something of value

( Note:  This pulls together some previous sketches--which have been removed from this blog--and adds a conclusion.  There is a bit more material that may get inserted at some point, but otherwise, this piece can stand alone.--aa)

Something Of Value

I PULLED MY TRUCK into the driveway, and Pat’s Tornado swerved in behind me.  Lurching out of his car, the bill of his hunter’s cap hit the doorframe, knocking it sideways across his head.  He did not seem to notice.  As he staggered toward the stoop, still singing ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, I began to realize the magnitude of his condition.  I was drunk, but Pat was at the edge of oblivion.  Annamarie appeared in the doorway.

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AFTER TURNING WRENCHES for four years back east, and in Santa Fe for Boddy’s, and then the Kawasaki dealer, and some anything-that-rolls-in-the-door auto repair shop, I’d had it with the oil and grease, the brake dust and exhaust fumes, the bone deep slices in every knuckle—and most of all, the grimy stains that no soap, no solvent would wash out of my hands.

A classified ad sought carpenters in White Rock.  I contacted old man Sandoval, the SnapOn dealer, and met him out at his house in Arroyo Seco.  I carried in a carton with a couple of air wrenches, an air chisel, and some other tools I knew I wouldn’t be using again.  I walked out of the house with a battered Skil Model 77, a wellworn leather tool belt, and some odd chisels and planes.  No money changed hands, and each of us thought he got the better of the other.

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NEXT DAY, I put the tools in my truck and hauled myself across the Rio, and up the highway that scales the rugged slopes of the Pajarito Plateau.  The Sandias and the Sangre de Cristos panned in and out of view as I negotiated the switchbacks.  Up on the flats, a trim young jogger loped along the road that ran to Los Alamos.  A fox, half hidden the brush, watched his progress.  Beyond the fox, the terrain rose to the Jemez. 

A little ways down the road, this tentative wilderness gave way to a convenience store.  I stopped and bought a quart of grapefruit juice and a bag of barbecue chips.  Another hundred yards, and suburbia spilled out to the east.  This was my turnoff.  At first, I missed the street named in the want ad, and wound down the lane all the way to the rim of the plateau.  The land fell off more than two thousand feet to the Rio.  I heard a plaintive wailing, almost like a child.  A thousand feet below me a string of geese were working their way south.

I probably took the longest possible route back along the coiling lanes to La Senda, and found the house.  It was a timberframed structure, with slumpblock walls and great glass panels.  Sitting on a rolling five acre lot, surrounded by stubby piñons, its form was ranging and aggressive--a prairie style house in the high desert.  A carpenter was nailing up cedar shakes on a curved section of wall. 

I pulled into the driveway.  A lanky, weatherbeaten man was standing nearby with a clipboard in his hand and a roll of drawings under his arm.  He wore tooled leather boots with pointed toes, and a straw hat with the brim rolled up on the sides, so the front also came to a point.  I got out of the truck and asked him if he knew about the job offer.  With his free hand, he took the cigarette out of his mouth. 

“You carpenter?”

The right answer was no.  The biggest thing I’d ever made using a hammer and saw was a plywood camper shell for Annamarie’s Datsun.  But I was pretty good with motors and transmissions—how much harder could this be? 

I glanced over at the building.  Even though it was chilly, the carpenter who was nailing up the shakes had taken off his shirt.  I flashed back to when I was in school, and Linda was pregnant, and I got that summer job working at the library.  It was the main branch, and my job was opening cartons of new books and gluing the envelope under the back cover.  A new wing was being added to the library, and I would look out the window of the dingy storeroom and watch the guys tiptoeing across a run of open joists carrying sheets of plywood, out under the open sky.

“I’m pretty good with wood,” I replied.

He peered into the truckbed.  “Ah see ya use a worm drive,” he said, nodding at the Model 77.  “Anything else is a piece a shit.  Kin you start now?  Ah’ll give ya four-fifty.”

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IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE, and we had knocked off early to drink a beer.  We got our regular table at The Fat Man's, and Pat launched back into his life in western Massachusetts, weaving his spell on me again, while outdrinking me two to one.  After a few rounds, the other guys shoved off, but Pat and I stayed for another few pitchers.

