Getting My Hands Dirty

I have a couple of good friends who are in the construction trade. As independent contractors, they make their living building things. Big things. They spend the majority of their workdays using manly trucks full of power tools to dig, saw, sand, drill, hammer, mix, fasten and grind all sorts of materials and turn them into things with addresses.  

I’m fascinated with what my hammer-wielding friends do for a living because it’s just so dang cool to be able to build something out of nothing. That, and these guys get to wear leather tool belts all day. They hit things with sledge hammers and cut through steel plates with white hot acetylene torches. The only careers above it on the testosterone scale would be bull rider, F-16 jockey and mixed martial arts champion. Or being a member of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team or a Navy SEAL. That would be cool, too.

In the morning, contractors show up on the job site, which is often no more than a dirt lot. Then, they keep showing up day after day and soon there’s a foundation and then framed walls and a roof and electrical and plumbing systems and insulation and windows and trim and … before you know it, a building is there that wasn’t there before you and your crew started.

Sometimes I’m envious of how my friends make their living. After all, when I go to work each morning, I don’t face an empty lot but an empty page on a monitor. My tools, a desk and laptop computer, laser printer and wireless router, would look ridiculous hanging from a belt around my waist. After all, I tell stories that (hopefully) enlighten, entertain and sell things. The stories my builder buddies make are parts of buildings that people live or work in, take shelter from storms in, raise families in – you get the idea.

The results of my work any given month can be saved onto a USB drive or printed out and stashed away in a file folder with lots of room to spare. My contractor friends can drive around their hometowns past actual physical structures they’ve built with their own hands. How cool must that be?

It’s no wonder then, that whenever I get a chance to actually build something out of raw materials, it usually winds up being a thoroughly relaxing and satisfying experience. Take this past cold, stormy weekend, for example. In spite of looming writing deadlines, I spent much of Saturday and Sunday in my garage building a custom, rustic-framed chalkboard. My wife had seen something similar in a gift shop on one of our weekend travels last summer and thought it would look wonderful in our guest bedroom. Unfortunately, the price tag on the unique piece was higher than the mountain town we were visiting, so we walked out empty handed. Unbeknownst to my wife, however, I had made enough mental notes about the chalkboard’s design to make one myself and surprised my wife with it on her birthday a few weeks ago.

My crafty project was such a hit with the Mrs., she asked if I’d be able to design and build a different one for the wall in our dining room. Oh, and could I possibly have it finished and hung before our company arrives for Easter supper? (Heavy sigh.) Okay, if you insist.

And so, I wound up back in my garage this past weekend with the radio blasting my favorite computer-tech-guy-talk-show, making a cacophony of noise using as many power tools as I possibly could without tripping circuit breakers, sending clouds of sawdust out into the steady rain falling on our driveway, and generally having as much fun as a big, balding, middle-aged kid can have.

Okay, so projects like these aren’t even close to building a house. Duh. But actually making something physical that will be around for years to come – and holding a nail gun in my hands instead of a wireless keyboard – it’s a pretty good feeling.

Maybe I should start wearing a framing hammer and carpenter’s belt while writing at my desk. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a repost of my column first published yesterday, 3.29.12, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper.

© 2012 WordChaser, Inc.

The Porta-Potties Are In Bloom

I know Spring has arrived in the foothills of Southern California not because of the clouds of yellow pollen that waft through the air with even the slightest breeze (or leaf blower), turning our cars a bright, powdery shade of saffron. It’s also not because our family pops antihistamines like Tic-Tacs during these days.

No. I know when Spring has sprung because of all the Porta-Potties popping up on neighborhood lawns from Sunland in the west to Flintridge in the east of our quaint suburban valley. Our all-too-brief rainy season is essentially over, with months of bone dry, hot-as-a-muffler weather just around the corner. Mortgage meltdown and shrinking home equity lines of credit be damned, homeowners everywhere seem to have pulled the trigger on long-awaited remodeling projects.

So, up go the Porta-Potties set far out by the curb. In come dumpsters to driveways like ships to berth. And out come the sledgehammers, crowbars, saws and enough power tools to dim the lights two counties over.

Homeowners who wait until Spring to begin remodeling are smart. Unlike my wife and me, who foolishly began our first, and last, major home remodel at the beginning of winter many years ago – a winter of near record rainfall. And cold. And wind. And what were we thinking?  

Within days after our contractor and his horde of hairy-handed helpers arrived, half of the roof and at least a third of the exterior walls in our house were gone, leaving most living areas exposed to the ravages of winter.

Our Christmas tree that year was on wheels. We had no undemolished corner of a living room in which to put a traditional tree, so we bought a small, live tree in a planter and sat it on a 4-wheeled moving dolly. Then, whenever rainwater breached a new location in the ceiling and threatened to short out the decorative lights festively strung on our tannenbaum like spiral slices on a holiday ham, we would simply roll the entire yuletide display to a less-damp location elsewhere in the house.

I spent the better part of the next four months waking up during the night to the sound of howling wind, flapping tarps and flowing water. I would jump out of bed, dash outside with a flashlight in one hand and hammer in the other, and climb up onto the remains of our roof to frantically refasten blue tarps that had become unfurled sails.

I have pictures of our then school-aged son and daughter, standing on a rough plywood subfloor in what would months later be a beautiful new kitchen. They are bundled up in their bathrobes, with a “hurry up and take the picture, Dad, it’s freezing in here” look on their faces. Behind them where a wall should be, is more half-inch plywood, temporarily nailed onto 2x4 studs – a laughable (yet in no way funny) imitation of walls to keep at least some of the wind and rain out of the “kitchen” until real stucco and wallboard versions could be installed. In the picture, rainwater can be seen pouring through the gaps in the plywood.

How we made it through that period without a visit from Child Protective Services, I’ll never know. Seeing the many blue and white plastic porta-potties dotting the streets around town today, reminds me all over again of that unforgettable time when the porta-potty in our front yard was the only place to go to get out of the rain. Ah, good times.

But then, really – aren’t Porta-Potties all about good times? I mean, what other industry (other than hair salons) has companies with so many clever names? You just gotta love “Happy Can Portable Toilets,” or “Best Seat In The House,” “Johnny On The Spot,” “Royal Throne,” “Gotta Go Potties,” “UrinBiz,” “Willy Make It?,” “Ameri-Can,” “Tanks Alot,” and my personal favorite, “Doodie Calls.” I’m not making these up, folks. Then again, if your business is Porta Potties (What did you do today, Daddy?), you find your fun where you can.

With that thought, I’ll officially welcome the new season by taking yet another walk through the neighborhood, where the scent of Spring – and other things – is in the air.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is an edited version of a column first published in the April 3, 2008 edition of the Crescenta Valley Sun newspaper.)

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.