"It's trucks we drive, I say!"

The tool didn’t work. I eagerly went out this morning to try it, finding out in short order that the thin metal of the steel tube was no match for the stiff valve that needed turning. It bent my improvised tool like so much paper—twisting it this way and that. I’ll look at an alternative design, with some reinforced steel down at the end—or I may just go out and buy the goddamned thing. There is no rush on this, since the plumbing in the house needs to be completely redone.

One thing you would learn, as you took apart the bathroom walls, is that—in 1956—you could buy what is described as a “GIANT 21” TELEVISION” for around one hundred and seventeen dollars. An attractive payment plan could also be arranged, adding absolutely nothing to the cost of the tv set. I came by this information from the crumpled-up newspapers the last remodellers had thrown into the walls for a little insulation. I’m not quite sure what their thinking was, since it didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. But back to the giant twenty-one inch television: These days people give away televisions that are not only bigger, but cost about five times the 1956 price. They usually work just fine, but the remote control device is generally the culprit. The thing that—in 1956—would sound absurd, is today normal. Remote doesn’t work? Toss out the tv; it’s simply too much trouble to get it fixed.

If I could go back to 1956, I would run straight to an appliance store and create a commotion. Holding up my hand in a dramatic fashion, I would command all sales to halt.

“Listen, folks! If you can just hold off for fifty years, you’ll have televisions like you wouldn’t believe, and they’re ALL FREE! You don’t have to pay a dime! The only thing that doesn’t work is the remote control, and you don’t even know what that is—you’re comfortable with the idea of getting up to change the channel. It’s what people do!

"We want to watch tv right now," someone will say. "We don't want to wait fifty years!"
"Well, that’s your choice, but don’t come crying to me when you see a tv that’s a hundred times better than these little black and white jobs sitting out by the curb free for the taking! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

Then I’ll add:

“Also, since I have your attention, here’s a heads-up on the current trend of the future: Most of us fifty years down the road drive TRUCKS!” Startled gasps all around.
“Yes, that’s right—T-R-U-C-K-S!”
“I know, I know,” I’ll say, “The truck is the first choice of the dirt-farmer, the melon-pickers, the migrants, transients, the stragglers from the Great Depression who never quite recovered from that fearsome economic blight.” I’ll wave my arms around a bit for dramatic effect, revival preacher-style. “I realize all that. But it’s what we drive, I tell you! We love ‘em!”

“You!” Indicating a man with a fabulous Cadillac all resplendent with tailfins, his wife in a head-scarf and movie-star sunglasses.
“Get with the program, man! Go out and buy a TRUCK!”

I’ll also add, if I haven’t been run out of town, that the cheap gas they enjoy isn’t going to last forever, so they’d better use as much of it as they can, while it still costs next to nothing.

Then some smart-aleck will ask:
“Hey, Mr. Man from the future—if your gas is so expensive, why do you mostly drive around in trucks? Don’t trucks use more gas?” Yes, others will nod in agreement, seeing the obvious contradiction from the rabble-rouser sent for god-only-knows what reason from the future. A significant murmur will rise from the crowd, outright derision at the idea that civilized people should convey themselves about the city and countryside in trucks, calling on grandma on a bright Sunday in a pickup.
“It’s unseemly,” one very proper woman in a smart outfit with a matching handbag will say.

Then, suddenly unsure of myself, I’ll mumble something, maybe audible, maybe not:
“Yes..I guess they do use more gas; I haven’t quite figured that one out myself. But it’s what we drive, I tell you! We can’t get enough of ‘em!”

Advertised there in the newspaper from 1956 was also a radio, a miniature affair that could be carried in a pocket or a purse. It looked pretty nice, and came with a headset for “private listening.” You could pay for this radio on an installment plan, giving over only fifty cents a week to own it—or two dollars per month. Not only that, but the installment plan supposedly added nothing to the cost of the little radio. I kind of wish I had one.

"Tink!"

The pipe gave way with a small, metallic “TINK!” It bravely held on for over fifty years, its insides rotten with scale and pieces of the galvanized steel flaking off. This small elbow was located just above the shutoff valve, where the water line comes through the basement wall—its delivery point from the water main out in the street. I’d already cut off the section just above it, but wanted to see if I could just add a new valve to this short piece—after removing the elbow. Nothing doing. I would have to shut off the water out at the meter—located under a small access cover next to the road. I’d already scraped the dirt off the cover, pried it open, and looked inside to see what it was all about. The water company quoted me a fee of fifty-five dollars to shut off the water. It looks to be a fairly simple matter to do it myself, although something that’s probably not officially allowed. I will have to replace the shutoff valve down in the basement—it is ancient and leaking, a quiet drip drip drip. Not enough to flood the basement, but it is trying to tell me that it is tired, like its broken neighbor the elbow. It’s had enough.

Now I know that absolutely every inch of water line will have to be replaced in the house. Not that there was much to begin with; the bathroom took the lion’s share of water usage, of course-with the shower and sink and toilet. Next is the kitchen, with its one outdated sink. There is also a line that runs outside to a faucet near the driveway. And the washing machine has a hot and cold line running to it. At the moment the house is entirely without water, cut off from its supply; the pipes inside dangle for the most part, leading to faucet-less dead-ends. Little by little I am removing the pipes themselves, the horrible-looking steel lines that have been endlessly repaired, fitted to copper here, maybe another steel pipe there. It all has to go.

Tonight I fashioned a large tee-wrench to turn off the valve at the meter out in the street. It should work, if I judged the size of the little screw correctly. I took two pieces of steel tubing, which originally made up the handle of a giveaway lawnmower, and fastened them together with two bolts in the middle. The whole length measures about five feet. Then I heated one end of the round steel tube with the torch and hammered at it until it became somewhat flattened—but not all the way flat. Its oblong opening should fit directly over the shutoff valve, allowing me to turn it with very little effort. At the other end of this tool I drilled a hole completely through, cut off a piece of steel from another mower project, and slid this piece through the drilled holes. This allows for the tee-handle, which will turn the whole thing and hopefully turn off the water without incident. I was tempted to just have the water people come out and deal with this, but the woman on the phone said there was no definite time they would be by, and that it might take a while before they ever came back to turn it back on again. I think I can handle it.

"I want one just like it"

With my older Chevy van outfitted, I did the two markets this weekend with good results. This truck is no larger than the other one, but will have to do until I can locate a bigger vehicle. It appears that the ideal size is a twelve-foot box attached to a Ford cab, allowing access between the cab and the box if needed. Loading and unloading is accomplished by a sliding rear door that goes up and into the ceiling of the box. This is sometimes called a “cube van.” Although there are many of them around, I haven’t found too many for sale on the used market. One of the other vendors has one, and told me he paid three thousand for it. I want one just like it, for three thousand dollars.

Pretty soon I’ll have one of the little convertible cars I so covet. I’ll fly out to Kansas city on US Airways for $113.00, and return in my Mazda Miata. A friend there wants to be rid of his little-used car, which he kept in excellent condition, and I said I would buy it. At first I made the commitment on a whim, even though this is a car I’ve long fancied—if not this one in particular, then this type. But as the days have passed I’ve convinced myself that this is a car I will be happy with, may even use as a daily—albeit impractical—driver. There is so little I’ve introduced into my humdrum life that can be rightfully called an indulgence. Rusted old riding mowers, costing less than a hundred—or even fifty dollars each--don’t count. They provide some amusement, a harmless pastime as I get the ancient motors into running condition again, but do nothing to glamorize my life. I need some glamour, some sunshine coming through the open top of the car, my hair blowing back from my receding hairline, a five-speed manual transmission to give a hint that this is a viable, sexy man at the wheel—if only in my own eyes. It is a path so many have walked before. I have had the ancient British classics, the cantankerous old clunkers that look fabulous but won’t hesitate to let you down at the most inopportune time. They have their place, too, but now suddenly I want the whole package—the good-looking car that also has an air of modernity about it. I want to drive. I’ll have a chance to do just that: The return trip is just under eleven-hundred miles. The work on the house will have to wait while I attend to this indulgence.

"So--Is it named after Chevy Chase?"