Pat Maloney was older than the rest of us.  Having served a formal apprenticeship as a joiner, he took a paternal interest in our work, teaching us how to sharpen a chisel or plane iron, testing the edge by shaving the hair on his forearm.  Using hand tools, he could layout and cut a mortise and tenon joint with machinelike precision, probably as fast as someone using a router and power saw.  He mesmerized us with stories of living and working on a pheasant hunting resort, raising the birds, maintaining the incubators and coops, guiding the hunters.  He described an idyllic existence.

During that time, he met Rosa, a sophomore at Amherst.  When she got pregnant, she dropped out, and moved in with him for a while, in his gamekeeper’s apartment above the workshop.  But she left him behind to have the baby, back with her family in Santa Fe.

Pat followed her out west to marry her, but soon grew uncomfortable in what to him was an alien environment.  He could not persuade Rosa to move back east, so he left her, and began a pattern of wandering back and forth across the country, in and out of the lives of his wife and daughter.  Pat was a pendulum that swung between the people and places he loved, repelled from one pole by the unbearable burdens of marriage and fatherhood, and from the other by the desperate forces of loneliness and sentiment.

Our mutual oscillations coincided in White Rock.  Pat was already working on the project when I got hired, but it took a while to get to know him.  For one thing, I was canned a day after I started.

I was a disappointment to the man who assumed I was equal to the merits of my tools.  That first day on the job, he assigned me to frame out for a big bathtub within the circular walls.  While the shirtless carpenter pounded on the walls from the outside, I struggled to resolve the interplay of arc and rectangle.  It was a task for a top notch, experienced mechanic, and by the end of the day I had maybe two illfitting boards nailed up.

The next day, the foreman walked in and watched me struggle for a while.

“Son, yer buildin a house, not a pie-anner,” he advised.  By the end of the day, he’d let me go.

“Ain’t gonna fuss with a check, son.”  He pulled out his wallet and peeled off three twenties.  “S’more than ya earned, but don’ worry bout it.  Good luck.”

A few despondent days later, I got a call from Orlando, one of the carpenters.  “Where have you been, dude, we need you.”  It turns out that the carpentry contractor had been fired, the day after they fired me.  The owner of the house—Cal O’Ryan—a physicist at the lab—was taking over finishing the project.  He had gotten the names of the carpenters from the subcontractor before he sent him packing, and apparently knew nothing of my limitations.

Nevertheless, it was back up the hill for me.  Someone else had finished the bathtub frame, so I fell in helping the best I could, humping materials, rerouting extension cords, retrieving tools dropped from above.  At some point, I was working with Pat, who was installing a wood cap on top of a parapet—a continuation of the curved wall that was my earlier downfall.

Pat had divided the half circle into twelve segments, but he couldn’t figure out the angle of the joint where the segments met.  He tried determining the angle by eye, and cut out the segments.  When he set them in place, the last one would not fit.

I started to explain to Pat how to calculate the cut by dividing angle of the arc by the number of segments, and he started getting annoyed.

“Here, dammit,” he swore, and handed me his pencil.  Then he began taking the tools out of his apron, handing them to me one by one, and when I could not hold anymore of them, and they started falling to the deck, he took off his hat and threw it down and started to walk away.

“Pat, wait a minute, let me just lay one out for you.”  It took me a while, because I needed Pythagoras to work out the length, and I couldn’t remember the square root algorithm.  (but oh how clearly I remember Nancy Swope, who sat on my left in Mrs. Byers’ math class.  She wore these button front blouses, and when she would lean forward, I could steal a glimpse of heaven between the puckers of the fabric.  It was a wonder I passed the course.)

Nevertheless, I worked it out close enough so that when Pat cut out a new set of caps, all he had to do was trim the ends that met the main wall of the house.  It was cherry.  Cal noticed, and gave Pat a compliment on the work that afternoon.  From then on, Pat and I were tight.

We worked together through the autumn, and under his tutelage I gained some skill.  He had a tender side, too.  Once—it was the day before Thanksgiving—I was nailing up blocking inside a closet, using a brand new twentytwo ounce Estwing.  As I began the swing of the hammer, its claw caught for a moment on a stud behind me.  I remember watching the hammer head, with its razor sharp waffle pattern sparkling, as it wobbled by on its way to my ring finger—which I had not yet learned to tuck behind my thumb when holding a nail.

