Juarez Hammer Time! -- Day 4
rob...@robertgidley.com
or
Raising the roof
In which our massive building acquires an equally massive roof
(The first title was suggested by Fr. Jim, who explains that the "sheathing" refers to both the chicken wire and the roof. I suspect he may have been in the sun a bit too long, but I didn't want to upset him by not using it. I came up with the second one on my own, and I've definitely been out in the sun too long.)
Wed, Feb 17, 2010
6:45 am
Yup, I did it again. This time, I had the alarm turned on and the time zone set, but I had the sound turned off. Tomorrow for sure I'll wake up when I want to.
7:45 am
We gather up to pray and load up the vans. Fr. Jim has printed up a service bulletin that includes a morning service and a song that can be sung to a variety of different tunes. Including "Stairway to Heaven" which I demonstrate and he's pretty fond of until he finds out it's a Led Zeppelin tune.
Which means we can also sing it to the "Mickey Mouse Club Theme" (they have the same rhythm pattern). Maybe I'll try that tomorrow...
It's very sunny and hardly chilly at all. There's no wind, so as long as we stand in the sun (which we do), it's pretty comfortable.
8:50 am
One of yesterday's complaints was that there wasn't enough work to go around. One guy, Simon, said he had plenty of work to do (which was true, he was ALWAYS doing something). So we decided that he was doing all our work. Today, some of the folks have built him a "Time out" chair out of cinder blocks where he has to sit periodically so that there's something for the rest of us to do.
(In past years, there was another fella, Wayne, who was the same way. Wayne could do everything about twice as fast as the next best person. I'm pretty sure that if you put Wayne and Simon together, they could build a standard Gateway house in an afternoon and still have time to stop for a beer afterwards.)
10:15 am
The entire building is now covered (or "sheathed") in chicken wire. Considering the size of the building, this is probably a week's output from a chicken wire factory. But just because the building is covered in chicken wire doesn't mean that Fr. Jim is happy with it.
He's organized a crew to go around and check for "pooches" in the chicken wire and to nail it down solid. When he gets like this, we all just nod, smile, and slowly back away.
10:35 am
We're installing the windows in the window openings. Two days ago, they were just holes where we didn't put any studs. Now they contain these lovely hand-wrought iron windows. It turns out that all the windows are made by Jose
Limas, who's the lead Mexican worker at his house. (I always thought that they were store bought. They look very lovely.)
Anyway, the windows are ready to let sunshine in and let little kids look out.
Next is nailing in something called "J-channel" which is made from lightweight galvanized steel and goes at the bottom of the walls. It catches the stucco before it hits the ground and provides a bottom for the stucco wall.
Usually, this takes about 30 seconds on a Gateway House, but because our building covers two area codes, there's a crew of four working on nailing it onto the house.
11:15 am
Meanwhile, the roof has been abuzz with activity. All the rafters (crossway beams) are up and they've started lifting sheets of OSB (Oriented Strand Board, remember? The same stuff we used for the walls) onto the roof. Pretty soon the roof is covered with OSB and the lighter people (for whom gravity does not pull as strongly) are scrambling all over the room nailing about 10,000 nails per sheet of OSB.
11:40 am
Most of one side of the roof is in place. Fr. Jim is still obsessing over getting all 47 acres of chicken wire exactly flat on the walls, but he's getting fewer and fewer disciples to follow him.
One of the Mexican workers, Aner, is turning handstands on the roof. One of our workers tries it (not your child, though) and gets instantly chewed out by Fr. Dan.
And it's lunch time! (Perhaps that's why Aner was turning handstands.)
Again we have ham and cheese sandwiches. Nobody seems to know why we're not getting our burritos (which Ed refers to as "prison burritos" in our blessing before lunch). But we have some lime-flavored mayonnaise, so we take some consolation in that.
That and a trip to the local mini-Supermarket. It's part of a chain and carries LOTS of Mexican stuff, but most of our crew is interested in the sodas (made with real sugar), the candy (ditto), and the chips (made with "natural potatoes").
Today's weird food is: Sponch! (the exclamation point is part of the name).
The package proclaims "Ahora...mas ricas!" which I think means "Now with more ricas!" It comes in a lurid purple package.
It's hard to describe what it is. The base is a shortbread cookie about an inch and a half on a side. On top are four smushed balls of some strange semi-gelatinous substance. Two of the balls are white and two are pink. They're similar to marshmallows, but not as stiff. In the center is a blob of strawberry jelly. The entire thing is covered in coconut (which I know is "pina" so that means "ricas" can't mean coconut).
There are eight of them in this package and they are SWEET. Even my temporary crown hurts from the sweet. I eat one and share them with the rest of the folks. I notice nobody eats two of them.
This is some strange food.
1:35 pm
Fr. Jim is still working his way around the building, making sure the chicken wire is absolute, unequivically perfect. The lightweight people are all up on the roof nailing down the OSB boards to the rafters.
The rest of us are idly puttering around, trying to stay out of the sun and find something useful to do.