This day I drove to the Washington area in the early morning drizzle, something we haven’t had in quite a long time. More than halfway there my car phone rang—the job I was headed to had been cancelled. Ok, I said, thanking the caller and returning the way I’d come. Since I’d arisen at the ungodly hour of six o’clock to beat the horrific traffic in the area, I now had a good deal of time to kill. I had another job in the same area, for the same people, later in the day—around one o’clock. In the interim I would go fetch my old truck, change out of my good clothes, and don my salvage yard get-up, consisting of dirty jeans, work boots, and a dirty tee-shirt.

I got the old Mercury moving down the road in the light rain, its wipers doing a good job of cleaning off the front glass. Nothing fell out of the back, even though the truck was piled high with sheets of metal, drawers from the steel cabinets, and so on. I arrived at the processing yard to find no line—the only other customer in front of me was an old tow-truck with a red car trailing behind it. Trailing behind the car was a bit of metal that dragged on the ground. The tow-man wheeled his truck onto the scale and I followed—almost making the unforgivable mistake of driving right up there with him. This would have caused a mess, making the scale read out the weight of BOTH our vehicles, the junk inside and the car trailing his truck. I slammed on the brakes just as I was heading up the ramp to the scale and the truck’s old brakes locked the wheels on the muddy and slick surface that mostly made up the landscape of this place. They saved the day. Had I made this gaffe, I’m not sure I could have faced the scrap people—might have had to turn around and go home again.

The man at the scale handed me a piece of paper. It read, in rather small print, that I had a load of sheet iron and that we all weighed—the truck, the sheet iron and I—four thousand, eight hundred pounds. He then told me to follow the road around to a large stop sign and then go left. I disregarded the stop sign, thinking it was there more for effect than anything else. I was reprimanded later by one of the men tending the huge pile of scrap that was actively being fed by new arrivals every minute. The man with the tow-truck didn’t put the car here—it went somewhere else nearby, with a row of cars that had already been started.

“Next time stop at the stop sign,” said the scrap man.
“Ok—sorry.” I explained myself, telling the amiable man that I was simply a homeowner looking to rid myself of some junk, get a look inside the salvage yard, and come away with a few bucks to boot.
He nodded, “Well, you’ve got all the right stuff,” he said, looking over my load of steel.
I couldn’t have been prouder; my first outing at the scrap-processing yard and I’d hit a home-run. I positively beamed.

Things got a little scary then. I backed my little truck against the mountain of metal, the whole thing rising many feet in the air. On both sides of me was rather significant activity; one enormous truck was offloading a cargo consisting entirely of automobile and truck engines—hundreds of them. They came rolling and sliding out of the back of the huge trailer as it lifted its load skyward, allowing gravity to suck the thousands of pounds of steel and aluminum out the back. They all came crashing down with a tremendous sound, the irregularly-shaped hulks, with their wires and accessories still attached, bouncing off one another and tumbling toward the dirty ground at the base of the mountain of scrap. On the other side of me was an even more impressive display: A similar truck, with a similarly huge trailer, was loaded entirely with refrigerators, freezers, washers and dryers and other large appliances. It too raised the trailer skyward, letting the ponderous metal boxes come sliding down to the rear of the truck. With these two behemoths flanking me, their enormous steel dump-trailers tilting high in the air, I felt that I was in a skyscraper city of junk—and it was all tumbling down around me. I took care to avoid being nicked by an engine or stray refrigerator, took stock of my meager offering, and started throwing the scraps—bit by bit—into the base of the huge mountain. The work went fairly quickly; I was motivated not to spend too much time there, as enjoyable as the experience was. I pushed the antique range out the back, with its little oven and four burners and even a broiler down at the bottom. The thing hit the ground hard, spilling its guts, the old gas jets scattering on the dirty ground, the metal grates for the burners clattering heavily against the other steel there. They would no longer hold up a simmering pot of soup or stew, no more would they heat a can of corn or peas; the meals of the past were gone forever. No one would await a hot dinner from this relic any more.

I felt at one with the place, this feeling coming from my participation in its activities, its purpose for being. I was contributing to the cause. I could sling it with the others, the toothless ones, the grizzled and hardened types rolling in with their next meal loaded up and ready to sell—a collection of barbecue grills, steam radiators salvaged from a Baltimore rowhome, a dead motor from the repair shop.
“I’m junkin’ this stuff!” I could yell. “Ain’t doin’ me no good!” Then I could push something off the truck for effect.
“Dang! Lookit all them motors!” I could hazard the observation: “Gotta be something there for my old truck!”
I might have to work a bit on the easy give-and-take of the salvage yard crowd, the bonhomie and camaraderie that surely must make the dreary activities more tolerable.
I might just want to keep my comments to myself for the time being, waiting for a good opening. Playing the grizzled, hardened type for a while might be best. The feelings I describe here, although treated lightly, are markedly different from those I’d experience if I’d visited the place with a camera, a microphone, a crew with some recording equipment and had talked to the people there, gotten their thoughts on scrap and how this world worked. All of that was superfluous—I was immersed in their world, if only briefly, and accepted as one of them. The price of admission was the diverse offering I’d piled into the bed of the truck.

Payment came from an ATM there at the yard. Forty-eight dollars. The man from yesterday had been a bit generous, somewhat of an optimist when he’d sized up my load. Still, I was happy with the money. I gave my ticket to the weigh-man, he weighed my truck again, and handed over a plastic card. My load had amounted to almost a thousand pounds; rounded down, it was around nine-hundred pounds of scrap I’d loaded onto the truck. It didn’t feel that heavy. I jumped the clutch, letting the wheels spin on the slick coating of the scrap yard, and headed out.

I parked the truck back at my brother’s house, since that’s where I’d left my car. I got changed back into my office clothes at my house and left for Chevy Chase, the location for my next job. As I set up my equipment in the spacious Holiday Inn conference room, an attorney from the Midwest told me that he was in the middle of negotiations, that the case might settle. My services would not be needed, since no additional testimony would be given. That was just fine with me; I’d collect my minimum charge and be on my way, waving to the small huddle of vendors at the Bethesda farm market that I used to participate in as I drove home. This was Tuesday, and the sad little market was struggling against the grey and rainy day—with the polished and well-heeled Bethesda people reluctant to go out and buy fruits and flowers in such distressing weather.

The case settled, and I began packing up my gear. Another attorney from the Midwest—this one from Illinois—had never been to the area before, had never visited Washington. He remarked that Chevy Chase was a beautiful area. Yes—I had to agree; the amount of money that flowed into this suburb of Washington bought a lot of nice scenery, kept things just so, discouraged the riffraff, the more unconventional among us from cluttering up the landscape. No old pickups parked in the driveway here, no antique riding mowers sitting at odd angles in the yard, to what purpose no one really knew.

“So…the town is named after Chevy Chase?” This was the attorney from Illinois.
I had to pause.
“You mean the comedian? Chevy Chase—the actor?”
“Yes,” the attorney—a man in his late thirties or early forties nodded.
“No,” I had to break it to him gently. “The town’s not named after him.”
Well, what was it named after, then, he wanted to know? Where would such a name come from, if not from an actor who got his start on the Saturday Night Live television show. I told him it had to be something old, something rich and involving a lot of old money and was probably British in origin. A rich old pastime, you know; maybe, in the days when they had steeplechases (and they still do), this town was a nod to that tradition. I don’t know, really—I just wanted to get packed up and leave. The Illinois attorney seemed satisfied with this haphazard explanation, and we parted like that.

Later, tired from the day’s many and varied activities, I met the man who wanted to buy the van at my house. First, however, I’d driven to a place a little north of Baltimore to drop off materials from my last jobs. There, across from the office building, was a chocolatier—a place with a fancy name that sounded maybe French. I had to have some of their chocolates. I was worn out and frazzled, needed a break, so I walked over from the lot where my car was parked, crossed the busy road, and went inside. There, in a glass case, was a small assortment of truffles. They looked expensive.
“Thirty-four dollars a pound,” the woman said.
I picked out five of them, told her to just put them in a little bag. I would eat them while I drove around.
“That will be five dollars even,” she said.
I realized that I had no money, had only credit cards, other forms of plastic payment in my wallet. No checks, either. I told her all this, as I pointed to the sign I hadn’t seen before—or had conveniently ignored.
CASH OR CHECK ONLY
She wanted to know if I worked around there, could I just pay later? I told her that I didn’t come up this way very often, was really just there to drop off some things and wouldn’t be back for some time.
“Would you like to mail in your payment?” She asked.
I told her I would, was grateful that she was going to allow me to take away my truffles simply on the promise that I’d send in a check.

