BackwaterBlog

Who was it, Tom Petty?  Sang the song about Livin’ like a Refugee?  Yeah.

I’ll have to physically reach into my brain and hit the kill switch on the whine generator to keep this from getting too sixth grade and all, but lawdy.  What times we have here.

I’m sitting in the midst of an urban industrial park of sorts, with a quasi-ghetto just down the street.  One of those pack-em-in but call it “Townhouse Clustering” things that rest on the fringes of shopping squalor.  And trust me, so far as shopping goes, I can drive a two mile radius and buy anything that western civilization has to offer.  Huge new car dealers and several used ones.  Furniture.  Food.  Lottery tickets and Payday Cash.  Kenneling services.  Hell, Sears and Best Buy are small players on this landscape.

10 lane boulevards.  I live a large block from one in this rented coop.  There is more traffic on the street where this house sits, in one hour, than there is in one year in the backwater, and I only wish I was exaggerating.

The house is owned by my wife’s employer, whose warehouse and office is directly across the street.  They were gonna bulldoze this place and put up a new structure, a vast monolith and shrine to the availability of automotive accessory bling but the deal fell through and the vacant house was spared for the moment.  And after evicting a few straggling vagrants and tossing a pail of Pine-Sol on the floor, they offered it to us as a sort of halfway house.  With a yard.  Which is urban code for “Undeveloped Commercial Land.”

My wife has been re-clothed and re-shod largely by way of donated clothes (I say largely, but hardly entirely) and has emerged from the aftermath of losing her entire wardrobe with enough apparel for any three members of, say, the Romanov clan back when the Czar was doing well.  She has a circle of friends that include many hip young women, and given that Ally is well within the clothing size of single digits she was heard to exclaim yesterday about “Fifteen . . . no wait, sixteen pair of jeans!”  And we ain’t talking about Wrangler relaxed fit here either, folks.  Who the hell needs sixteen pair of designer jeans anyway?

For my part, old Corporate Partner Stu dug up a pair of his barely worn Carhardt bibs to replace the scorched ones I stubbornly dug out from beneath a charred rafter. ”There y’are son.  Don’t mind the dried caulk streaks on the pockets, figgered you wouldn’t want to show up on a jobsite in new ones in any event.”  And he was right, I wouldn’t.  Pride trumping vanity and all that.  I am blessed, and in possession of great treasure indeed.

In the year and a half we had in the little backwater house there were likely no more than a dozen opportunities to go out and sit in a tony restuarant for a meal.  Such places just don’t exist down there, you have to drive a long ways to get to them, and once arrived home in that green and quiet place there just didn’t seem to be the need, you know?

I believe we’ve already exceeded our restuarant quota in the past three weeks.  Once I’ve arrived “home” to the rental, about all I want to do is get away from it.

Makes it easier to work the ten hour days with the two hour commute.  Makes overtime more palatable.  Makes the drive to the homestead more of a pilgrimage instead of just a trip to pick up the mail.

Yesterday, the boy with the excavator and the grappling bucket had the homestead scraped down to the top of the foundation, swinging square yards of debris into a waiting truck.  I stood and watched him for a time, noted the fact that as noisy as the machine seemed to be it was still quiet there in the pines.  His was the only motion to be seen.  I took mail from the mailbox and drove as slowly as I could up the little road barely wide enough for one large truck to squeeze through on.

And streamed north toward the city, refugee that I am, and wondered about supper.

The Demolition Man allowed as to how he could save the deck lumber, if we wanted.  “Just take a chainsaw to them posts there, lift the whole shebang up and set ‘er down in the yard over yonder.  Yep.”

Now that’s all fine and good.  Lumber’s expensive, particularly the kind of lumber that I prefer to buy.  The clear stuff that’s hard to find, purchased from the old boys in the run down mill over in P-Town.  But it presents me with a project, for as soon as he “Sets ‘er down” in the yard I’m gonna have to attack it with crowbar and sledge, nail-pullers and saw.  There’s a not so gentle art for you, making useful lumber out of an already put together thing.  And you can rest assured that I don’t put ‘em together with the idea that they’re to be taken apart.  Not in the slightest.

Curiously, the deck survived in much better fashion than the house itself.  Oh it had a fair sized hole burnt through it, right in the heart of the main fire area, but structurally it sailed right along.

