The Chris Craft Cure

Tuesday, November 28, 1994

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

"That's an emergency?" I ask.

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

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

I ask, "Are you okay?"

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

"Can Henry see now?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry loves powerboats, especially old wooden Chris Crafts.

1928 Chris Craft Cadet (from Wikipedia)

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

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

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

"Yes," Isabella says.

Thanksgiving Poem

Thanksgiving Day

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

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

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

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

Sweat Test

Diary of a Small Contractor

Thursday, November 6, 1986

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.  It hurts.”

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

“Yes.”

“What’ll you get?”

“Chewing gum.”

“You don’t want a cupcake?”

“No.”  He looks at me.  “It hurts.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, November 7, 1986

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Boring,” I say.  “Totally neutral.”

“That’s the best kind,” says Margie.

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

Tuesday, November 11, 1986

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

This is the moment — and everyone, sometime in life, learns this — the loneliness of pain.  I've been hurt before, many times, but never like this — so deep, so chilling to the body.  No one can see this torture.  No one can feel it but me. 

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

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

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

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

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

Thanksgiving will have special meaning this year.  It's the simple things that matter.  Maybe by then I'll be able to move my arm.  Maybe I'll carve the turkey.  I'm so thankful for so many things — little miracles — including a healthy boy, age four, a boy who runs up hills.

Poly-euw

Diary of a Small Contractor

Monday, November 3, 1986

All day
shaping lumber with a
clear heart.

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

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

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

Now the lid is frozen to the jar.

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

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

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

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

Oops.

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

“Rose?”

“What?”

“I can’t do the poly tonight,” 

“Why?”

“I just broke the jar.”

“How?”

“I was just trying to open it.”

“With what?”

“A framing hammer.”

Bless her, she keeps a straight face.

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

Maybe it's a message from the wood sprites.

Peace and Love and Wall Thermostats

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day 23

Wednesday, October 29, 1986
 
An early morning consult.  Taylor is an intense, speedy young man in blue jeans and a black mustache.  In less than an hour we plan about $2000 worth of small projects in his glorious house, a beam-and-stone castle with a broad view over Silicon Valley.  Whenever I name a price, Taylor immediately says "Okay" so quickly that I wonder if he heard it.  He gives me a business card: he's an electrical engineer, a manager at Hewlett Packard.  By my reckoning he's about 24 years old in a ten-room house with no wife, no kids.  King-size bed. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a bad light bulb.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, November 17, 2011

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

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

So much has changed.  And so little.

Ansel Adams in Suburbia

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

Thursday, October 23, 1986

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

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

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

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

"Do you have any?" I ask.

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

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

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

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

"What's so funny?" Andrew asks.

"I don't know," I say.  "It just is."

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

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

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

"It's funnier without the commentary."

"That's what everybody says."

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

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

Isabella selected the fan.  A botch of a choice. 

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

Friday, October 24, 1986

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

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

Saturday, October 25, 1986

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

Andrew notices.  "You okay?" he asks.

"Sorry.  Drywalling does this to me."

"Is it toxic?"

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

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

"I was only joking about the photo."

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

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

Tuesday, November 15, 1988

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

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

In the hallway, the photos are already gone.

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

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

And I'll do the drywall.

Stealing Ansel Adams

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day 19

Wednesday, October 22, 1986

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

I tap on the door.

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

He shakes my hand.  He smiles warmly, genuinely.

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

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

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

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

Do they then confess their sins to the shrink?

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

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

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

Ansel Adams: The Tetons and the Snake River

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

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

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

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

“What were you doing on the sink?”

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

"I said 'Hello.'"

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm sorry."

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

Ah.

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

I say, "I wish Carrie were back right now."
 
We fall silent.  Apart.  But together.

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

Good Craftsmanship is the Lack of Botch

Diary of a Small Contractor, Days 17 and 18

Saturday, October 18, 1986

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

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

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

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

Sacré bleu!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, October 21, 1986

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes, everything works out.

Deep Woodside

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

Sunday, October 12, 1986

Woodside, California is a wealthy town with a semi-rural vibe.  If you're rich and you want to keep a few horses on a few acres, Woodside's for you.  If you're an eccentric billionaire, so much the better.  You'll fit right in.  
 
Today I check out a job in deep Woodside.  Deep, like where the estates are so vast, you can’t even see the houses from the road.  Driveways are blocked by steel-bar automatic gates.  Single family houses are the size of a ten unit condo complex in Sunnyvale.  Deep, like where horses romp and Porsches honk and an army of groundskeepers serve the whims of the trickledown theory. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

I ask, “Was there a live wire?”

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

“So.  I’m next.”

“Do you still want the job?”

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

The dapper little man listens quietly.

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

“I don’t make a hobby of them.”

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

“Oh yes.”  Obviously, he wants me to.

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

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

Monday, October 13, 1986

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The plumber asks, “You ever try wrestling?”

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

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

I touch no live wires and fall off no ladders.

Tuesday, October 14

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

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

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

“There’s a lot of obstacles,” I say.

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

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

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

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

Clark snorts.  "Lucky you," he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Banker, Retired

Diary of a Small Contractor, Day 13

Saturday, October 11, 1986

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Please," Mrs. K says.

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

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

I look at it.  “What’s the problem?”

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

“They’re supposed to.  That’s normal.”

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

SNAP.

“Oh yes,” he says.  “It’s working.”