#112 / 2009 Tour 5 Spring: Nashville, Hard Work Continues

NASHVILLE WORK CONTINUES

#112

Deep in Nash country the work continues. I still wonder at the fact I am here and with so much work ahead of me. Little did I suspect that the work would be so great or that I would have thousands of insurance dollars to help me see it through. My little house has had a hysterectomy, the bathroom work continues. I didn't know to turn the hot water heater off when I shut off the water so I discovered yesterday that the hot water heater has been ruined. I casually mentioned it to my new old neighbor Joel who along with his wife has moved back into his house next door to me after eight years. It's hard to say who has the most work ahead of them, Joel or myself. His house was really trashed.

He was at my front door this morning to tell me he could fix my water heater. I didn't even know he was a heating and air conditioning technician. I just can't believe my luck. I bought two new elements for a few dollars and the system was back up and running within a few hours.

My sister and brother-in-law brought the woman who is redoing the bathroom floor over this morning. Yes a female and she has got an enviable tool belt I'm here to tell you. My sister helped her out last month so she has ripped out the toilet and sink and redone the bathroom floor for NOTHING. Can you believe this stuff? My brother-in-law has been beside her every step of the way, brought over the plumbers, and went to Home Depot for all the building materials. It is all so amazing.

As we work on the house the van is parked FEMA trailer style in the driveway and that is where we sleep at night. Every time I walk down the hill to the store I retrace the steps that I walked to elementary school. Yesterday evening I stood at the very place where my father's body flew out of his car and hit the ground when he was struck and killed by a truck driver in 1956.

This is some kind of accounting for me, it's traumatic and sad to see the house in this shape. This little plot of ground is all I have except for my van and the burial plot next to mama out at the cemetery. So I am trying to make things right, make mama proud. LIke the bathroom. The problem there was that the big pipe where the toilet is supposed to be connected has been six inches too far below the floor, I guess for sixty years. Someone put something like a coffeecan on top of the pipe and stuffed old newspapers and plastic bags around it to prop it up and then they set the toilet on top of all that.

Poor work, crap work, no wonder it never worked right all those years. I also found up there are four layers of shingles on the roof. Three is the legal limit. Again somebody took advantage of mama, did a poor job. I can see mama now out in the yard complaining, "I'm just a poor old widow woman."

So it is a long haul to get it all right and it is stressful to wait all this out but I believe I am doing it with a small degree of grace. I have learned and continue to learn if I just stay calm and believe in the best it is all going to work out. I'm going through something here, a mourning for the past, i can harldy find any distinguishing landmarks around the old neighborhood anymore. I'm not young anymore and time has moved on. Proust says all those memories where just little slivers of time, moments now lost.

I have a wonderful new world on the road to get back too and I am eager to begin, but not yet, not yet.


Here is my poem about the whole experience:


Renovation


The house on Kipling Drive, center of my world from three years old
I return to its devastation. Once so intact, now needy like Mama after Daddy died.
My sister Debbie and I: big, strong, and confident, we cringe, 
thinking of Mama’s need for sympathy.
“I’m just a poor old widow woman.” (She used that line on everyone.)
She poor mouthed to the swarthy man who laid the asphalt driveway.
She poor mouthed to the plumber, the electrician,
The central heat and air guy. They all took advantage of her. 
Now I stand here, sledgehammer in hand.
Determined to set things right. I crawled under that house three times.
Twice in the dark with a flashlight. I honored that house with my hard labor.


Debbie brought over Teresa. She swung a tool belt any man would admire.
As she ripped out the bathroom floor she grumbled over the earlier work.
“I’d like to see who put this floor in. Man this is a bad job.”
When it came time to put the new floor in I had to redo her work. 
She didn’t level out the edges of the floor boards, created sharp points
That could rip the new linoleum.
The plumber clucked in disapproval too at the antique galvanized pipe.
The one for the toilet was six inches below grade. Someone put a coffee can on the top,
stuck a wax seal on the can, set the toilet, and lined it with old newspaper and rags for support.
That’s why the toilet always leaked.


“I’d like to know who set this toilet,” says Ricky. “He should be ashamed.”
“Well, he’s dead,” I said. That would have been Terry and his two sons.
All alcoholics, all dead within three years of each other.
Turns out, years ago, Ricky was apprenticed to my ex-husband the union plumber.
Small world. We shared war stories. 
Ricky finished up about nine pm, tired and ready to go home.
When he turned the water back on he turned the meter key too hard
and the pipes exploded under the house.
That’s the night I crawled under there twice.


The roofer showed up with his two boys. Said the house had five roofs on it.
Only three are legal. I can hear Mama now when she heard the estimate
to tear off all those tiles: “I’m just a poor old widow woman.”
She was always afraid the piano was going to fall through the floor. 
She should have worried about the five tons of roofing on the top of the house.


It took six weeks, but it all got done. My sister was my biggest help.  She paid for demolition,
found the plumber, put up a mailbox, and seeded the lawn. 
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I sobbed.
“I’ll always be there for you, she said. I kissed her, I hugged her
and then I declared: “I’ll never have to be just a poor old widow woman!”