fog fill the shadows of the valleys, she says, "Can I ask you something?  Why did you have children?"

That's one of those questions for which there's no final answer, like asking why do you believe in God.  "It's kind of like faith," I say.  "Faith in the future."

In twilight we walk with dogs down the trail.  Lulu says she's been thinking a lot about whether to have children.  She has some issues with her own mother.  Lulu says she's set herself a deadline of making up her mind by her fortieth birthday, and it's almost here.

I find myself urging her to have children.  She's a warm and giving person.  She'd be a great mother, and I know her husband would be the soccer-coaching let's-all-go-camping kind of great father.

"Having children seems so selfish," Lulu says.

I'm shocked.  And I guess I've just learned something about Lulu's relationship with her mother who, as a matter of fact, lives in Connecticut, about as far away as Lulu could get.  "No, it's the exact opposite," I say.  "It's an act of idealism."

Lulu thinks that over for a few minutes.  Then she asks, "But don't they break your heart?"

"Sometimes.  They break everything.  But that isn't the point."

"What is the point?"

"Accepting that you're part of the great flow of life.  Embracing it.  Loving it.  We call sex making love - and sometimes it is - but having sex isn't the only way of making love.  Raising children - if you're lucky - and you do need luck - and if you do it right - you make more love in the world.  In your life.  You get to love more people."

I spoke passionately.  I think I surprised her.  Again, Lulu thinks it over for a few minutes. 

Sunset's over.  We're walking down the trail now and it's nearly dark.  Her face is a shadow as she says, "I'm kind of embarrassed to ask this, but don't children ruin your sex life?"

This conversation has already gone farther than I would have expected.  So here goes:  "Well, yeah, it gets complicated.  But it still happens.  And I tell you this - on the subject of not being selfish - creating children, knowing you're trying to create them, is the best sex you'll ever have.  Because it has a whole different meaning."

"Wow," she says.  There's no eye contact here.  Nor should there be.

Three days later, Jemma calls again.  One nurse showed up and flailed about.  Another failed to show up. It's tough getting help on weekends.   And now Ed's house, in a manner of speaking, is losing bladder and bowel control, big time.

I can't fix Ed, but I can fix his bathroom.  I drive across the Bay to Ed's house.  Arriving at noon, I find Ed lying awake in bed.  He says pleasantly, coherently, “I’m just finishing a nap.”  Reducing the meds was a good idea.

Despite Jemma’s description of massive broken pipes in walls and attics, the problem is simply the bathroom faucet and drain.  In a fit of anger Ed had kicked the P-trap into the wall.  The entire sink needed replacing years ago, so I buy a new one and begin installing.  Meanwhile, for Ed I play a CD of a concert my son Will just performed as a final project at college - ten songs he composed.

There are three ways to cheer Ed up.  Visit him, play music, or talk about family.  Here he's got all three.  He's having a great day.

Late in the afternoon I take Ed to see Dr. Wu.  Ed can barely walk.  We go shoulder to shoulder, very slowly, with Ed balanced and partly supported by my arm.  Dr. Wu reminds me that the goal here isn't to find a cure but to provide comfort and a graceful exit.  And as far as the doctor is concerned, Ed can stay home until the end.

Jemma and I work together to guide and partially lift Ed up the front stairs to his entry door.  She asks what the doctor said, and I tell her.

"I don't want to see Ed go to a home," Jemma says.  "I'll stay with him to the end."

As it turns out, she doesn't.  She has the heart but not the training as Ed's needs become more demanding.  Many an adventure will come in the up-and-down saga of Ed.  Under the care of another keeper, Ed remains at home for five more years and will die peacefully in his bed surrounded by posters of his beloved old trains.

It will be my job for another five years to keep the plumbing patched together and to direct his care which becomes something of a third-world soap opera.  But that's a story for another time.

Meanwhile Lulu's husband suddenly gets a promotion to a new location.  They move to Fremont across the Bay. 

About six months later, Lulu calls my house, something she's never done.  "Hi!  It's Lulu!"  At first I can't even place her because I'm an idiot with names.  She's offended but gets over it.  Then she says, "Guess what?  I'm pregnant!"

I feel like an uncle.  Or a godfather.  I feel like this baby was conceived by our conversation that day, watching the sunset with the dogs.

