Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters is one of my all time favorite Salinger stories. And I love the title. It is strong and hopeful. And I thought of it today as I was out roofing.
Seriously, I was roofing today. I worked at home build for Habitat for Humanity today in a suburb in south Phoenix. The entire subdivision was built by Habitat and it is something to see. The houses aren't huge (at least by Phoenix standards), maybe 1500 - 1800 sq feet, 2 bedroom, 2 full bath. There are 2 - 3 styles of home - your typical suburb layout and look. The finished houses are lovely and well tended with tidy yards and personal landscapes. There is a park with a playground in the center of the subdivision and every house has a park bench on the front porch (donated by the mayor to encourage community watch).
There were probaby 8 builds going on today in various stages of construction. Two doors down from the house I was working on, they were still framing the walls onto the foundation. The house directly to the west of us was drywalling the interior. And at the house just east of our build site, they were raising high the roof beams. It is truly something to see to watch a handful of people (there were probably 7 on the ground and 3-4 more on the roof) raise a roof. The people on the ground have to pick up one of the huge trusses and carry it over to one side of the house. When the guys on the roof are ready, everybody lifts the truss and sets it on top of the house. Short people just duck out the way at this point but a few of the taller ones hold up the end that isn't resting on the house while the people on the roof attempt to pull the truss all the way up. There are a couple of people on the ground trying to push as well with some 2x4s nailed together into a primitive tool. Once it is all the way up, they raise it into an upright position and then hammer it in to the sides and beams of the house and join it to all the other trussess with cross beams. It is an impressive display of human strength and ingenuity and is probably as close as I will ever get to a good old fashioned barn raising.
At our site, our trusses were up (at least by the time I got there) and the big job of the day was to get the roof covered. Before you can put on your shingles and tar, you have to put down some OSB board - thats particle board to you and me. You get some people on the roof and then some people on the ground hand up big 4x8 sheets of board. Then (and this was my job), someone has to go along and nail those boards to the rafters. It was hot up there. I have splinters in my butt from scooting along the board to pound nails in every 12 inches down a truss line and every 6 inches down a seam. By noon, the roof was done. At least, it was ready for the next stage.
Now, I have done some roofing before believe it or not. In Mexico on a much more primitive scale. There were no trusses or particle board. Just some 2x4s with which we framed out rafters onto a 10x10 cinder block home that would hold a family of 7. The roof was sheets of corugated tin. But that job, as hard as it was, by no means qualifies me as a skilled roofer. The thing that amazes me the most is that most of us out there today weren't builders or contractors or construction workers. Most of us had to borrow hammers and work gloves and hard hats and be told how to work the skill saw. There were hundreds of people out there today working on 8 different homes and probably at least 80% of them do something M-F that is compeletly unrelated to construction. But here they all were, working hard in the heat on a Saturday morning, to build a home for people they may never even meet. They might have had other things to do this morning, but they didn't have better things to do.
So here I sit, with splinters in my ass and blisters on my fingers, a smashed thumb (I missed the nail - OUCH!) and a slightly sunburned nose. I'm tired and dirty and sweaty and I know I will be feeling it tomorrow. And I feel fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
A little more grateful for my own roof and even more grateful that I was able to help give at least one more family in Phoenix a roof of their own.
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