I ate the truffles—all of them—on the drive home. The chocolate was exquisite, the quality was obviously that of a hand-made confection. I sent in my payment the next day, promised to come back with actual money the next time.

Back to the van’s buyer: He came over to the house after the long day. The work on the van was finished, the inspection complete. He paid me in cash, an amount totaling five-thousand dollars. I gave him the title to the vehicle, wished him well, and promised to have it cleaned out by the time he picked it up from the repair shop. There was a lot of stuff in there, and I wasn’t looking forward to clearing it all out. Overall, however, this had been a painless transaction; no classified advertisements to buy, no hapless callers wasting my time, wearing out my patience. I was satisfied.

Later that evening I drove the other van to the shop, got everything cleaned out of the van I’d just sold, put the key under the seat, locked it up and said good-bye to the useful and undersized vehicle. I’d resisted buying a larger truck for two years now, but could no longer put it off. The woman with the painted windows, glasses, bottles and so on would make the rounds of the art shows, the outdoor festivals, displaying her offerings there and transporting them smoothly and safely in the efficient white Ford. Good luck and God bless.

"Did you bring a hardhat?"

I spent this day laboring next door, carting large pieces of metal out to my old truck to haul away. The bent and battered pieces of the ancient kitchen cupboards went into the truck, as did the old refrigerator from downstairs. The old gas range and oven went as well. I struggled for some time with the other refrigerator—the Frigidaire brand with the tiny freezer up top—but only managed to get it outside the basement door. I flopped it over on its side and left it there. The thing is just too fucking heavy to get upright with one person—especially if that one person is me. At least no one will be tempted to invade the house with the old Frigidaire standing—or lying—sentry in front of the basement door. I may ask for help one day, or I may just cut the thing up into pieces and cart it off like that. On a whim, I opened the heavy door before moving it and looked inside. The interior had been cleaned some thirty years previously, the owners deciding to store it away properly. But inside one of the food-storage drawers was an odd find: A memento from the Baltimore Colts 1969 team. They’d had a luncheon of some kind, and the menu was there in a little booklet. The point of the whole exercise was to honor one of the Colts’ “Unsung Heros” from that year. The honorees from previous years were also mentioned, and I assume that the man honored on this occasion in May of 1969 was actually a team member. I don’t know who else he would be. Also in the little drawer was a booklet of recipes provided by the people at Frigidaire, and an original warranty card dated from 1941—the date the fridge was bought new. I saved these things before dragging the heavy coolerator outside.

With the truck loaded I was past due for a shower. The day was hot, hovering around ninety degrees, with a good dose of humidity to round things out. My labors hadn’t been exhausting, but had been dirty. Dirt is something I’ve resigned myself to in the renovation of the house—it’s part of the deal. So I was dirty and looking forward to ridding myself of the load of scrap metal. This meant a trip to the local scrapyard, a place I don’t get to visit all that often. As a result, any outing there is an occasion for much anticipation and maybe a little anxiety. The anxiety comes in part from wondering how exactly I’ll manage in the huge scrap-processing facility. Will I be directed to a place where newcomers go—neophytes to the world of scrap? Will they seat me in a dingy little room, with a snack machine that has few selections, and gives up the ones it does have reluctantly? I imagined myself seated there, maybe another new arrival to the world of scrap seated in one of the other well-worn and faded chairs. They would play a video on a grimy television, orienting us to this new and dangerous world. An announcer, a specialist in voiceover for industrial films, would say:
“Hardhats must be worn at all times in the scrap processing area. Always be alert to dangers around you.”
Then the old film would show an image of a hardhat or maybe some men standing around wearing the things.
“Always follow directions. If unsure, stop and ask someone what the correct procedure is. Above all: BE ALERT!”

I would turn to the other person in the room, ask in a nervous and friendly way:
“Did you bring a hardhat?”
“No one told me nuthin’ ‘bout no hardhat,” he’ll say.
“Yeah, me neither,” I’ll respond. And that will be about the extent of our bonding there in the little room with the video and the malfunctioning snack machine.

At the scrap yard, it turns out, they expect visitors to keep a sharp eye out, to pretty much take care of themselves. Given my experience, a video might not be such a bad idea.


The yard was closed when I arrived around four in the afternoon. The folks who run the enormous operation, taking in hulks of cars, old washing machines, stoves, pieces of engines and engines in their entirety and large, unwieldy colossi of rusted metal, call it a day at three o’clock precisely. They start their activities at nine in the morning. I found these business hours rather attractive, and thought it might be nice to go into the salvage business. So I arrived with my truck loaded high with its variety of scrap, metal destined soon to be bundled into large quantities weighing many tons and sent possibly to Asia or other parts of the world to be blasted into molten steel once again, formed into new products, maybe even a stove or refrigerator. Two men there directed me to the entrance, but told me that the place was closed. They’d run out of gas waiting in line for their turn to come up, but I gathered they’d had a chance to unload, judging by the empty late-model Ford pickup they were standing next to. The one man, smiling with few teeth to show, admired my load of scrap, saying that I had maybe a good seventy-five dollars to show for my efforts. He offered to take it for me, saying he would bring it around the next day. I told him that, since I’d already gone to the trouble of loading it up, I may as well see the few dollars the scrap people would give me for it. Besides, I wanted to get inside the place, see what it was like, take a look around. He understood completely, wished me well, and said that at least now I knew where the place was. For sheer convenience, I couldn’t really complain: The huge scrap-processing yard was only about four miles from my house.

So I drove the city streets west, back in the direction of my place. But I didn’t turn to go back home; instead, I drove the old truck to my brother’s to park for the next couple of days. I wouldn’t be able to return tomorrow--the day was already spoken for. I would be able to return maybe on Wednesday, maybe not. I had a psychological problem with returning home with this load of stuff. When I’d pulled out of the driveway earlier in the day—after the scrap yard had closed, but before I knew it—there was an air of finality to the act. This junk had left the place forever; returning with it meant that the junk had beaten me, had somehow won a contest that I couldn’t even begin to describe, didn’t even know existed. I would simply drive the junk someplace else, leave it there for a while, see how that worked out. My brother would be pleased no end.

Earlier in the day I’d stopped at the car repair shop to ask about my van. They had performed an inspection, had noted a few things wrong with it, quoted me around two hundred and fifty bucks to repair the things. I wanted to make sure what was included, wanted to ascertain that one other thing—that I’d added on and was not part of the inspection process—was included in the estimate. The shop’s owner assured me that it was all included. I said ok, and told him in an offhand way that if anyone needed a van that mine was for sale.
“I need a bigger truck,” I told him.
He immediately responded that the shop was getting ready to look over a van that a longtime customer had brought in. He had his doubts about this van, didn’t think it was going to check out ok.
“If we condemn this other van, I’ll have this guy give you call,” he said.
“Ok,” I said, and left my name and number and a few particulars about my white Ford van.

Later in the day, after I’d dropped off the truck at my brother’s, showered, and was getting ready to go eat, my phone rang. The man with the other van said the shop had condemned it, told him it was a junker—not worth buying. This man’s name was Marty and he wanted to see my van right away, wanted to know if I’d already brought it back into the shop to have the repairs done.
“No—but I can meet you there,” I told him. “I just need a ride home after leaving the van.”
“Ok, I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes,” he said.
“The van is dirty,” I replied. “I haven’t had a chance to clean it up yet.”
“That’s ok,” he said, “I just want to take a look.”
I met him at the shop, told him my price, said that I couldn’t really budge from it, and offered him the chance to take it for a ride. I already knew what he was prepared to pay for the junker van, so I felt confident that he would buy mine. It cost much less. Besides, it was a decent van and I felt it was a good price.

We drove down the road and back and he said he would like to buy it, would finalize the deal the next day. He said the van was for his wife—an artist.

”Oh? What kind of art?”
“She paints wine glasses, bottles, old window glass. You oughtta see some of her stuff.” I thought it sounded perfectly dreadful, had a terrible image in my mind of little flowers daubed onto these different objects. I decided to keep my thoughts to myself. No point in pissing off the man who was to buy my van.

