(originally written 5/3/8)
“Are you afraid of heights?”
The voice on the other end of my phone is my brother in law Paul. Now, we all know this is a loaded question. It’s kinda like seeing a huge hairy spider behind someone and asking them “Hey, are you afraid of spiders?” Or being in the ocean and seeing 5 huge fins lurking their way to your friend and saying, “So, um, how do you feel about sharks?”
“No, I’m not afraid of heights”, I reply. “I’m afraid of falling from heights, but not afraid of heights per se.” “Great, I have a friend of mine who works on chimneys, and he needs an extra set of hands for a few days. It’s scaffolds. Are you OK with that?” “Sure, no problem”, I say. It will be nice to do something different for a change and be outside.
So the day comes. I will be working with Scotty. He is Scottish, accent and all, so I think you are smart enough to see where the name comes from. I arrive to the job, and he is not there yet, but another contractor is. And no sign of scaffolding. Instead, in the front yard is a boom.
Scotty shows up, and is a way cool guy. Laid back, sense of humor, we’re going to be good to go. And by good to go, I mean, good to go into the boom and fly. The reality of the situation is now starting to hit me. Which is far better than the gravity of the situation hitting me if I fall. My friend Kellie CocoNutz just went skydiving this week (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX29wljJCc8) and I can live vicariously through that. I manly hop in and say let’s go. Then I white knuckle the railing and try not to cry like a little girl. Now, I’ve learned working for Paul that heights don’t particularly freak me out. It’s the getting there that kinda does. I’ve climbed ladders that I swore would crumple and send me careening to an America’s Funniest Home Video-like coma. But as soon as I get to the top, I am fine. I could be getting ready to unscrew a window that if I handle it wrong, will swing down and shatter on me, but I’m still fine, and this hasn’t happened yet. But climbing back down for some reason freaks me out a tad. So stepping in this boom is a bit of a leap of faith.
We’re going up to apply some wire over exposed wood. I step in and feel that initial jolt of the bucket lifting us up. It goes slow enough that I slowly see the earth leaving us. It’s a Hitchcock like slow. We rise up, and slowly rotate over the roof and back down a bit to get to the chimney. I admit the ride up was a bit nerve-wracking. Scotty is being a douche and telling me he has never crashed one-yet. Yea, it’s all the usual jokes he tells the new guys. And honestly, I am not that bad. When we lower back down is a bit freaky, but I am OK. This does beat sitting at a fucking desk.
I am clearly “assistant” here, which is fine. So it’s my job to unroll the wire as he cuts it, and staples it to the wood in the chimney. He tells me to be careful because the wire is very sharp. I have gloves on. Yet, I am still bleeding within an hour. He tells me welcome to the club. I guess it’s far better than the welcome to the Jackasses Who Fell Out Of a Bucket club. We get a vibe going. It is a bit tough to move around the ‘bucket’ as it’s called though. You better be able to get along with someone if you are this high up. We work our way up and down the chimney. I try not to unnerve myself by looking down too much. These buckets are all mesh wire, so if you look down, you see through to the ground. It takes me a while to get used to, but the more I do it (look down), the more it doesn’t bother me. To be honest, there is a quiet serenity when you are up that high. I would guess we’re talking like 60-80 feet here. It’s a beautiful, sun-drenched day. Birds flying by, a truly beautiful spring day, and quite the experience when you are this far up.
I wanted to bring my camera to take some pictures, but didn’t. Everything gets covered in cement, plus I am sure Scotty would think it was weird for the new guy to bring a camera. I can still vividly see the green lawns, the KevAmPire and Scotty’s truck so far down on the street, the water tower, and the trees with the leaves just starting to come in. There is an eerie stillness at that level, and perspective is really changed. Scotty’s done this hundreds of times, he doesn’t even notice anymore. But for this new guy, it was fascinating.
We get the chimney wired, and the next step is to cement over it. The boom arches up into the sky, and I hear every sound the machine makes. Scotty is clearly not bothered. He asks me if anything is freaking me out yet. I say I am doing good so far.
