Garage Goes Up

           Our church never built a garage for the parsonage. Mostly because none of the other pastors wanted one. Pastor Jay wanted one. He brought it up in a business meeting and it was voted on to build one.

          At first, it was going to be built by volunteers and donated materials. The church would purchase whatever couldn’t be or wouldn’t be donated.

Pastor Jay asked only for a modest-sized garage — something to get two cars in out of the snow and have a little room for his tools.

“It won’t be big enough,” Mike said. “I recommend we build at least a 30 by 30.”

The size was approved.

It was decided to set a budget rather than approve every little detail and a committee was appointed to oversee the project.

          My handsome mountain man was on the committee.

          No moss grows under Mike’s feet, let me tell ya! When he’s got something to do, he gets it done. He was right on this task and during research, discovered we could have a steel building put up, materials and labor included for less than a wood structure. Not only that, steel has a longer life than wood. It won’t rot and galvanized, it won’t rust. And as an added bonus, we wouldn’t be at the mercy of the volunteers’ schedules. You know how it is when you’re trying to get something done. Some people can't make it no matter what day you set for a work day.

          Mike spent days on the phone. He told the design planner at the company what we wanted and as things came up, Mike had to get with Pastor. What color steel do you want? Do you want windows? How many windows do you want and where do you want them? Do you want a walk-in door? Where do you want the walk-in door?

          “It sounds like the church is building it just for the pastor,” you say.

          And you would be right. Someone had to make those decisions and since Pastor would be using the garage, he might just as well say what he’d like to have. After all, I don’t think anyone in the congregation cares if the siding is white or blue. However, we went with a beige color to match the parsonage.

          We originally planned for three overhead garage doors and for volunteers to put them in. As the plans progressed, it was decided to go with two larger garage doors and a walk-in door in the front of the garage. Instead of the overhead doors and volunteers to install them, we went with a roll-up style the company offers.

          Bailey, the rep, sent the completed drawings to us. We printed them and presented them to the congregation even though we probably didn’t have to. We were given a budget to work with and we were under budget. Lamar, Pastor, and Mike decided it was prudent to make them aware of the changes and give them a chance to object.  

          No one did.

          Approval in hand, the garage was ordered, and the down payment made.

“Let me know when you have the pad poured,” Bailey said, “and I’ll put the order in. Then it’s usually two to six weeks.”

          One of our parishioners, David J., brought his equipment out and cleared the land.

          Luke, Pastor and Mary’s son, loves working with wood. He was in his glory using a chainsaw and clearing away the debris.

          The site was cleared and graded. Then David J. dug the footers. 

          Rain came but that didn’t stop this crew. They formed up the pad and got it ready for concrete.  

   

         I love that the little girlies were allowed to play in the mud as much as they wanted.

          “It’ll wash off,” Mary said.

           A little wash station was set up to get the worst of the mud off before they went into the house.

Playing in the mud is a rite of passage. I know that my siblings and I spent many happy hours playing in the dirt and mud, trees and creeks. I won’t say anything about the barns and outbuildings that we played in and weren’t supposed to. 

Once the concrete was ordered, a group of men from the church showed up to help.

The concrete trucks were heavy and left a heck of a mess! 

          When the site was ready, Mike called for the garage to be built.

          That was at the end of September. We expected them in the two to six-week time frame we were quoted.

          That came and went.

          To say that Mike was chomping at the bit is an understatement. He felt he was responsible since it was his idea to have a steel building built and he was extremely frustrated. He may have suggested it, but the congregation voted on it. It was on all of us. Mike made several calls to the company. They assured him it would be up before Christmas.

          Christmas came and went. Bad weather set in.

          “They won’t build it if it’s snowing,” Mike muttered.

          “I don’t care if it doesn’t get built until spring,” Pastor Jay tried to ease Mike’s guilt.

          At one point, Mike began to wonder if it was all a scam and the down payment was lost. Oh my goodness! How this man fretted!

          Monday, we got a call. “They’ll be there tomorrow,” she said.

          “It’s supposed to snow tomorrow,” Mike said.

          “They’ll work in the snow. They’ll do as much as they can, then come back the next day. They should be done in two to three days.”

          I bet you can guess where we were the next day.

          We arrived just as the Lull lift had been delivered. That’s a forklift on steroids.

          The snow had started in the night and we had a few inches by morning. The crew to put the building up wasn’t there yet so Mike and I went on into town to run some errands. I had a goodie box to put in the mail and we needed a gallon of milk.

          The roads were snow-covered. It’s the first time we had our car out on roads like that and it performed better than Mike thought it would. 

           It was late in the afternoon when the crew showed up.

Pastor Jay and Luke started clearing the snow from the pad.

          At the end of the first day they not only had the truck unloaded and the various parts staged, they had a few pieces up.

          The next morning, Mike and I went to watch and to take pictures.

          The sun coming up over our pretty little creek. 

          I spotted this tree across from the parsonage. It’s got a bend at least ten feet from the ground. It reminded me of the system the Indians used. They would take a sapling, cut the top, bend it over, and secure it with a strip of rawhide. The tree would grow like that and serve as a pointer to show where food, water, or shelter could be obtained.

          This was a three-man crew with the boss leaving for periods of time. The other two guys kept working right along and knew what to do without the boss standing over them. 

          As we stood chatting with Pastor and taking photos, color started appearing in the sky.

          “Am I seeing things?” I asked.