Fine, I said. I made sure that he knew I would be in the DC area all day, working on a job, but that I would call him when I returned home. He gave me a ride back to my house, told me he was a very spiritual person, and turned up the music on his religious radio station to emphasize this point.
“Good deal,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

More kitchen, then to market

On Friday I tore away at the kitchen some more. The man from the department of public works called to ask if I still needed a disposal waiver for the debris I was generating. I told him I did. I could tell from his tone that he would just as soon I took care of this on my own, maybe dumping the stuff in some illegal roadside collection point, the weeds and small trees eventually obscuring the boards and nails and drywall and pieces of tile there by the road. I’ve seen these improvised dump-sites many times on my bike rides—they’re not pretty. He said he would try to make it out to the house, would leave the waiver, which was a kind of permit, on my door. I said ok.

The rest of the metal cabinets came away, along with good-sized chunks of the wall. I used mostly the pry bar and reciprocating saw to cut through the metal of the cabinets and the nails and screws that held them in place. They were pretty securely attached to the wall; even the most thunderous whack from my heavy maul, crashing into the dented metal with terrific force, mostly just dented the cabinets even more. Finally, with the bulk of the fixtures gone, I had at it again with the heavy hammer, dislodging the last bit of cupboard enough to pry it away with the wrecking bar. On the other side of this wall is the bathroom. Both walls—the bathroom’s and the kitchen’s—will be mostly removed, so that there will be daylight between the two rooms until I erect new sheets of drywall and maybe tile it over in the bathroom. The pipes to the kitchen sink are now protruding from the floor, where the sink used to be. I will cut them off from the basement and cap them until I decide where the new sink is to go.

At market:

Today I listened with a combination of sadness and regret as my young helper described her preparations for her boyfriend’s birthday celebration. She’d baked a cake for the young man, whom she obviously adored, and assembled a little package of pastries and croissants to give him on his special day. The cake she had made from scratch, something she was understandably very proud of. I’d provided the croissants and so on, a benefit of working at my bread stand. I was going to fire her at the end of the day, let her go for being late on several occasions—including today, when she reported to work almost a half-hour after her starting time. My other helper and I had to scramble to keep up with the load, while I anxiously waited, having no idea if she were coming or not. I like her very much; she is a young artist of twenty or so, a student at the big art school in town, and I admired her sketches and works she produced at the market—things that helped with the presentation and the sale of the breads and pastries. Life rarely offers the perfect opportunity to embark on such an action, and this was certainly no exception. With her obvious anticipation of a joyful time with her boyfriend, presenting him with the cake and surprising him with the different pastries he enjoyed, I felt very much the heartless ogre, delivering the news as I paid her. In my mind I had no choice; I’d told her in the past how important it was that she arrive on time, and this had been mostly ignored, with always an apology on her part. She apologized again as we parted, and I told her that I genuinely liked her, thought she did a good job while working with me, but that the lateness was too big an issue. She seemed to understand. I’ve already lined up another helper—the woman who worked with me at my Thursday market last week. Tomorrow I’ll be on my own until the girl who comes at eight o’clock arrives. I think I’ll be able to handle it ok.

"Singer--Hmmph!"

Another successful trash pickup yesterday. I put out some more of the boxes of debris, filling them with drywall and wood and whatever I’d torn away from the walls in the other house. The trash men took it all. When I returned from my Thursday market, it was all gone. As for the market itself, it was a rather slow affair, helped greatly by my new helper from Hong Kong—a woman who worked terrifically hard and just intuitively knew what to do. She will come again next Thursday, and I will try it with just the two of us. This market seems to be in its waning days, no longer requiring a crew of three to keep things going; if I can get by with only two of us, so much the better.

The other night, as I was packing up the boxes of debris, my big grey cat ran inside the other house to see what was going on. I was just closing the place up, and didn’t see her dart inside. When she didn’t respond to my calls to come in for the night, I suspected what had happened. However, there was nothing much I could do about it; in typical fashion, I’d picked up the wrong set of keys on my way out, and locked the right ones inside the house. She would have to spend the night there. The hour was late, and I was in no mood to pry open a window, climb a ladder and get inside. I went to bed.

The next morning I tried the keys to the basement door, letting myself in down there. However, the door at the top of the basement steps was locked from the inside, so I had to resort to plan B, which involved a ladder and opening a window from outside. My cat could hear my efforts from inside the house, and meowed her approval. I finally got one of the side windows open and called to her to jump up to meet me. This she did, and I lifted her up and out of the window, depositing her on the driveway. She immediately went over to the front lawn, where she began chewing on some grass. When offered food, she didn’t seem particularly hungry. I know this house has a mouse problem, so maybe she’d found a meal on the run during her night in there.

Today I had a horrible breakfast at the local McDonald’s, ordering their hotcakes and sausage. For some reason I thought it would be good. The local citizenry, enjoying their matinal get-together in the comfortable and well-lit accommodations, voiced their opinions on the events of the day. This only added to the horribleness of it all.
On Pavarottit, who just died this week:

“Here’s a guy ain’t done nothin’ to contribute to life, to society, an’ now he’s gonna be immortal.”
The others nodded
“Singer, hmmph.”

Detour to work, markets, and New Jersey

The trash people took away all of the debris I’d set out, which was considerable. I returned home to find the trashcans empty, with the ones in my driveway thrown across the entrance, in a fairly typical fashion. I’ve grown used to this; I simply stop across the street, run over to move the cans out of the way, and park the car in my driveway. I’m just grateful that much of the material from my demolition work is gone. The bathroom is still full of the stuff—the heavy pieces of wallboard in bits and pieces, as well as large sections—littering the small space. I’ll have to await a visit from the inspector from the Bureau of Municipal Waste. I hope it goes well.

Thursday I managed to sell most of what I brought to market. I told my young helper that it would be only the two of us working that day, and that I didn’t know how I would deal with the future markets. She was going back to school, and the other helper had just told me that she was taking a class that would interfere with her work on Thursdays.
“How are we going to get everything set up in time?” She stopped in her work to ask this.
I was fairly direct: “By moving fast and not asking a lot of questions,” I said. She seemed to get the point. The two of us managed ok, and I put the word out at the market that I needed help. Someone should be coming next Thursday.

Last Friday I made the drive up to Carroll County to check out the junk sale. There was the usual assortment of power tools, mowers, hand-tools, and so on. I didn’t bother to obtain a bidder’s number, but checked in at the last minute, just before leaving the place. The auctioneer was starting to sell things in the big shed, and could drum up no interest in a set of hubcaps for a Ford. I recognized the style and thought they would be good for my 1967 pickup. Although I have a set of original hubcaps for the truck, the wheels are currently bare—I don’t want to risk losing them as it sits around or is driven on work runs. These wheel covers—although not the exact year of my truck—would provide some protection from corrosion. The auctioneer was trying to get some interest, finally lowering the starting bid to fifty cents. I raised my hand and he yelled, “SOLD!” I explained that I didn’t have a number, but gave him my name and even ran the sheets of bidder’s numbers up to the office so that I could pay for my purchase without too much waiting. The shiny wheel covers fit perfectly, and actually look good to boot.

This, from a video job:

“Did you make-um tape for me?” The reporter asked this in her falsetto, little-girl voice that she’d been using during the entirety of the job. It made me want to puke. She spoke to the attorneys like this, she spoke to me this way, she even used the nauseating affectation on herself, during those times when she was talking to no one in particular.
“Oooohh, we don’t like-ums long extension cords! Marsha have to go faw away make um plug-ins!” The attorneys found her delightful.

Of course, I hadn’t made a backup audiotape for her. Many times the reporters on these jobs don’t want them. That wasn’t the reason I hadn’t made one, however; the reason was that I didn’t have any tapes, thought maybe I just wouldn’t address the matter, thought perhaps Marsha would go away with her little-girl voice and her high falsetto, would remember later to ask for a tape. But by that time I would be on the road, or maybe stopped at a Dairy Queen, asking the counter girl for a vanilla cone—the tape issue no longer a concern as I licked delicately at the soft ice cream. I told her I would make her one from the video, not knowing exactly how I would go about that. I knew that it was technically possible, but also knew that I was stymied by the most trivial of audio-visual connections, the many cables and power cords conspiring to make a tangled snake’s nest of frustration, ultimately ending with whatever offensive or uncooperative component I deemed responsible being smashed or kicked out the window.