At this point I am introduced to “mixing mud”, and no, that’s not as perverted as you might believe. It will be my gig to make the cement. I fill 2 5 gallon buckets with sand from Scotty’s truck. And let me tell you, this shit is heavy. Then, its lift and split open a 75 pound bag of cement and pour half of it into a wheelbarrow with the 2 buckets of sand.
OK, I admit to going to the gym. I admit to thinking I might be better than the average couch potato. And Scotty is like 55 and does this shit for a living. But, fuck, I am wasted already. Why the hell do I go to the gym so much, when I wuss out so fast? Next is taking a hoe, and mixing the dry sand with the cement. Again, not as easy as it seems, and Scotty’s method is 3 times up and 3 times back. My shoulders and arms are crying at this point, what can be next? Duh, water. So now I have to add water to a dry mix that I estimate as roughly 800 pounds, and mix. Fuck, you have got to be kidding me here. I am not one to wilt, so Scotty supervises me. You can’t fuck up the cement mix, and Scotty is great with being patient with me. It’s like rowing through, well, wet cement. Not easy. After the mix is satisfactory, it’s get dumped into 5 gallon buckets; a wheelbarrow makes approximately 2 ½ buckets of cement. And if I have to guess-and I do because it adds to the story-I would say each bucket weighs approx 75 pounds. Scotty tells me to load all 3 into the bucket and get in.
Uh, wait a minute. There are limits on these things. And they don’t just put it on some BS sticker that can be covered or peeled off. No, no, no. It’s right there, forged in the metal on the door. In stencil, it says MAX CAP 500 LBS. Uh, Houston, we have a problem here. Now I’m over 6 foot and about 210 (of twisted steel and raw sex appeal) these days. Scotty looks to be about the same. My 5th grade math tells me that puts us alone at 400 pounds. And these wet buckets of cement will easily put us over the measly 500 pound limit.
I do not want to be on the news. I do not want to be on some Darwin email about 2 idiots who overloaded the bucket and crashed to earth. Scotty looks like the devil, extending his fiery hand and telling me “get in.” I am so fucked. I can’t not go. All common sense tells me don’t go, but vain pride wins out and I sheepishly step in. The arm starts to lift, and I swear it’s only getting ready to bend at our highest point, and we will die. If we don’t die from the impact, the buckets of cement will crush our numb skulls like a Saw movie. I swear I never knew machines could whine. It seems to be plodding slower as we follow the same track we did last time. The bucket swings around and I am convinced we will crash into the house now. But we keep going. I am holding onto the railings for dear life, as if that will make any difference on the way down.
We’re up and over and come to rest. OK, I don’t need to change my underwear yet. It will be my assistantly role to load Scotty up with the ‘mud’ so he can slap it over the wire. (The wire will act to hold it in place.) I am all in favor of shedding any weight we can, so I try to load him up as quick as I can. The previous sense of peacefulness is replaced by “good God, please don’t let us crash.” Scotty can see I am a bit uncomfortable. “You, OK, there, mate?” I lie. There are 2 sentiments that are screaming through my empty head. 1) Jesus Christ, I think I can see my house from here! 2) Fuck, that plane sure is flying awful low. Scotty doesn’t care; he’s done this hundreds of times before. There he is, leaning out of the bucket. There he is climbing on the railing of the bucket. BANG! He jumps back into the bucket. OK, this does freak me out. It’s that uncontrollable sway, as the bucket shits from side to side that does freak me out. It’s like Scotty is doing some sort of jig from his homeland. I swear as his feet leave the railing, they tuck back up into his body, then thrust out to land just to shake the bucket. I tell him that this freaks me out. To his credit, he is a gentleman, and never does it again.
He’s cool, and explains to me why we hang the wire, why we mix the cement, etc. it’s basic everyday shit to him, but I appreciate he takes the time out to explain it to dumbass me. He even explains to me how to operate the boom. He explains to me what we will be doing next. I nod like I know what the fuck he’s talking about, all the time hoping we don’t topple. We finish the buckets, and he says,”OK, Kev, take us down.”
You have got to be kidding me. Seriously.
Scotty has known me for all of 2 hours, and he trusts me operating the boom?