Lulu remembers, too.  "Now maybe you have something good to think about."

It's a boy. 

Black and Decker Worm Gear Saw

Tuesday, April 15, 1975

Not mine, but similar

Sonny says if I want to be a genuine carpenter, I need a worm gear saw.  And he's found one.  Together we drive in Sonny's old truck to an industrial area of San Jose where he finds a guy working out of a garage. 

Sonny, always friendly, says, "Hi.  I'm Sonny."

The guy avoids our eyes.  "Pleasedameetcha," he mumbles, wiping greasy fingers on a rag, then briefly shaking hands.  He has a black mustache and hair that needs a brush.

He's got two worm gear saws for sale at this moment, each a rebuild.  "That's what I do," he says.  "Fix 'em and sell 'em."

"Where do you get them?" I ask.

He frowns, looks away.

Oops.  Some things you aren't supposed to ask.  I don't want to buy a stolen saw, but these tools are freshly rebuilt with bright new copper windings on the motors.  If you want to steal construction equipment, you don't grab the broken stuff.

My instant character judgment is that this mumbly dude is good at his work, shy with people, has a shady past but has found his niche.  He can handle salvaging tools but not much else.

It's a choice between a clean-looking silver Skilsaw for $80 or a roughed-up old Black and Decker for $70.  New, they sell for $129.

Sonny asks, "Which is better?" 

Mustache guy picks up the Black and Decker.  "Looks like piss because it's older.  And yeah, it's heavier.  Nobody wants it, but they built 'em better back then.  I put new windings.  Forget the paint job.  Paint don't cut.  I make more money on the Skil, but honest to God, this is stronger."

"I'll take it," I say.  Rebuilding that Black and Decker, I sense, was a work of love.

He wants the check made out to "Cash."  He never told us his name.

I'll use - and abuse - that saw for the next 21 years.  I'll build decks, rooms, entire houses in good weather and bad, cutting good lumber and bad, working that saw just as hard as I work my own body.  In other words, I'll work the crap out of it. 

Near the end, the top handle came loose and would lift off when you were in the middle of guiding a cut.  Then the blade went out of alignment putting extra load on the motor.  The blade guard jammed and broke off, turning the tool into a lethal weapon.  And at last - on March 20, 1996 - when I'm ripping timbers, the motor starts bubbling, and the saw dies in a cloud of black smoke. 

Some tools you're fond of.  Some you just push hard.  That old Black and Decker was a solid worker, and I maintained it - or near the end, failed to maintain it - without sentiment.  I don't have a photo.  I never thought of it as a memory I'd want to preserve.

Instead of throwing it out, my son Jesse wanted it.  In college he was studying to be an engineer (and a philosopher).  In the summer, he was a counselor at a summer camp.  He took the dead saw to Plantation Farm Camp where in a stroke of genius he'd invented a popular activity in which he and his campers would take apart old broken tools.  They'd handle the parts.  Pull springs.  Turn gears.  Touch the grease and sawdust and dirt.  Spread little pieces over a concrete floor.  With a sense of wonder and play they became familiar with human industrial ingenuity. 

As a final act, the campers took turns with a sledge hammer.  Gleefully, they smashed everything to bits.  Jesse knew just what kids wanted.

In that final dismantling and smashing, as in Mr. Mumbly's long-ago rebuild, the old Black and Decker received more respect than I'd given it in 21 years.

Some day my overworked motor will start bubbling, too.  I'm already out of alignment.  Some people would claim that my top handle comes off with more and more frequency.  Maybe I'll go out in a cloud of black smoke.  Then please, I ask you, dismantle me. 

See how I'm put together.  Handle my parts.  Touch the grease and sawdust and dirt that I'm sure are inside me somewhere. 

Appreciate the biological ingenuity.  Show some respect. 

Then, if you want, take turns with the sledge hammer.  I've got one you could use.

"A Little Water Problem"

Monday, April 14, 1986

On the phone he says he won't be home but I can come by anytime because the problem is outside.  "A little water problem," he calls it.  So I visit a handsomely designed house of redwood and glass in Portola Valley where an underground leak has dug a gully under a concrete patio, sending a gush of water cascading down an embankment and into the street. Right now it's dry.