When I was finished building it some 2 years ago, the county inspector came by to take a look and render his officious opinion thereto.  This being one Bubba, a waddling youth of squinted eye who had never had an original thought in his entire life, and spent his day frustrating builders hither and yon with obscure references to “The Code”.  Meaning the building code of course, which often as not was some interpretation of his own, and had nothing to do with any actual regulations produced by officials down at the state capital.

Bubba took a dislike to me for some reason, something to do with an error on the building permit, and delighted in that error with a series of suggestions for “improving” the deck.  Metal ties, increased tread overhang, another rim joist and so on.  Actually insisted on seeing the plastic tag that comes stapled to every board and quizzing me on what it meant (that being pure nirvana for me.  I can hold forth on lumber specifications for hours, knew that tag like my own name, and it’s entirely possible that he learned something that day following my lengthy sermon).

It frustrated me a little bit.  Bubba refused to sign off on the deck until his whims had been satisfied, which meant the house couldn’t be occupied, and that of course was a major problem.  “Not structurally correct according to Code”, I believe was his comment on the inspection report.

I showed that report to one of the neighbors who, of course, was following all this with huge interest.  Entertainment is hard to come by in the backwater and a feud betwixt builder and inspector is always a lively way to pass the time.  I supposed I whined more than a little bit as Tim read the report, standing out in the yard with a Marlboro in his hand and a straw hat atop his head.

“Lawd, fella.  That boy sure does make life miserable, don’t he?  Structurally incorrect?  My land, you could park a battleship on that sumbitch.”

“I ’spect you could, Tim.  But he ain’t never seen a 2 x 12 rim around a 2 x 8 joist system before and it’s not in his picture book, either.  So he’s giving me the business, I reckon.”

“Yuh.  He’s good at that, he is.  Funny, ’cause he ain’t never swung a hammer in his life, far as I know.  Got that job from his daddy, ol’ Cletus from down Weeksville way, and his daddy wasn’t much more useful than a busted shovel either.  Likes that county paycheck though, and that county Jeep he hoofs around in.  Sure does that”, and he shaded his eyes for another look at the majestic deck running across the rear of my house.

“Reckon I could call his boss and get a second opinion, Tim?”

“Spence, you mean, the old man?  Oh you could.  Hell we’ve all tried that from time to time.  Won’t do ye no good though.  Spence, he’s even worse than Bubba is, from what I’ve been able to tell.  Regular beaurocrat, that one.”

We paused, and Tim fished another cigarette from a pocket and lit up.  “Tell ye what to do next time, though”, he offered.

“What’s that?”

“Why, just build a set ‘o steps up to the door.  Tack a handrail on there and call it good.  Then after he passes it, tear the sumbitch down and get to work on the real thing.  Soon as he’s off the property, I mean.  He ain’t gonna be comin’ back, right?  And ain’t nobody from the county makin’ a special trip way out here, anyhoo.”

I laughed.  “That’s the way it’s done, eh?”

“Sure ’nuff.  ‘Course, it’s bit late for that now.  Shame.  Why, you could park a battleship . . .”

And so it went, and eventually Bubba won his victory.  I scurried and sweated and performed all the little tasks he desired, until he was tired of the game and reluctantly signed off on the house.  A few weeks later he chuckled to a lad down the street about how he “Ran that new fella ragged with his big deck”, and I saw the true nature of his Bubba ways, and the feud didn’t die.

Now I never anticipated having to rebuild much of anything on the homestead, so Tims advice about sidestepping the building department just kinda laid there in the back of my mind.

Of course, it popped back up very quickly when the insurance man and I talked a few days ago.  “Huh.  Got a lotta deck there, bud.  Way more than the new builder’s gonna have in his bid, so I’m gonna have to get you to do it, and we’ll compensate you for the time and materials of course, and . . .”

I had to stifle a groan, when talking with the insurance man.  Not sure he’d understand it all, and it didn’t much matter, any road.  Didn’t keep me from ranting about it to Ally, of course, but she’s used to such things, and listened impassively as I muttered dark and evil things concerning fat inspectors and something about settling this feud thing, Backwater style.  I got the feeling she was pretty much unimpressed with the seriousness of it all.

But not me.  Bubba done questioned my quality of work, the fat little creep.

And the feud?  Oh my.  Just gettin’ warmed up, you betcha.