“Scotty,” I plead with him “you’re kidding right? I don’t know how to drive this thing.” “Aw, lad, you know how to do it. G’head, get us down.” Gulp. Right now, I look down and my world looks like this:
This isn’t Nintendo. Suddenly, the controls look like a plane I am trying to land. I think lovingly (as I always do) of my poor, poor wife widowed. How embarrassed she must be when cause of death is listed as ‘motard at the controls’. Let alone poor Scotty’s wife. This isn’t PS2, it’s real life, if I fuck up, we’re toast. I adjust my huge balls, start the engine, press the pedal down, do the Homer Simpson eeny-meenie-miny-mo to hit a button. I go to lift the bucket, and it responds. I watch as that annoying tree limb is sliced off as the arm recoils. Sure hope that doesn’t get stuck in the lift. We swing out (still a bit rocky). I lift up, almost to the max point. Catch my breath. “Everything’sOKEverything’sOK” runs through my head. It feels like the slightest breeze could blow us over. Now it’s time to navigate past the house. Watch the gutter, watch the window. We’re clear. Again, hold breath, as we start the interminable descent. Such a tease, the Earth is there, but approaching o so slow. Touchdown. Exhale breath. Command color to return to face. We have survived. Check this off the list of ‘shit I never thought I would do’.
The cycle begins anew. Haul buckets of sand and bags of cement. Mix dry, then add water. I look up to the chimney and think “what the fuck is wrong with this dude?” At the same time I feel an edge. I have survived. I have faced something that was totally unplanned for and more than just a bit scary (operating the boom) and have lived to buzzogged the tale. The ground never felt quite as sweet as it does now. Some people fill out TPS reports. Some people reconcile numbers all day. Today, I got to fly, face death, and cowardly laugh in its face. It truly is a good day to (still) be alive. Now the adrenaline is flowing. Even mixing 800 pounds of concrete can’t contain it. We have to do it again. We’re real men. Not some office pussies. We laugh at the MAX CAP numbers. We have a job to do, gravity be damned.
So we go up again, Scotty driving. I still feel a twinge of nervousness as we ascend. I am still not used to blatantly ignoring safety requirements. Speaking of which, I should mention that there were harnesses in the bucket. Or maybe just one. I don’t know, being real men and all, we never checked. There is a logic to it. Scotty explained to me, “Would you want to be chained to this thing as it fell?” No. I would want the chance to escape on the way down. So the harness remained as window decoration. Ha, I wipe with sand paper.
After clearing the roof, we have to descend a bit. I can best describe it as a bit like a roller coaster. It’s that drop that always gets ya. Every time we go down, it’s still a bit of that. In the bucket, we’re kids. It’s that odd feeling of “we’re not supposed to be here”. We trade stories, ethnic jokes, just bullshit. We laugh and laugh. I can’t stress how important it is to be able to get along in such close (and high) quarters. He teaches me rude Scottish words. He tells me it takes a day to “get my legs”. The whole time I hold to the sides. It’s almost constant motion up there. Even the breeze can sway you. In some situations, the bucket is just prone to swaying.
We work our way down the chimney. We’re covered in cement. I think I’m carrying 5 more pounds, just in dried cement. The sun is burning us. Scotty doesn’t care, he does this for a living. Me, on the other hand, could have an interview at any given moment. I rock the sunglasses, cap and multiple applications of sunscreen. I know going to an interview with raccoon eyes would be a bad thing. I won’t even bring up my playoff beard. I have survived. My day is over. We’ve done all we can do to the chimney. We are burnt and fatigued. I feel glad, exuberant to be alive. I drive home more tired than I ever have, but also more alive. Tomorrow will be a new day. Hopefully with less dumb ways to die.
My expectations are met. The n ext day is “sticking”, which is applying rocks to the chimney. I mix a new batch of cement. Scotty thankfully says he has to do this alone. God bless him. Now I load the bucket not only with buckets of cement, but obscene amounts of rock. Scotty tells me there’s no room, and I wimpishly agree. I am no fool. Scotty doesn’t care, he loads the shit up. As soon as the boom lifts up, I run away. No way this fucker crushes me.
As the job wears on, I grow more familiar with the boom. Don’t get me wrong, I still mix all the cement on the ground, while Scotty soars. Its moments of sheer boredom, followed by moments of madness hauling sand and adding water. I am a bit jealous Scotty’s up in the air, and I am on the ground, getting sunburned for no good reason. But I am better off this way. It’s at this point I should bring up there’s 2 chimneys at this house. And the second one is harder to get to. The garage roof limits how far down we can get to.