When I got home I rummaged around in a half-hearted way, actually found the required connectors and cables, and got my little tape deck hooked up to the video deck. Everything worked, and I hadn’t exploded in rage, thrown anything around, or even gnashed my teeth a little bit. I let the video play, put the tape recorder on “RECORD,” and went out in the yard to cut away the many vines that were overtaking the place.

The cats looked on in interest, wondering no doubt why I was suddenly keen on tidying up the yard. For their purposes it had been just fine, affording ample places to secrete themselves amongst the vinery and tall weeds. I was going to have a caller on Sunday—a friend from the sixth grade who was the only person from long ago that I was still in contact with. He was now a priest, and had offered to come visit for a short time in the afternoon. We would do lunch.

On Sunday I finished up my market activities and prepared the house in a mad-dash of activity for my caller. Things that had been sitting around for a while simply went in the trash. I wouldn’t miss them. I vacuumed as well, spending a little time on the sofa, which had giant patches of fur where my large grey cat had chosen to sleep. Every time she lay down to nap, she left a good deal of herself behind. This fur didn’t come away so easily, so I know I’ll have to cover the sofa with an old blanket or covering to help prevent this problem in the future.

When my friend arrived, we went directly to lunch at the Mexican place I like over in Ellicott City. There was a new server there, and there was a little confusion about exactly what I was ordering. This was not helped in any way by the fact that I wasn’t so sure myself; I knew what I wanted, but couldn’t find it on the menu for some reason. Nevertheless, the food and drinks arrived without incident, and we shared a good meal together. I had some questions about the church, which I was considering getting reacquainted with, and my friend was happy to answer my queries—being something of an authority on the subject of Catholicism.

We spent a little time at my house afterwards, enjoying sodas from the coke machine and listening to some selections from my beloved Bert Kaempfert collection. With plenty of daylight remaining, my friend took his leave for the trip back to Washington—about a forty-five minute drive. I went upstairs and took a nap, having been up since around four-thirty in the morning. Later I watched the movie Jerry Maguire, which I’d seen once before but decided to revisit. I was glad I did; the portrayals of the different characters seemed credible—and I have to grudgingly admit that Tom Cruise is a rather decent actor.

I set the alarm for six o’clock the next morning—this being Labor Day and a holiday for most people. I would be driving to New Jersey to pick up the vintage riding mower I’d purchased online for forty-two dollars. Once again, I hadn’t really intended to be the winning bidder—it just worked out that way. I made the trip up to the northern part of the state in a little under four hours. I found the town of Pompton Lakes easily enough, and drove through its little commercial district along Main Street, before turning on the residential street where the mower was located. There it was, sitting in the driveway, just as the seller had said. She and her husband were out back, cleaning out the garage, and it looked like they were having a rummage sale. I suspect that maybe they gather things together as a sideline and either sell it online or locally. Everything they’d brought out of the garage was sold, said her husband.

The couple was pleasant enough, the day was absolutely beautiful, and I wheeled the little mower out to the car to remove the handlebars and get it ready to stow in the back. Mark, the woman’s husband, said he would gladly help me lift the thing in when I was ready to load it up. In about ten minutes I had the steering mechanism removed, and the riding tractor was ready to go inside the car. We slid it in easily, with room to spare, and I held it in place with my toolbox behind the rear wheels. I chatted briefly with Mark, who said he’d grown up in the quiet area—which did not appear to be too far from New York City. I asked about places to eat, but he didn’t recommend any of the local restaurants, suggesting that I could try the diner after I commented on seeing it along the main street.

I drove back into town, only a few minutes away, and of course the diner was closed—this being a holiday. But there was a much more impressive-looking place that billed itself as an Irish pub and restaurant. I thought I would take a look; maybe they would serve the corned beef and cabbage that I love. Inside was a massive bar that ran around the middle of a rather large room. The bartender presided over the activities and drinks from his place inside the ring. Next to this room was the dining area. I was seated at a conspicuous table somewhat in the middle of the room, and asked about the corned beef and cabbage. Yes, they had it, my server said. I ordered it right away, noting that it was only $10.95 This seemed like a bargain—especially since it came with red potatoes, meat and cabbage.

I waited for my food while looking over the state highway map I’d picked up at a rest area on the way to Pompton Lakes. I knew that if I started following the little scenic roads that led back in the general direction of home, it would be many hours before I would see my house again—and it would be well after dark. I just decided to retrace my steps, maybe drive around the town a little and call it a day. The drive up had put just a little over two hundred miles on the odometer.

When my food arrived, the plate contained a mountain of cabbage, potatoes, and of course great big slices of corned beef draped over the whole business. As a garnish, there was also broccoli and some big slices of squash. When my server asked if everything was ok, I commented that the food would keep my busy for some time. The food was unusually good, given the quantity that was served. I actually finished off the potatoes and cabbage, but—try as I might—I couldn’t polish off the corned beef, my favorite part. There was simply too much of it. I ended up taking the leftovers with me. The restaurant was good, and I would definitely eat there again. The only troubling thing was a bothersome fly that wouldn’t leave me alone, being insistent throughout the meal on trying to land on my food. I hate the the nasty things, and it made for an unpleasant distraction.

The drive home was uneventful, the holiday roads being lightly traveled, even at the end of this long weekend. Not having to drive in the vicinity of New York City was a bonus, as the radio reports from that area told of delays over the George Washington Bridge and other routes. I stopped once for gas and some provisions, getting terribly bored from my time spent behind the wheel, not really able to look about at the things that would normally be a pleasant diversion. Also, I was falling asleep. It was hard to keep my eyes open, so I pulled out two of my caffeine tablets that I use in extreme cases. Washed down with a coffee from the rest area, they quickly took effect. To help better pass the time, I munched on a bag of some red candies they sold at the rest stop. In New Jersey they have a law that doesn’t allow you to pump your own fuel—the attendants must see to this job. So I gladly handed over my credit card and told him to serve up however much the tank would hold. He also washed the windshield, doing a pretty thorough job of it, and I gave him what was probably an exorbitant tip of two bucks. Exorbitant for me, anyway.

New Jersey’s main roads have a remarkable number of broken-down vehicles on them. Flat tires, cars with their hoods open, owners mucking around in the engine compartment, cars helping other cars, and so on. Maybe it’s the sheer number of vehicles on the road that contributes to this phenomenon, but in my area I can’t say that I see disabled vehicles with the regularity I noticed on this brief trip. They were practically everywhere. As for the tire-changers, they were happily wrangling with their unstable and propped-up cars and trucks within a few feet of the speeding motorists, apparently oblivious to the danger. I noticed that—without exception—all of these cars were pulled over within a few hundred feet of an exit, where they could have driven to be safely out of harm’s way.

I made it home with plenty of daylight remaining. When I turned onto my street, I saw it immediately, beckoning: A late-model riding mower with all the desirable attachments in someone’s front yard. A sign on it said $100. I had to have it. I knew right away that this was a test, that the thing had been put there to taunt me, to bend my will as I drove by with my antique mower stowed in the back of the car—not even unloaded yet. I stopped to take a look, turned the lightly used motor over by hand, and convinced myself that the price was a giveaway. The tractor would run again just fine, would make someone a good, dependable riding mower. The extra equipment alone—the bagger and grass-catcher—were worth a few hundred dollars. This test—like the others that came before it—I was destined to fail. I drove home, slid the little antique rider out of the car on the makeshift ramps I’d cut this morning, and put the steering handle back together. I put gas into the dry tank and pulled a few times on the rope starter. It fired up and ran smoothly. I got on the tiny machine, figured out the controls and the clutch, and set about mowing the yard next door, which conveniently needed a good clipping. It did a remarkably good job, powering through the rather tall grass with little trouble. I was used to these underpowered machines balking at being asked to do any meaningful work. I headed into the really tall grass out back, and it continued to do just fine. I finished up the front yard and parked the amazing little machine. With a two-tone red and white seat and red sheet metal, it was actually kind of stylish.

