Ya Git Old

[Forrest Gunter]

Yes.

>From: "mwheless" <mwheless at airmail.net>
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>Subject: Re: Ya Git Old
>Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 12:43:28 -0500
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>
>Twisty, Was Michael Waddell married to Linda Reese Vaughn whose mother was
>from Menard? Did Michael and Linda have a daughter named Clara? Just
>curious.
>marilyn wheless
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Harry Edwards" <laughingwolf at ev1.net>
>To: "ghetto 2" <ghetto2 at lists.whathelps.com>
>Cc: "ghetto survivors" <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
>Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 6:57 PM
>Subject: Ya Git Old
>
>
>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.
>
>
>
>