A neighbor wanders over and says he told the homeowners about the problem a couple of months ago. The owners' response was to shut off the main valve to the house.  In the morning the neighbor would see one of the owners walking out to the street in a bathrobe carrying a big wrench, kneeling in the dirt to turn the valve so they could take a shower.  Then a half hour later, dressed to the nines, they'd turn it off and drive away.  They've been living mostly without water for the last two months.

“When did they call you?” the neighbor asked.

“Last week."

“Amazing,” the neighbor says.

“People procrastinate,” I say.

The neighbor shakes his head. “Either they’re cheap or they’re idiots.”

Together the neighbor and I study the house. It's probably worth several million. The husband is a surgeon, the wife an attorney.

“Don’t underestimate inertia,” I say.

“Or tightwads,” the neighbor says, and he wanders off.

. . . In retrospect, I see that I used this job as an incident in Clear Heart almost exactly as it happened.  Sometimes, you can't improve on real life.

In the novel, Wally (the contractor) accepts the job.  In real life, I turn it down.  That lifeless gully of rock and bare dirt emerging from under cold concrete is scary somehow, a desolate distant planet.  If somebody waits two months to call you while living in a million dollar house without water, he might wait another two months to pay you.  As a contractor, you have to develop a sixth sense about weird situations.  There are too many Mr. Lunders in the world. 

Better to lose a few jobs than get sucked into a bad one.  And the wife is an attorney.  This job gives me shivers.  No thanks.

Witchcraft

Wednesday, April 13, 1977

"I'm Sheila," she says as she opens the door.  "Some people say I'm a witch."  She's old, gaunt, with long straggly blond hair.  (I'm young - 29 - skinny, with straggly brown hair.)

It's an aging house, not quite gothic, in disrepair.  She says she hears mysterious gurgling.  It's creepy in the middle of the night when she's alone.  "If I were really a witch," she says, "maybe it wouldn't bother me."

I tighten a no-hub coupling, open her clean-out and listen, investigate her toilet, fix a leak in a faucet.

I like her.  She likes me.  We chat.  She says she was an economist but now she's a therapist.

"What kind of therapist?"

"Hypnosis," she says.  "I teach self-hypnosis."

"Wouldn't work on me.  I never let myself lose self-control."

She laughs.  "You don't lose self-control under hypnosis.  You enhance it.  That's what it's good for.  You'd be a pushover.  It's the physicists and engineers who have a hard time."  She's having an open house that very evening at her office.  She invites me to drop by.

That evening, I show up at a conventional office building in Menlo Park.  Her therapy room looks like your basic business conference room - carpet, drapes, sterile smell - but no furniture.

We sit on the carpet.  There are about half a dozen people in attendance, including one talkative couple: the woman is a nurse taking a course in business management, the man an engineer.  Both of them seem to flit from fad to fad, transcendental meditation to auras to crystals - and now to hypnosis.  They sound open-minded but seem to have no core.  Maybe that's what they're seeking.

Sheila describes what she can and, mostly, what she cannot do.  Hypnosis can't make you do something against your will.  It can help you do what you really want to do.  She's unpretentious and matter-of-fact.  She says some people fall easily into a hypnotic state, others find it nearly impossible.  Then she has each of us hold pendulums and concentrate on the motion - just like in old bad movies - and in good faith I give it a try. 

I'm there.  It's fascinating.  Like a tunnel. 

When she brings us out of it, the fad couple say how marvelous it was.  "I'm not sure you got there," Sheila says.  

Then Sheila turns to me.  "You fell fast," she says.

"So that was hypnosis?" I ask.

"Totally."

It was such a familiar feeling.  I go into that state - call it hypnotic, or not - whenever I write.  It's the feeling of obsessed, shielded, narrow concentration.  Sometimes with other craft work - carpentry, plumbing - I'm the same way.

"I haven't heard any creepy gurgling since you left this morning," Sheila tells me as I'm leaving.  "It's like you cast a spell on the house."

Fingertip Feedback

Wednesday, April 12, 1989

The decorator wants me to install a switch and 3 downlights in the Cantor's living room.  The attic is difficult: stuffy, cramped, hot.  I have to lie in dusty insulation, stretch out my arms to a spot I can't even see, and make wire connections by touch.  It's amazing what you can do based solely on the feedback of your fingertips.