After I’d finished with the lawn, I walked back up the street to visit the pharmacy and of course stop in to see about the tractor for sale. As I approached in the failing light, my worst fear was realized: Someone had beaten me to it. He was parked, his beaten-up pickup partway in the road, and his hazard lights flashing. He and the tractor’s owner had attached jumper cables to the dead battery and were trying to get the machine started. It had been sitting for about a year and of course had gum deposits that were clogging the fuel system. I watched as the two worked at it, successfully getting the motor to fire with some starter fluid for just a few seconds. It sounded fine, until it stopped. This was because it was running only on the little bursts of spray that the prospective buyer was spraying into the engine. I thought initially that he was trying to impress the owner with how the tractor was problematic, that it couldn’t be depended on, see—look how it won’t stay running. I imagined that this was a tactic to get the seller to come down on the already comically low price. I was wrong, however; it turns out that the man spraying the fluid into the engine was simply an idiot. He didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t know the principles on which the motor depended to run. He thought that maybe putting the seat down would make it start up and stay running, because the safety switch was preventing it from doing so with the seat in the raised position. The seller patiently explained to the idiot man that he’d disabled the safety switch, that obviously the tractor would not have even attempted to run with the safety switch activated, would not have turned over the engine—nothing. The prospective buyer, the man with the can of starter fluid, looked at the seller blankly, not comprehending. He sprayed some more fluid, hoping that this time it would stay running. Realizing that the man with the can of fluid was an idiot, I decided to make an offer on the tractor right there.
“I hate to get in the middle of what you’re doing here,” I said, But if he doesn’t want it, I’ll give you a hundred dollars for the tractor.”
“Ok!” The seller was delighted.
“I’m going up the street to the store,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
I left them like that, the man with the beaten-up pickup wasting the seller’s time, trying repeatedly to get the machine to stay running, even though it was obvious that it needed a carburetor rebuild—something that would take me about forty-five minutes. I was glad I’d made the offer, because I didn’t want to see the idiot man get it for an even lower price.
He was an annoying, frivolous person, and had no consideration for the time he was taking away from the seller.

I returned maybe twenty minutes later to find the idiot man with the same purpose in mind—to try to fix the tractor with his little can of starter fluid. As I watched for a minute or so, he sullenly said he was going to buy it.
“I know what I have to do,” he said, presumably meaning he knew how to fix it. I very much doubted that, but wished him luck anyway. I was actually relieved; I didn’t need another machine around, and was glad that the seller was going to get the full price for it. What the idiot man didn’t know, however, was that he was wearing out the electric starter with his repeated attempts to fire the engine. These starters are not very robust, and constant use like this burns them out quickly by overheating them. He may, after a long and bumbling job, get the tractor running. Most likely he will not; but—even if he does—the starter will fail before too long. Of this I am quite certain. I went home and admired my New Jersey mower.

Kitchen:Banquet of scrap metal

I picked up the phone this morning and dialed the number listed for the Bureau of Municipal Waste—the people who take care of our garbage. I expected the worst. I wanted to explain that I was a homeowner who was undertaking some renovations, would have a considerable amount of material to dispose of, and how exactly would I go about that? The stuff is too voluminous to just set out by the road and wait for the trash collectors to pick up. That’s not to say that I don’t do it anyway—setting out boxes of wrecked walls, sawed-off lumber, and the like. My theory is that—if I can disguise it as regular trash—maybe they’ll take it away. This mostly works; however, I’ve come to quickly realize that even a small room yields a prolific amount of debris. The bathroom is a good example of that—and I haven’t even finished tearing down the walls.

Here is what I expected when the person on the other end had finished listening to my query: She would respond with something that sounded like,
“Urble urble oorf. Urble oorf root. Root with urble powder extra urble. Hork. Hork. HOOOOORK!! Whereupon the phone would go dead, and the recorded message would come through the earpiece:
“If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again. Operator 100054566.” Followed by horrific beeping noises.

None of that happened. The very person who answered my call, actually picked up the phone, had all the answers I was looking for. ALL of them. Her name was Ella, and she knew trash.

“What about some concrete?” I asked. “I might break up the front walk to pour a new one. It’s made of concrete, you know.”
“Concrete is free,” said Ella.
Free? This was too good to be true. Free concrete disposal! And I imagined this to be one of the more problematic things to be rid of. Then she took down my information, said that an inspector would come around to look at the work I was doing, would issue a permit for so many loads of material to be dropped off in my truck. It was all quite official.
“He won’t be able to make it out there for another seven to ten days,” she said.
“That’s quite all right,” I answered. I was still stunned, in shock really, that this woman was able to help me. Then she gave me directions—very detailed—to the big landfill I’d want to drive to in order to dump my material. She wanted to know about everything I would be throwing away.
“Carpet?”
“No.”
“Drywall?”
“Yes.”
“Wood?”
“Yes.”
“Appliances or metal?”
“I’ll take those things to the metal recyclers,” I said.
“Oh, yes—you do have a facility near you.” Ella knew her stuff.
“Windows?”
“I’ll try to recycle or give them away,” I said.
“Tile?”
“Yes, some tile. A little, not much.”
“Anything else you can think of?” She really needed me to be thorough and specific.
“Oh! Those linoleum things, you know, the floor stuff that comes in squares.”
“Floor tiles.” She knew all the right terminology.

After she gave me directions to the facility, she wished me a good day and signed off. If I ever get a government job, I want to work for the Bureau of Municipal Waste; it seems to be the best-run agency of the lot.

Later I went over to the house and started dismantling the metal cabinets in the kitchen. They were destined, along with the antique gas range that no one wanted and the refrigerators downstairs, to go to the big scrap yard nearby that collects cars, bulk metal, appliances and so on. I thought I would save the old cabinets, maybe dating from the forties or early fifties, judging by the design; however, they turned out to be in such poor shape that I just tore at them with my metal-cutting saw, pounded the crap out of them with my heavy maul, and cut away the cheap countertop with my circular saw. The cabinets, although rusted through in places, were surprisingly heavy. I cut the sturdy doors off their hinges, sawed through the metal bracing, and yanked one of the units off the wall, tearing a good deal of tile away with it. The cheap and ancient wallboard came away as well, creating holes in the wall over the sink. I planned to replace a good deal of this wall anyway, so this didn’t create too vexing a problem for me. I more or less expected it.

Later I boxed up much of the debris from the kitchen, putting the heavy tiles and bits of countertop into cardboard boxes and folding over the flaps. I carried it all out to the road, deciding to maybe spread it out a little, so that some of the material was out in front of my house, and some of it was in front of the house next door. It’s always fun to see exactly how much they cart away. I don’t want to overdo it, but still.

Bathroom is now the "wreck" room

Today I started wrecking the bathroom next door. The hideous little space came apart readily enough, its construction consisting mainly of a series of quick-fixes, carried out over the course of many years. I wielded the wrecking bar with abandon, taking pleasure in seeing the shoddy work come apart so easily, not even resisting a little bit. There was no finesse in my approach: if a fixture needed removing from the wall, a solid whack from the strong iron bar sent it flying. The shower rod and filthy plastic curtain crumpled together in a mass, ready for the trash. There would be no more cleaning this shower stall; the cheap plastic walls that stood up from the tub tore and succumbed after a few blows from the clawed bar. I wondered at the layers of unskilled workmanship that the demolition revealed, the numerous repairs undertaken over the years, each one built upon another distressing piece of work, so that any succeeding addition—any subsequent repair—was doomed to be even worse than its predecessor. The whole thing was an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle—or possibly a combination of different puzzles. The workmanship was universally poor

Within an hour I had the little space mostly demolished. The sink was gone, the shower head stood alone, a piece of broken board supporting it, and the pipes from the basement adding a little additional support. The cheap vanity, made of pressed wood, was flattened and in pieces, and out by the road for tomorrow’s trash. Any fixtures worth saving were in a little pile out in the dining room. Scrap metal was in a box that I had started for that purpose. I’ll post an ad online for the sink, as it is still functional, and might be used for a workshop or some other purpose where appearance is not critical. It is free for the taking. I’ll do the same for the mirror and medicine cabinet, a cheap item I picked up when I bought the house. It is still in good shape, but I will not be reusing it. The mirror I just bought is much nicer and goes with the other things in the bathroom set.

I will cut off the plumbing leading to the bathroom, maybe tomorrow—possibly Friday. Most of it will have to be reworked; I plan to relocate the tub and shower to the wall at the end of the room, put the sink and vanity and toilet in the main area. They are currently crammed together down at the end of the tiny bathroom, making it difficult to maneuver down there. If I can pull this off, it will be a wonderful use of the space. It is time for the bathroom to get a new lease on life—there was nothing more to be done with the old space, the constant fixes, the cheap repairs and shoddy work. They must all be done away with, everything, together—once and for all. This gives me great pleasure.