          “Nope,” Pastor Jay said. “I see it, too. I forget what that’s called.”

          “The only thing I know is sundog,” I said. “But that’s usually just little pieces of a rainbow and not as much as this.”

          I Googled it and I believe this is called a rainbow halo around the sun or an icebow.  

I had hoped to get a better view of it when we left but it was gone by the time we were ready to leave. I could kick myself for not walking over to where I could get a better view but I’d forgotten to put my boots on and I wasn’t traipsing through the snow in my slides.

          At the end of the second day they had all the studs up and the siding part way down. The doors and windows were temporarily put in place.

The next day we went to see the progress. This guy impressed me as he hefted a roofing sheet, climbed the ladder, and slid it up on the roof.

“Look honey! It’s not a two-person job!” I said.

“It is for me,” Mike said.

“You can do that kinda stuff when you’re young like these guys,” Pastor Jay said.

          Mike and I left about 4:30.

          “It’ll go fast now,” Mike said.

          And he was right. They finished it that night.    

   

          I can’t tell you how impressed we were with this crew. They worked from 8 o’clock in the morning until after dark. And they worked in the cold. One day wasn’t too bad because the sun was shining, but the next day was not sunny and was bitter cold!

          Pastor and Mary kept them supplied with hot food and coffee but they never took long breaks from the job.

          “When they were all done, I convinced them to go sledding,” Pastor Jay told us.

          Two of these guys were from Honduras and the boss was from Mexico. The boss was the only one who spoke any English and it was very broken English at that. Pastor had Spanish in school and managed to remember enough to communicate on a basic level.

          “They’ve never played in the snow, never been sledding,” Pastor said. “The boss wouldn’t go but the other two guys had a blast!”

          We have got such a good church here and a good Bible-teaching pastor. I am truly thankful for both of those things.

          Watching the progression on the building wasn’t the only thing I did this week.

          “Peg, you said you’d show us your new projects,” you say.

          That’s right. I did. But I can only show you one of them. The box destined for West Virigina got held up in the snow and Trish won’t be able to get it until Monday. So I can’t tell you about that one. But I can tell you about the other one.

          My beautiful daughter-in-law, Kandyce had a birthday coming up. I made her a card using watercolors.

          “She really liked it,” Kevin told me when next I talked to him. “You did a good job.”

          “Thank you!” I said. “It was my first thing making with watercolors.” But that’s a lie — sort of. I messed up my first attempt at this card so technically this one was the second.

          “Yeah, it was really nice. We took it outside and set it on fire and it burned so well!”

          I laughed and I could hear Kandyce laughing, too. “Kevin!” she exclaimed.

          Kevin laughed. “No, we didn’t do that.”

          Seriously, what’s there to do with cards once you’ve seen them and maybe hung them on the refrigerator for a few days? Nothing! Go ahead and burn it or throw it away. It won’t hurt my feelings. My joy was in making it and hoping you would get joy from receiving it.

Mission accomplished.

“You better be careful what you say,” I told Kevin. “Your birthday’s coming up and I might paint you a card, too.”

“I’d love that,” he said. He loves me.

Another job I did this week was to refresh our redwood sign. We had this sign made more than twenty years ago. The varnish was peeling and the colors had yellowed.

I sanded it and repainted it. I haven’t varnished it, only sprayed it with a sealant.

          I have a bunch of snow road pictures for you. We had planned to go to the big town of Tunkhannock for shopping, but considering the condition of roads, we opted just to go to the local grocery for the few things we really needed.

We had a couple of snow-free days, then more snow. This time we went out for haircuts.

          “I can reschedule them,” I offered.

          “No. It’s okay. I’m not afraid of driving in the snow,” Mike said.

          So here are more snow road pictures.

          We rounded a corner. “Look at those big birds,” Mike said.

          I raised my camera and started snapping pictures before I even knew what I was taking pictures of.

          “That one’s an eagle!” I was so excited! It’s a juvenile and not yet got his colors but there’s no mistaking that he’s an eagle!

I was hoping he’d still be feeding on the deer carcass when we went back that way after our haircuts but he wasn’t. I’m thankful I got these shots.

 

       

          I read the most interesting book! Lamar Kipp recommended Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. There is a story line and I wasn’t all that thrilled with the ending but some of the things she talked about were educational.

          “Like what?” you ask.

          Like she talked about organic farming and the problem with pesticides. It kills the good and the bad bugs. The problem is the bad bugs reproduce much faster than the beneficial bugs so by spraying pesticides you’re doing more harm than good. She talked about other things too but that’s the one that sticks in my mind.

          Something else that stuck in my mind is the old geezer in the story suffered from bouts of vertigo. Dizziness. The neighbor, and organic farm-stress, had him do the Epley Maneuver. Sometimes you get a crystal in an ear canal that causes you to be dizzy. This maneuver moves the crystals out of the canal to where they won’t bother you anymore.

          I Googled it. It says one of the symptoms of BPPV, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, is eye movements called nystagmus.

          Guess what?

          My oldest son had this when he was young. Five, maybe seven years old. I don’t remember anymore. It scared him so bad he’d scream and fall to the floor. If you looked at his eyes, they’d look like they were spinning in circles. I took him to the doctor but they never did anything for it. I guess he outgrew it. I only remember it happening a half dozen times or so. I’d forgotten all about it until I saw this and now I know what it was.

          And with that, let’s call this one done.