When at last - ta da! - I turn on the switch, the light pattern is not what the decorator or the Cantor had expected. 

The decorator frowns.

The Cantor looks embarrassed.  He has an ornate old armoire of dark carved wood.  Highlighted in the new light, it is suddenly obvious that the carvings are of naked women.  Of course they were always there, but now they jump out at you.  Their bodies - at least certain parts of their bodies - are polished as if someone has constantly rubbed them to a high sheen, glowing in the new light, while the rest of the wood remains dark, unrubbed.

"We'll install another light," the decorator says.  "To - um - balance things a little better.  I won't charge you for it."  She looks at me meaningfully.

"I'll be happy to do it," I say.  What I'm obviously expected to say - but don't - is: "No charge."  Not if I have to crawl in that attic again.  He isn't my cantor.  Heck, I'm not even Jewish.  And anyway, it's the oldest law of business.  Some services you provide at a loss, some at normal cost, some at a premium.  There's probably a great Yiddish phrase for this, but here it is in English: In the world of commerce, the more nookie, the more you pay.

Last Comes the Bathroom Door

Tuesday, April 10, 1984

At the playground my son meets another boy his age.  Immediately, they hit it off.  I chat with Jennie, the boy's mother.  As any parent knows, your social network is formed by your children.  Jennie, it turns out, lives just down the street from me. 

We visit Jennie's house so the boys can continue their play.  Jennie and her husband live in a shell - a house frame with a relatively complete exterior.  Inside, they've been camping out for several years, completing rooms as time allows.  Just like my wife and me. 

Camping in an unfinished house, you learn your priorities.  First, running water.  A toilet, a sink.  At least one functioning electric outlet.  Each little improvement is a quantum leap in comfort.  Then heat.  What luxury!  Some kind of stove.  Then hot water!  A bathtub or shower.  Life is good.

Privacy came just about last.  Neither Jennie nor I had given much thought to it, but talking together we realize that in a close family, you can live a long time with stud walls.  Eventually, you put up drywall.  Even then, with young children there's little that's private, not even your bed.

Jennie says, "We didn't put doors on our bathrooms for about three years."  She laughs.  "Then my mother came to visit, so we finally got around to it."

"Same here!" I say with surprise.  I'd never thought about it.  "Except it was my father-in-law."

It seems odd, looking back.  Maybe it was a generational/counterculture thing.  We may have hung a blanket over the doorway from time to time to accommodate guests.  But for the in-laws, by golly, you need a door.

Once you have a roof to keep the rain off your head and walls to keep the coyotes from wandering through, what are your priorities?  Here were ours:
1.  Water.
2.  Toilet and sink.
3.  Electricity.
4.  Heat.  (In a colder climate, heat would rank higher.)
5.  Stove.
6.  Hot water.
7.  Bathtub.
Then came insulation, permanent lights, a kitchen sink, drywall, a comfortable chair, a shoe caddy, a shelf for toy trains and little stuffie bears.  And finally, for Jennie's family and mine:
100.  Bathroom door.

Toy Chest

Monday, April 9, 1984

On this day in 1984 I'm building a toy chest for Will's second birthday.  In six days my son will be two years old.

I'm using 16-inch pine planks that I pried from Wagon Wheels just before the poor cottage was crushed.  Unlike my older two children, Will never lived at Wagon Wheels, but this toy chest will give him a piece of it.

Though not quite two years old, Will actually assists me in the construction at least to the extent of picking up sweet-smelling pine shavings and placing them in a pile.  His older brother Jesse, age seven, helps run the plane over the top.  Everybody loves to plane.  Then both Jesse and Will watch the quickening of color as I apply oil to the wood - no stain, no varnish, please. 

And oh how I love salvaged wood.  Here's a photo from 2007 which I've been advised never to show anybody because "there's something creepy about a man hugging a toy chest."  In the photo you can see the shape of the chest (an old Shaker design), the extraordinarily wide planks of the sides, the planed top.  You can also see that the chest is somewhat banged up from 23 years of use.  Eventually Will left it behind, not needing a toy chest at Dartmouth - so it remains where I can hug it again if ever I feel so inclined. 