2:20 pm
The OSB is being added to the other side of the roof. It's probably the south side, since it's the side away from the border.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. We can see New Mexico from where we work. The church is on a rise and it looks out over a valley that's in the US and there's trains that run all day. We can also see the I-10 freeway (if you happen to drive by, honk and I'll wave). It's pretty weird to be able to see the US, but be in a very foreign place.
Anyway, since the US is north, we're working on the south side of the roof.
The sky is blue, blue, blue. Almost as blue as it gets in Seattle during the summer. There's not a cloud anywhere in the sky and there's a light breeze. It's very comfortable if you're in the shade.
Fr. Dan talks about how he has to buy sand for the stucco, here in the desert. All the ground around here is very fine, sand-like dust. It gets into everything and every night I pour at least a tablespoon out of my shoes.
But even though it looks and feels like sand, it's actually fine dirt, and when it gets wet, it turns to goo. So for the stucco, Fr. Dan has to buy sand and import it to the desert.
3:30 pm
We're putting J-channel along the tops of all the walls, so that they can also have a top (as well as the bottom we put up earlier).
Fr. Jim has relucantly decided that the chicken wire situation is "acceptable," except when he runs across loose pieces while putting up the J-channel, which gets interrupted as he puts a few hundred nails into the offending sections.
3:55 pm
It's warm! It's so warm, that Chris is now wearing just a T-shirt (and pants, but on top he only has on a T-shirt). Chris is ALWAYS cold, and this is the first time in six years he's been warm enough to take off his jacket and his sweatshirt and his shirt and wear just the T-shirt.
It's official: it's Warm.
4:00 pm
We're building the Children's Outreach Center on the grounds of the Cathedral of San Jose, a partially finished church building. Today is Ash Wednesday, and they're having a service at 4:00 pm, so we knock off at 3:30, put away all our stuff and wander over to the church.
The person leading the service, Cesar, was probably expecting the two women, three kids and one man who make up the Mexican segment of the congregation. He not only gets them, but also 24 gringos, plus a couple of the Mexican workers.
Cesar is studying to be a priest and he took the sudden multiplication of his flock in stride.
Fortunately, Fr. Jim made up service booklets for us, and he included the Ash Wednesday service. So even though the service is entirely in Spanish, we can follow along by reading the English part (and I learn some new Spanish words: Senor = Lord and Salvador = Savior).
It was pretty cool to think that all around the world today, Anglicans and Episcopalians were going through the exact same liturgy in all kinds of different languages. And Christians of all flavors were saying essentially the same thing in different ways. It's a long way to travel to realize that we're the same.
As we drove away and closed the gate behind us, Cesar stood on the steps beaming at us and waving.
4:55 pm
Kevin has been driving "our" van all week (everybody rides in the same van each day, because we're all Episcopalians and by now it's traditional). The first day, he got a lot of grief for hitting the curbs whenever he turned a corner (he would hit them because he was trying to dodge the potholes while turning).
Then somebody mentioned at the debrief that he felt bad that we made fun of Kevin and we all felt guilty (also very Episcopalian) and since then everyone has said supportive and positive comments to Kevin like "You tried not to hit that pothole! Better luck next time!"
Well, we paid for all this encouragement today. On the way back from the Ash Wed service, Kevin, full of positive reinforcement, decided to pass Ed's van and pull in behind Fr. Dan (we all follow Fr. Dan to wherever he is going, on pain of getting the nastiest scowl that you'd ever want to see).
That part went okay, as we raced past Ed's van on a blind curve up a hill (really, this seemed safer than it sounds). Then it got unsafe. Ed, being Ed, couldn't allow this stain on his honor to go unavenged, so he pulls up next to us at a four-way stop and we head off, side-by-side on a two lane road rapidly narrowing to a one lane road.
And there's a pick-up truck in part of that lane. Engines racing, we keep up. Ed keeps up. We keep up. Ed keeps up. We see God and he says, "Slow down!" so we do.
At least we all have an answer for the "Where was God in your day today?" question tonight.
For the record, your spouse and/or child was riding in Fr. Dan's car and had no part in these adolescent shenanigans.
6:00 pm
Dinner was something I'd never had before on my previous trips down here: Chili Rellenos. These are giant chili peppers that are filled with white soft cheese (kind of like mozarella, but not aged as much). At first, I think they're pretty bland, but after a while I hit the chili pepper seeds and pretty soon my tongue is doing the Macarena in my mouth.
Not that this prevented me from having two of them. They were good!
Tomorrow is our last day on the build site, so we hope to get enough done that we feel good about turning it over to Fr. Zuniga. At least we know the chicken wire will look good.
About those West Texas Girls
Fr. Dan claims that there's a video of those 10 West Texas Middle School girls (and the grandma) building the same giant building that we have in four and a half days. He claims it's on YouTube.
He also claims to have conveniently "forgotten" what the link is, but he assures us that it's there. All you have to do is search on "Yeadon Smith" and it'll turn up. If you manage to find this elusive video, shoot me the link using rob...@robertgidley.com and I'll include it in the blog (although I won't be able to actually watch it).
Robert
Juarez Hammer Time!