Background

Background

Following is a mostly day-by-day account of a home renovation, a reworking of the kitchen and bath and other rooms to update them from the nineteen-fifties era to current standards of livability. I’m someone unaccustomed to such work, knowing a little about it, but not enough to make me terribly skilled or even particularly adept. I just plod along. Sometimes I don’t even do that; I may stop altogether for a good long while. Maybe scratching my head, or going outside to scratch my cat’s head.

The goal is to get the house into livable condition, and to do it as quickly as possible. However, there is a built-in hurdle to this equation: I don’t work quickly. I don’t move quickly, don’t think quickly. I mostly excel at things that require extremely slow movements.

The work I am undertaking, the stuff that will take place in the house, is a fairly major project, and it is being done by someone who is mostly comfortable reading a book or driving around looking at things, or taking walks—always on the lookout for the odd cat lurking here and there. You see, I will be completely demolishing a bathroom, a kitchen, possibly some other rooms if I have enough energy left, and reassembling them in a new configuration. Also, I would like to add a whole new bathroom upstairs, where one does not currently exist. Things like sinks, toilets, tub and shower will be relocated, the walls will be torn down to the bare studs, the floor will be ripped up and discarded, leaving a clear view into the basement. That kind of thing. Believe me, there are things I would rather be doing. But view it this way: Here is your chance, to experience vicariously, all of the horrors of this kind of work, the stuff you dread, but that needs to be done in your own house. Envision yourself taking on all of the projects at once, and then not having to do them. Let someone else immerse himself in the agony, the frustration, the fruitless wranglings with a variety of materials and tools.

Would I rather be walking around the neighborhood looking for cats, or driving out into the country to photograph old tractors and pumpkins? Yes, I would. I would opt for those things before the home renovations. Besides, you might find stuff while walking around; sometimes people give things away, leave them lying out by the curb, and you can just make off with the unwanted items, bring them home and put them around in the yard. There’s always that.

So why go about this at all, you might ask? Why not just walk around the neighborhood looking for cats? I have two houses, see. One of them I live in, and the other sits vacant. This is by choice; I had renters living in the hideous place, their stay lasting almost four years, actually. I’d slapped together a few repairs to make it livable back then, had mostly forgotten what kind of condition it was in, then decided to visit one day. It wasn’t too far, as the place is just next door. I had them move out.

“Sorry! House need big work!” I yelled, waving my arms in the yard, doing my best imitation of a foreign landlord. I ran back and forth a few times for added effect. I felt this would be more dramatic, although the two tenants knew me to be mostly an American hick. Never would they have suspected I was from a foreign shore, wouldn’t have particularly cared if I were. They had a cheap place to live, and now that phase of their life was over.

So it has been vacant for a while. A few months, actually. During that time I have been reading my books, looking forward to another trip abroad, working at the odd things that put bread on the table. I haven’t even gotten out in the neighborhood much to look for cats.

Some days no work whatsoever will take place; don’t think this is going to be a frenzy of activity, wielding one power tool after another, an epic adventure carved out with a reciprocating saw. On those work-free days I may get up late, hitting the snooze button until around ten a.m., the classical music doing its best to rouse me. Maybe an early offering from Haydn, followed by a lively snatch of Mozart, then—when it’s past any reasonable hour for facing the day, the inevitable chorus from Bizet’s Carmen, hollering to just please get the hell out of bed, which is what I always hear when they start singing the boisterous “Toreador.”

Get of out bed, now!
Please get out of bed!
Get out of bed,
Get out of bed!
If you can hear me,
I said please get out of bed
Get out of bed RIGHT NOW!

So there will be days like that. There will be days when I shudder at the thought of immersing myself in the grit and the white powder of pulverized walls, of endless nails and splintered wood, of going and facing a project that looks as if it will never end or come to fruition. For all I know, it might not. On those days I’ll think over to Iceland, vacation destination of practically no one. I’ll daydream of stepping out of my little rented car, standing alone on a volcano-blasted plain, the huge boulders and glacier-strewn rocks a jumbled landscape. Some days I’ll actually BE in Iceland, the house alone and cut off from the world, the things that make it livable no longer a part of its fabric. I won’t care much, because I’ll be in Iceland—land that I love. I’ll be sure to let you know when that happens.

The first phase has started, however. But first, let’s meet the neighbors. They are the half-wit and her husband, an elderly couple who live just next door to the place that has become my albatross. They eye it constantly, wondering what the hell. Can one of our kids, our many kids with their kids—just move in there? Please? We don’t care, it’s a house—how bad can it be? The half-wit works at burger joint, used to work at McDonald’s. Overall she has about thirty years in the business. Her job there is to straighten up the tables and mop the floors, make sure there is enough ketchup and so on in the little condiment bins.

She had the grandkids one day recently. They were out in the driveway, having a good time. They were playing a game whereby they would climb up on a pile of gravel with their little bikes, then ride down towards the other one waiting at the bottom. I thought maybe they shouldn’t to that, since it looked like they were going to kill each other, and –of course—the pile of gravel was mine.

“Hi, kids—why don’t you go play over in your driveway? You’re going to get hurt here.”
The older boy, an exceptionally dull young man, responded, “Huh?”
But then he asked this, as his grandmother, who had been spraying water onto her car, told the kids to move away from the gravel.

“Is wat wer huse?” He has something of a speech impediment. This translated to:
“Is that your house?”
Yes it was, I told him.
“Whey qho fose othrs how ive there?” Understandably, he was asking why other people lived there. Fair enough. This was when the place was still occupied.
Without going into the complexities of the adult world of rents, tenants, landlords, civil law, and so on, I told him simply:
“I can’t live in two houses, so I let them live there.”
“Huh?”

I returned home. The half-wit asks, from time to time, how much rent I’ll ask for when I have it finally fixed up. I name a figure that would probably be exorbitant for the Taj Majal. “It’s going to be pretty nice,” I say.

Her husband, a man who is forever praising God, works for the county. No need to elaborate, just working for the county is enough; the security and safety of a job from which you can’t get fired, the satisfaction of knowing you can go into the office and do any damned thing, sit and stare, stupor-like, as a thin line of drool pools on the desk in front of you, and probably get a promotion next week. He pointed to a shiny white car in his driveway one day: “The good lord sent us that car,” he said. He is forever saying that the good lord sent him this and that. I believe, implicit in his bringing a higher power into the picture is this message: “The good lord don’t take too kindly to you and your empty house. I don’t see him sending you any shiny white cars or even coming ‘round to mow the lawn once in a while. No sirree. Guess the good lord knows who he likes in this neighborhood.”

I was painting the place one day, slapping a thin coat on the one exterior wall that needed to be finished. I’d taken a long break from the job, lasting a little over a year, and now the paint that was going on was a completely different shade from the parts I’d already covered. Oh well. After time, it too started to fade into the uniform color of the rest of the house, making the difference not so noticeable. You are starting to get an idea of the pace I usually accomplish—or try to accomplish—things. I am typically in not much of a hurry. One of the half-wit’s grown children was there, helping her grown child move his things into the house. He’d just been evicted from his apartment, his young child and wife, too. Things were in flux, but he didn’t seem to mind so much.

The grandson showed me a lamp, holding it up proudly for me to see. He’d made it himself.

“You have any idea what one of these costs new?” he asked expectantly.
I told him I did not. From his tone, I gathered that this was a lamp that would fetch a handsome price in a store, should you even be able to find one like it.
“A hundred and fifty bucks,” he said triumphantly. He then detailed the prices of the different components that went into the making of this lamp. I did some mental calculations, rounding off the figures and adding them together. He didn’t appear to have saved so very much by making the lamp himself. It was, nevertheless, a nice lamp, really a string of lights on a strip, plugged together to create a track-lighting effect.
“That’s a nice lamp,” I said.
He beamed, then tossed it into the pile he’d been making, along with the other things he’d cleared out of his apartment.