Building that chest was such a pleasure - and such mental therapy - that I recreated the experience in a chapter of my novel Clear Heart.  If you're curious you can read all about it - Chapter 30 to be exact.  Or episode 14 of the Clear Heart podcast.

I'd quote the chapter here, but it's a bit too long for this setting.  But, hey, I tell you what.  For the rest of April readers of this blog can buy the ebook of Clear Heart for half price!  Such a deal!  Just follow this link to Smashwords, put Clear Heart in your shopping bag, and use this discount code at checkout: CJ48P.  You'll get 50% off the price of a book that already costs less than one beer at Sullivan's Pub.  Now it costs just half a beer!

Here are the words of some people I respect, craftspeople who could build a far finer toy chest than I:

" I LOVED Clear Heart. In fact, I couldn't put it down.  It's about a 55 year old ex-hippy carpenter named Wally—and the interaction between true craftsmen, their good-natured joking, routines and habits (like sometimes getting too friendly with female clients). It's male bonding at its finest, filled with endearing characters and fast-paced, nail-biting mishaps.  And it made me want to ask Wally: 'You hiring?'"—Kari Hultman, The Village Carpenter

" I just couldn’t put it down. It was a great read.  Now I have met many of the people in Joe’s novel, quirky sub contractors, stupid clients and the like. I found myself (I believe for the first time) actually rooting for fictional characters. The book is gripping. It is a love story and so much more.  I should also tell you that it is a book for adults.  I wouldn’t have my (prude) sister read the book."—Stephen Shepherd, Full Chisel Blog

"What's my crime?"

Friday, April 8, 1983

At a coffee shop in Los Altos, I'm chatting with Sonny.  We sit at the counter talking shop, and he offers me a job hanging doors.  I say I don't feel qualified, and anyway I have all the work I need right now.

"I'll do it."  It's a man sitting two stools away.  "You need a carpenter?  My name's Gary."  He begins telling Sonny that he’s a chemical engineer with a bad health history. 

Silently the waitress is shaking her head. 

Sonny turns him down.

Then Gary sets to work on me, saying he'll do anything.  By now I judge he's either an alcoholic or a nut.  I turn him down.

Gary has been glancing out the window toward a Ford station wagon where a woman and two children are staring back at him. 

Now Gary sees a police car parked outside.  He rises to leave and is met by an officer who puts him in handcuffs.

"What's my crime?" Gary says.  "What's my crime?"

Again the waitress is shaking her head.  "Poor guy," she says. 

Gary Laidlow

Now he's just
a nuisance but
he was, of course,
a criminal. 
San Quentin. 
Long ago. 
Then he got a wife like an
alpine stream, two
kids who he adored, and a
run of bad luck
so consistent
it was uncanny.
They lived all four in a Ford station wagon.

I met him in a cafe
where he was spooning
a cup of cold coffee.
Outside from the windshield
peered desperate
swiftflowing eyes. 
He told me he just got out
of the hospital and might have
to go back so nobody will
hire him but he'll work for peanuts and he knows
what to do if I'll just loan him seventy-five dollars
for a bus to Seattle where
his tools are in
storage.

I say, gently, "No."

He smiles, shakes his head, understanding
that I understand.
But he had better luck with churches giving him
money to attend a funeral in Vancouver, B. C.
Fifty churches, fifty funerals
until he was arrested,
swearing he was innocent, for living
in a dirty car, a shopping center parking lot,
charged with child abuse for feeding
the baby old milk he found
in the dumpster behind the Safeway.

"What's my crime?"

Creating the World

(Before writing these blog entries, I go back through my journals reading one particular day for each year, sort of a Ground Hog Day movie except that each time everybody is one year older, and in the end I still haven't gotten it right.  Here are three such days.)

Saturday, April 7, 1979

A good garage sale can cure a bad mood.  So can a ride in a pickup truck.  Today I apply the double cure to my son Jesse, age two-and-a-half.  He's been horrible, a not uncommon condition for a two-year-old, but enough is enough.

We're still living in the Montgomery Ward cottage at Wagon Wheels while building our new house in La Honda.  The new house, I believe, is the cause of Jesse's crankiness because it takes me away from home all day every day, and he's used to having me around. 

In the pickup (known as the Twuck), I let Jesse lean forward in his car seat and push the radio buttons, choosing random music.   

