Ya Git Old

[Harry Edwards]

Some of you probably know Michael Waddell. This timely essay by Michael 
was forwarded to me from a mutual friend.    twisty

subject: ya git old

git it?

used to be. I would go strate ahead on, in the trades, carpentry. Ya 
have a tool belt, and to start with you have and prize the few thangs 
yuh carry there. Used to be cloth one. Apron-like, to keep the stuff ya 
werk’t with at hand. Convenient.

Nails. An essential, those pointy things with haids, they call ‘em; the 
heads are actually flattened circles of aim, targets, to give rise to 
expressions from some straw-bosses among my hearties, and mighties, 
such as—hit the nail, man! th’ nail! Hit th thang, don’t try to Scare 
it in!—

The apron would hold a handful of nails, and perhaps a pencil and a 
measuring tape, that could go ten feet. That's all.

You graduate. you get a leathern belt, that holds a utility knife, in a 
special sheath-shaped quiver (quoit or quirt, or quirn, kern or 
coin—qui vive!?), a pocket is provided for a thirty-foot tape, pencils, 
rectifying squares, nail-punches and –sets, a triangulora divisor, and 
other arcane stuff, unknown to the publick. A hammard, mine was a Plumb 
Bludgeon, with candy-apple transparent ochre shellack’t finish on the 
wooden handle, a 16-oz. curved-claw short-handled (relatively) framing 
implement, a tool. I had not made the acquaintance, yet, of the 
Bluegrass steel, the Louisville Bluegrass straight-claw. The tool. The 
nail-drivers’ tool. I could hire on any day, ‘hello! I’m a nail-driver. 
You gotta ennie jobs? here?’

They can tell if you’re shuckin’ cause they have this test, see. They 
tell you to grab a belt of nails, and give you an empty pocketed strap, 
and point to the 50-pound box that sixteen-penny commons come in packed 
ever witch way; they tell you Fill your pockets. Then they watch you, 
and time you at this. There’s a way to fill yer pockets in about three 
seconds; there’s a way to sort all the haids in one direction, a manner 
of getting all the pointy ends t’other—a convenience. this handshake is 
known to all real framers. A secret.A leger d’main. A palpable, tactile 
point of manual dexterity. Experience.

And I was hired.

time was.

You never give it a second thought; you grab a handful and frame up 
that wall, nail after nail after nail after day after day, after wall, 
after floor, after house . . . afterthought: what does it mean 
‘finish’t’? When, do you know, when you’re done? When, you walk away?

Well, remember that ceiling, that fell on me, metaphorically I mean, 
about a year ago? That I wrote you the account of? That the rockwool 
insulation had brought down, being sodden with an overflow of water 
sweated out of the air conditioner into it’s overflow pan, that had got 
stopped up by some growth of bacterial mucus, so that the water didn’t 
drain down the pipe that for years had led the sweat outside, like a 
postnasal drip fix’t for the attick’s nose???

The insulation got so heavy that the sheetrock ceiling in a four by six 
foot section, done give way; Pow, two seconds and it’s on the floor. It 
floored you! you said.

Dust fuckin’ everwhurr.

Now in that same space of room, there’s the new bath facility quarters, 
under construction; Here’s where we get old. I put down the italian 
tiled floor pieces, in the area exterior to the tub&shower combination 
chamber, at its deep end. The closet-flange has been set, anticipating 
an imminent porcelain S-curved pee-trap, known to the laymen as the 
john, or crapper. American Standard makes a fine one. I put down the 
underlaying cementitious backer, then the thin-set, and then the pieces 
of slate-looking verdigris tile, placed with eighth-inch cross-shap’t 
neoprene spacers at all quadrants . . .

I have left unframed, an open access, in place of  a long wall   
-to-be-    for the convenience of being able to walk into this evolving 
space, rather than around it, thru a door, carrying the mud, the tiles, 
the werk.

Thru a squar’d and measured locus I fix three points, two one-inch 
holes will be drilled thru the sub-floor, and the backer, and another 
hole between them, which will be the slip for the two-inch drain pipe, 
to carry suds ‘n aftershave and such, from a pedestal sink, that will 
be placed just in that spot.

I place all the tiles, and in this one spot, one tile must be saw’d 
with the diamond blade wet-saw, to have its own three holes, matching 
those foresighted in the present floor. Then it’s pegged, so to say. 
Buttered, pressed in. Set. Wait a day they say, before doing the grout 
lines. 24 hours.

And a day later I place the pedestal sink upon the appropriate 
position, to find that it’s about a foot too close to the virtual 
toilet . . . and I chew on this for another day, and it’s a real kick 
in the haid.

Ya git old; but ya learn to take up the cut tile piece, bite your lip, 
lower one, and not too hard, and shake yer haid, and pop up the ceramic 
before it gets set any tighter. And notice how good the mated surfaces 
are evidenced, a wee bit of insight and experience that won’t see much 
effect, or have much affect perhaps in the enduring world, of temporal 
affairs, and indeed, of temporizing.

Been thurr; done that, dun that. dunn that, and that.

Yesterday I was putting the plumbing supply lines for the pedestal sink 
into the wall, that I’d abhorred using earlier (this wall stands below 
the ridge line of the house, and I wish’t not to diminish its structure 
with holes, cut for piping—a matter of conscientiousness, coming from 
some ‘experience’—of maximal vs optimal structural design—I should have 
gone for optimal at the first go-round). Hmmm . . . maximal, it has the 
‘-mal’ configuration in it, at its end, -mal maybe equals BAD. that’s 
so crazzie . . . nnnaaaaahh!

Once these lines were gloo’d—they were all PVC plastic tubings, and the 
house water pressure supply was shut off during this measuring and 
fitting improvisition work—I crawled, or crept, out from the low space 
of the pier and beam floor, thinking now to open the house supply valve 
to test that all the fittings held, strong and without leaks.

Quick I run to the exterior cut-off valve, turning the handle several 
times; I hear the Ka-kaGaBoing thud of the starved water meeting up 
again with whatever remains down the pike, in the vascularity of this 
living creature, The House. Aaaaiiieee!! it Lives!!

Quick I run in to the new bedroom, with bath facility sans son 
quatrieme mur—to see how it goes.

How it goes is, all over the new tile floor, water holds, coming from 
the sputter of the two outlets, we call the Hot and Cold, that I have 
forgotten to put temporary stoppers in, for the pressure test phase.

I rush outside again. This time, to turn off the house’s water supply.

Turns out, the tile floor is quite waterproof; I have inspected every 
line below-deck, and minimal damage has been done. I’ve just . . .

just got, older.