I should also point out that the controls can actually move the wheels on the ground. I say this because Scotty has a certain knack to do this inadvertently. There is nothing more unsettling than seeing the wheels of your support system moving. They shouldn’t even put this shit on the controls in the bucket. Once the wheels move, it’s a guessing game at best to reposition them properly. The Earth smiles up like “yea, fucknuts, I’m gonna get cha here.”
I know my feet are firmly staying on the floor of the bucket. Scotty, on the other hand, is some sort of Scottish Spiderman. He leans out of the bucket. He steps on the rails. He opens the door to lean out. He also has something called a plank. The plank is just a long piece of flimsy wood, with a few pieces of 2x4 nailed beneath to act as grips. He will take the plank up, and prop it between the bucket and the roof. He then works off of it. It almost looks like he’s waiting for the trapeze to swing back to him. I mean this guy has no fear. He even props the plank on the arm of the lift. All it has to do is just slip a bit, and he is toast. I am sure there is some sort of unspoken bond that says I have to catch the falling Scotsman before the first bounce, but fuck that. I look up from the ground while he’s doing some sort of balancing act on a piece of wood.
The second chimney poses a problem, as the garage roof limits how far down the bucket can go. So what does that mean? It means it’s time to get out of the bucket and walk on the roof. This particularly doesn’t freak me out, but I take my time. Scotty starts busting my chops, “Haven’t been on too many roofs, lad? Looks like you got a stone in your shoe.” I get a bit testy. “You know what? I have not. You’ve been on more roofs in a month than I have been on in my life. I would have liked to see you on your first roof over there in Scotland. Don’t they have thatched roofs over there?”
I’m Ok with walking the roof, it’s when we start unloading shit from the bucket that it gets a bit tricky. He’s handing off buckets of cement and boxes of rocks. We’re putting all kinds of shit on the roof to do this chimney; dropcloths, water buckets, tools, stones, radio. One wrong step and I’m careening off the roof like I’m on MXC. But there’s little time to worry and show I’m a bit nervous. Stuff is coming off the bucket fast and furious. I’m shifting weight and trying to watch where by big, dopey feet are going next. I finally manage to get everything down, convinced that this is some sort of Chinese fire drill and Scotty will now say “Just yankin’ ya, bloke. I need all this shit back in the bucket.” But no, we’re here to work, no matter the angle or height.
As the job wears on, it’s funny to watch how I mature (and hopefully it’s funny to read as well. It must be, you’re still here well into 5 pages). I can now operate the boom all by myself. I can be the only one in the bucket as I maneuver it up over the house, past a tree and back down to the chimney. When it comes time to cement the stones into the chimney, there I am, stepping on the railings to lean out. Even Scotty says, “look at you mate, doing all kinds of stupid stuff.” It’s funny how this huge machine went from scary to familiar in a week and a half. On some sort of level I can’t really properly explain, I gained a lot of satisfaction and confidence. It was scary, intimidating, challenging, but I slowly worked to conquer all of that. I am sure there is some big life lesson in that, but if I keep rambling like this, I’ll be quoting office motivational posters.
My time on the job came to an end, and I have to say, I will really miss it. While sticking rocks to houses is not my calling, I enjoyed my time. I enjoyed Scotty and will miss him. He knows he can call to ‘borrow’ me again, or call if he needs help on a job on the weekend. It’s all the difference in the world to go in that situation and get a guy who slowly brings you along, explains things and is encouraging. The thing I will miss most about Scotty is his sense of humor. I am sure if I did that job with some impatient hardass, I would have dreaded every moment of it. And the days while I was mostly mixing cement on the ground did drag at times, the times we were up in the bucket were truly fun. We could be dead tired, and making one last run up. As soon as we got into position, it was like 2 little schoolkids, laughing at each other and telling jokes. Yea, it was hard work. But laughing can make things so much better.
So, anyone need to get stones put on their house?
Bonus Material
Rejected Titles for this post: Excuse Me While I Kiss The Sky, And Then I Got High, The Greatest View, Up Up & Away
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