At one garage sale Jesse falls inexplicably in love with an old brass coat rack, so we buy it to install in his bedroom.

Stopping at a grocery store, Jesse's eyes alight on a display rack.  "What's that?"

"Those are called pocket pies."

"You put them in your pocket?"

So I buy one.  As it happens, Jesse has no pockets today, so I put it in mine.  In Palo Alto we drive to a quiet street of big green lawns.  We park but remain sitting in the twuck under the shade of a sycamore.  We unwrap and share the pocket pie.  From a grocery bag I remove a beer and open it.  I pop an old Beatles tape into the radio/cassette player.

A pregnant woman with two travel bags is walking down the street, crying.  Jesse grabs his teddy bear from the dashboard of the truck and holds it, watching the woman.  She's wearing a long blue dress which is flapping in the wind.  She’s stopped walking.  Her fingers are on her lips.  Still crying.  I want to help but know I would only be interfering.  After a moment, she walks on.

Driving home, I see the world through Jesse's eyes, the world I've brought him to - the sun burning over six lanes of El Camino Real, glinting off cars, while Daddy listens to old rock tapes with a bit of beer on his breath.  A large part of Jesse's world will be whatever I bring to him, such as cruising the garage sales and eating pocket pie.  The woman in the long blue dress will no doubt create a far different world on this, our shared planet.

Saturday, April 7, 1990

Jesse is now thirteen and a half.  He's in eighth grade and sometimes discovers that I'm weird.  We live in the house I built in La Honda.  The truck is a Ford.  We listen to Grateful Dead tapes - Jesse's choice - and drive to Palo Alto where we hit some garage sales and come away with a turntable.  Jesse in his lifetime has never played a record album but has seen my crates of them stored in the attic.  He'd like to listen.

After the sales, we drive to a medical office building on Welch Road near Stanford Hospital where together we repair six entries for six psychiatrists.  I need Jesse's help to remove and replace each solid-core, dark mahogany, massive door.  He's old enough - and big enough - to help dad earn a living. 

For three hours labor on this, his first paying job, I give him $30, a great wage for a thirteen-year-old.  And he knows that he accomplished something. 

Back home the turntable works.  In fact, it's excellent.  My old records - John Prine, Phil Ochs, Big Bill Broonzy - have never sounded so good.  I haven't heard them for ages, and now I'm hearing them through Jesse's ears, a whole new world.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Today I'm providing childcare for my grandson, age two and a half.  Raj was born in San Francisco and recently moved to the suburbs down the Peninsula.  I could stay at Raj's house where he is comfortable and happy, but I consider it my job as grandfather to introduce him to the more rural life in La Honda. 

From my house we take a walk.  There are no sidewalks in La Honda, so we walk the narrow streets.  A bit up the hill from my house are two llamas in a pen.  One sleeps; one watches us with a steady gaze.  I explain to Raj that you will never see both llamas sleep at the same time; they watch out for each other.

We walk downhill a bit to another house and feed carrots through the fence wire to a couple of goats.  The bigger goat keeps butting the smaller one away with a thwack of horns.  He can eat an entire carrot in a matter of seconds.

Farther down the hill, we throw popcorn to the ducks in the pond.  Farther still, we come to "the cookie store" otherwise known as the La Honda Country Market, where we select one large chocolate chip cookie from a glass jar.

Back home we read a book I just got from the bookmobile: Gramps and the Fire Dragon, which becomes the event of the day.  To Raj it's an utterly gripping tale in which a boy and his grandfather encounter a fire-breathing dragon who chases them up an apple tree which they escape in a hot air balloon, but the dragon follows through jungle and cave and finally is melted by water from a fire truck's hose.  When Raj enjoys a story he's all over it fingering pictures, flipping pages, shouting, laughing.  We read it six times, cover to cover.  What a great book.

We talk about the fire dragon all the way home in the car.  Raj reprises episodes and adds new ones involving butting goats, hungry ducks, watchful llamas - framing the story and the events of the day, coming to grips with the fear, the excitement, the camaraderie.  To Raj there is no line between encountering a dragon and what we did today; it's all part of the wonderful web of life.  For me it's a beautiful lesson in the purpose and power of story - why we tell them, how we respond and grow.  I brought Raj to my world; in return he brings me to his.