Pyrate sure writes a good story.
I woke up this morning reading Twain's account of the slaughter of
Captain Cook.
For the weeks leading up to the 4th of July in the unHamptons the two
dogs get the jitters with loud explosions going off at odd hours of the
dark. The older of the two, D-Dog, is pretty much deaf but he does not
see this as a reason to not go out late at night and stand at the corner
of the yard and bark at phantoms beneath the street lamp – I’m the mutt
with the ears that hear in sleep and that wakes up to rush out barefoot
in skivvies to prod him with a quick toe to the rump to go inside.
Dixie, who hears just fine, has been freaking and panting all day,
hanging close to anyone that will sit still. On occasion she huffs or
barks right out as if to tell “them” to stop. Tonight when dark comes…
we hear it arriving and banging and crackling as the day grows long and
the heat sets in… we can expect that the whole area will be a
free-for-all. Later we will leave the dogs shivering together in the
house, even the deaf dog will hear. We will wander the dirt streets of
the neighborhood, swatting skeeters and sucking our long necks, we will
turn in all directions, pointing and exclaiming, to see where the next
display will flash out over the warm scent of Atlantic bay water. All of
the show is illegal by NY law… but damned if it is not all the more to
savor for the outright civil disobedience.
Today my son and I did an inspection and survey of an obscure 1750’s
timber frame structure, a small house within five minutes of our house.
The developer for the local mall can’t get a Certificate of Occupancy
until he shows that he has a reputable preservation contractor under
contract to dismantle and rebuild the house. Don't know why I got
involved. We have until Tuesday to put a price together. We need the
work and working on the Fourth feels a whole lot like we are working for
our liberty. We are happy with the task. I don’t know diddly about
timber framing and my son follows me. Though I tend to bark like a
mason, I had almost as much experience as a stick framer. I’m reminded
myself of advice I gave to a young mason at one of the first IPTW’s who
was nervous that he did not know enough… I told him if his heart was in
the right place to want to do the best work he could then he would
figure it out just fine.
Our middleman for the project, a fellow mason from Queens who says the
house is all put together with mortise and tendons, remarked that there
was nothing special about the building and that is where I told him he
was wrong for the fact that in the unHamptons though there are a few
heritages for the most part there is nothing much for anyone to claim.
All the more reason the local preservation community would value this
simple house. Anything old around here has been torn down. It was
because people wanted to stop the development of the mall that they
figured out how old the house was. Before that nobody noticed. It served
as a lawyer’s office for many years up to recently. I’m a bit concerned,
though; the architect the developer hired drew a cartoon for plans… it
is fairly obvious this fellow has no clue about preservation, and there
is zero spec… even more odd that he wants fancy cut wood shingles (the
guy is real good at drawing shingles), the ones with the corners
trimmed, when the old shingles that we found there were plain cut and
random.
This week we made a deal with the stock car race team on the opposite
corner up the street, a decent bunch of guys hustling for the sport
(their driver told me about his competition in the figure-8 school bus
race out at the track in Riverhead, a small track, to give them the
mini-bus, the one that was supposed to prevent people from driving into
Kathy only she don’t like driving it, in exchange for their fixing up
David’s fire-engine red Pontiac. The race team likes the bus so that
they can use it to tow their car and keep themselves comfortable in the
pits. So we had the bus on the corner of our lot, sitting there for a
few days with no plates, and the county tow guys came and stole it. [At
the time I was sitting in our "orfice" wondering why big bills come in
easy and checks to pay them don't -- I know one principle of starting a
business is for everyone you never ever heard of before in blazin' hell
to figure out a smart way right off to suck out all the money and the
fun and to kill off the enterprise.] We had a big sign in the window of
the bus but they ignored it. Somebody in the neighborhood must have
complained. The tow guys never bother to knock on the door or call and
ask why the hell we have a bus sitting there… they just come and hook it
up and drive off. So, Jerry, the guy on the race team that wanted the
bus, saw what was happening when the white bus in tow went past his
house and he jumped out and took off after them in his blazer. They had
got out on the highway with it and he pulled up right in front of them
at a light and started yelling at them for stealing his bus. They yelled
at him to leave. He told them he would not leave unless the cops made
him. The cops showed up and told him to leave. And he got in his blazer
only it would not start and he had to ask the cop for a ride to his shop
to get his jump pack. When he got back to the blazer it started right
up. Jerry says when he gets excited he sucks all the electrical energy
out of his vehicles.
][<en
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To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>
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