Presently the woman I believe to be his mother began to speak, while the young man, recently de-housed, put some order into the little pile. She and her boyfriend were painters, she said, indicating that I could call on them to help with the painting I would need done while the house underwent renovations.
“I can’t work for real long; I need breaks on account of my back, but my boyfriend will keep going—even if I have to stop.”
I told her I would be happy to give them a call, and would accept their help with the understanding that she wouldn’t always be able to paint, but that her boyfriend would.
“I just need breaks every now and then, you know. But my boyfriend—he’s a painter—he just keeps going.”
“Everyone needs a break now and then,” I told her.
Then she volunteered that her husband had been killed.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.” There seemed to be more there, so I asked:
“Was it an accident?” I realized that it was none of my business, but at the moment didn’t care.
“No,” she replied, “He was shot in the head.”
She said this with the combination of regret and matter-of-factness a waitress might display in an all-night diner, delivering the news to a hungry customer that there was no more buttered toast. I had to get back to my painting. It was hot, I hadn’t accomplished much, I’d indulged the young man and his lamp, had listened to the woman’s stories about painting and her back, and now was hearing the distressing news that her husband had been shot in the head—and she apparently didn’t care one way or the other, delivering the news to a stranger holding a paint brush next to a run-down house. The half-wit’s household and its assortment of characters is a never-ending carnival of fun. The woman carefully wrote down her number and handed me the little slip of paper. I told her I would call when it was time to paint the interior.

The half-wit herself, matriarch of this clan of dunderheads, is always generous with her advice and questions.
“You should cut them bushes back.”
“This house got you beat, ain’t it?”
“You ain’t got nothing stolt, are you?” This question, which I understood perfectly, was meant to inquire about having things stolen from my porch. I’d in fact had a bike stolen.
In the days before I’d dug out the driveway extension and had it paved over, there was a constant mud puddle in the lawn, made worse by cars driving over that area.
“Why don’t you throw them weeds in the mud-hole?” she’d ask.
And on and on like this. One day recently she came over, with an important mission to execute. I was working out in the front yard when she approached.
“Them folks across the street.” She pointed to the apartment complex for elderly people. “They tolt me to tell you not to park over there no more or else they’ll call the police.”
Years ago, I’d occasionally parked my car in their lot, because space was tight in my driveway and I was sharing my house at the time. I hadn’t parked there in probably four years.
“I don’t park over there,” I told her. “Never have,” I lied.
“Oh,” she was unconvinced. A great big apartment complex, with lots of employees, surely held more sway in her world than a tee-shirted, whiskered man making noise in his yard with power tools because he was too cheap to hire someone to do the work.
“I’m just sayin’,” she said. “They tolt me they was gonna call the police if they see your car there no more.”
I bid her good day and fed more branches into my chipper/shredder. When she first approached, she’d commented that she thought I’d been crushing rocks with the machine.

THE HOUSE

The house itself is from the same era as mine—built around 1928. It is a Cape Cod style bungalow, I suppose, with—at one time—cedar shingles on the exterior. Those shingles were covered during the huge asbestos-shingle craze that swept these kinds of neighborhoods in the past. Salesmen would come around, tout the benefits of the ugly shingles, and a crew would set about covering the attractive wood exterior after the homeowner signed the paperwork and made some kind of down-payment. The results were nothing short of hideous. In addition, the asbestos shingles are brittle things, much like covering a house with cheap china or porcelain dinner-plates. Strike the things and they break. Obviously, a house covered in cracked and broken pieces only adds to the distressing effect of this material.

So the house has been around for some time. I have borne witness to its history these past ten years. Abandoned by the neighbors who once lived next door to me with their young son and two daughters, it passed through several renters. The family, relocated to someplace in the Midwest, still owned the house, couldn’t really sell it, so they tried their luck at getting different people to live there. The most recent renters were a young man and his common-law wife and their daughter, a little girl of about four or five. The little girl was an unwanted child, mostly screamed at by her mother from dawn until dusk, and the young man went off in search of work, returning at the end of the day to the endearing cries of his child, who called out to him, “Daddy!” They lived in a tangled mess of unmowed grass, the tinny and underpowered lawnmower no match for the knee-high greenery that surrounded the house. I watched one day as the young man, in misery, pushed the reluctant machine through the verdant lushness, a wobbly wheel impeding his progress, and the thick greenery clogging the machine in the sticky heat, making it necessary to stop and get it going again.

The woman, in agony with the unwanted little girl, afflicted with a house that was neglected and not in the least improved by her living there, complained about my thick-furred grey cat. I saw a note one day as I returned from work. It said:

“Your cat is knocking over our trashcan, creating a huge mess. Please keep your cat away from our trash.”

I would not for one minute dispute that my grey cat was actually EATING her trash; she is not in the least bit proud, and—as long as the trash is fresh—might wander over to see what was there to supplement her regular menu. However, this cat was in no way responsible for overturning the trashcan—she simply arrived to pick through the interesting mix after some other critter did the heavy-hitting. I know this to be true, for on many occasions my own trashcans were knocked over, their contents spread around the driveway. There is a healthy population of raccoons in the area, and they were most likely the culprits. They can make quick work of a trashcan full of pizza leavings, eggshells, old bacon, and the like.

I explained this to the frazzled young woman, felt that she was just overwhelmed with her situation, the constant screaming at the little girl, her young man who cursed and sweated with an underpowered machine out in the tall grass. The cat, delicately nosing through the scattered garbage, was just one more thing. She accepted this, said that she’d had a bad day. I can only imagine.

So they moved out--had not actually been paying the rent for some time, as it so happens. For over a year they lived there, the owners out in the Midwest waiting for rent payments that never arrived. Along with the young couple was an assortment of friends, live-in houseguests, and their beaten and battered pickups and sedans, mostly parked all over the front lawn. The last evidence that the man and his wife and young daughter had been there was impressive: Almost all of their belongings were piled here and there on the front lawn: Sofas, stereos, cheap furniture, the little girl’s clothes and toys and other playthings. For a week or so it remained there, while the weather changed, the rain and the sun coming down on the sad collection. The house had puked it guts out onto the front lawn.

I helped clean up this mess. After making a deal with the owners, who were now back in town, I got much of the stuff picked up. They had rented a trash container, a big steel vessel that would be picked up by a truck and carted away. In the meantime, the house’s contents were piled onto the front porch to get the stuff out of the immediate view of passersby. Someone had complained to the authorities, it seems.

Unable to pass up a bargain, I bought the house. Mostly uninhabitable--even though people had just been living there--I had to get it cleaned up and in reasonable condition fairly quickly. I did this in a month or two, hiring a young man to help with the painting and install some floor coverings in the kitchen and bathroom. I ripped up all of the purple carpeting and threw it away. It was stained in many places, and—besides—it was purple.
For close to three years, my tenants, two men who had previously been unknown to each other, lived there. Now it is time for the modest, two-story house to undergo a renaissance.

NEXT: Demolition work begins.

Introduction

I was asked to write an introduction to this collection of narratives—a sort of treatise, I suppose, on home improvement projects. The author, a former student of mine at the University of Maryland, is someone I remember as a particularly unpleasant young man. He mostly sat in the back of the classroom, making sniffling noises, and holding an improbably large white handkerchief. During our discussions of Keats, he would gag loudly. During an in-depth treatment of Dickens, he had this to offer, with no explanation—an especially odious poem regarding the main character in Great Expectations:

Pip, Pip
He cut his lip
While in the pool,
Taking a dip


I seem to recall him sitting, often with one finger probing a nostril, trying to get the attention of some of the more attractive females in the room. He had the unsettling ability to move one eye independently of the other, resulting in a Quasimodo-like effect, or perhaps remniscent of the frightening countenance of trolls. His efforts with the young women were never rewarded with any success that I could see. Mostly he was an object of derision, scorn, and outright ridicule. The large white handkerchief—no doubt—did not further his cause much. There was one occasion where he came to the lecture wearing no shoes.

I didn’t want to write this introduction, didn’t care so much either what was contained in the narrative. I did it, however, on the condition that he never ask me to do a similar thing again—or ever to contact me, for that matter. I’ve read through the introductory passages in a cursory manner, saw that the words seemed to be in the proper order, the sentences strung together fairly well. As for the content, it has something to do—from what I can gather—with kitchen sinks, faucets, pipes (the references to pipes seem endless), trips hither and yon in a dreadful old truck. A lot of it appears to be pointless mucking about with decaying old things, knocking things off walls (quite a bit of knocking things off walls, come to think of it). That’s mostly what stuck with me. If he is going somewhere with all of this, I cannot imagine—or care—where.

I should note that what little I remember of his poor showing in my literature course is also reflected in the current writing set before you.

--Dr. Edward C. Gibbons, Professor Emeritus, Modern British Literature