It seemed like the hammerhead just tagged the fingertip, but it tore a nice flap of skin loose.

“Damn,” I cried, and dropped my hammer.  Pat noticed, and went out to his car to get a bandaid.  By the time he returned, it was red beneath the fingernail.  The pain was excruciating.

Once again, Pat went back to his car, returning with needle nose pliers and a tiny brad.  He put the brad in the pliers and heated it with his lighter until the tip started to glow.

“Gimme your hand,” he ordered.  I gave it to him.

“Now look away.”

Then he poked the brad through my fingernail.  Blood spurted from the little hole, but the pain immediately subsided.

“All set,” he said.  Now let’s get back to work.”

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I CALLED UP from the driveway, “Hey Annie, I brought Pat Maloney with me.”

“I see.  Is he coming in, or is he just going to stand there singing?”

Then Pat saw her in the doorway, hands on her hips.  Immediately he fell silent and stiffened up.  He straightened his hat out and hitched up his trousers.   

“Pat, come on in.  This is Annamarie.”

We clambered into the little trailer house.  I gave Annamarie a peck on a stony cheek.

Pat greeted her.  “Mrs. Wolfe, how do you do?  ‘Sa pleasure to meecha.”  Pat knew we weren’t married, but called her Mrs. Wolfe anyway.  Annamarie grimaced but let it go.  She asked him, “Pat, can I fix you a cup of coffee?”  I was about to have a cup myself.”

He cocked his head toward her and raised one eyebrow, and replied, “No, but I’ll take a beer if you have one.”

I groaned audibly.  “Pat, for crissakes...”

At those words, Pat’s head sank.  The corners of his mouth pulled down, and the twinkle in his eyes vanished.  “That’s right.  Enough is enough.”

We sat down, me on the couch, and Pat in a chair on the opposite side, near the door.  The little trailer house was so narrow, our knees were almost touching.  Annamarie brought in some coffee and sat down next to me, about as far away as the little couch would permit.

So I started telling her about our plans to subcontract the carpentry work for the Gant house.  Pat began to beam again.  Some force filled his sagging body, and his arms and head became animated again.  He rambled on about the plans for the house, how it would be even greater than O’Ryan’s.  About our partnership, and the beginning of creating an enduring relationship.  Through it all, he kept using the term, “something of value.”

But there was something incongruous about it all.  One minute, he seemed stupefied; the next, he was actually making sense.  But I was in no condition to explore the issue.  I felt even drunker than when I had arrived, and Pat’s remarks rolled in my head like the shifting baubles in a kaleidoscope.

Then he talked about how proud his wife, Rosa, was of these prospects.  He wanted to introduce me to her.

“I want you to meet Marcella, too.”  Marcella was his daughter.  “Smart girl; she’s going to Saint Johns.  Beautiful, too.  I think you would like her.”

Annamarie was sitting with her arms folded across her chest and legs crossed.  Except for the slow flexing of her elevated foot, she could have been carved out of a block of stone. 

But I was in another world, imagining the lovely Marcella.  Somewhere in the background, I remember Pat comparing his knockout of a daughter with Annamarie, my Annamarie, who took fierce pride in the severity of her looks; somewhere deep in my suppressed consciousness I knew I should be outraged.  But instead, I just sat there, lapping it up.  Annamarie sat in silence.

Finally I told him it was time to wind it down, and he got up and went out to his car.  Annamarie was still on the couch, still crossarmed and crosslegged, but she had turned her head away, gazing out the south window at the desert beyond.

I started to say something, knowing there was nothing to say.  Then I looked out front and noticed that Pat’s car had not moved.  He had passed out behind the wheel.

So I got up and went outside.  Then I opened the drivers side door and shoved him over, and drove him back to Santa Fe.  Pat rode slumped against the passenger side door, his right arm extended, and his head on his shoulder.  The sun was setting, turning the snow on the Sangre De Cristos a salmon color.  He lived all the way on the other side of town, somewhere way out Agua Fria.  Annamarie followed us, and drove me back.  By this time, the sky was black, and snow on the mountains was luminous.  I chattered lamely, pretending it was all in good fun, a few drinks, a crazy old guy, no?  Maybe she even believed me, a little bit, anyway.

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I DON”T KNOW how many years, after it was all over with her, it took me to realize what I’d lost, or how much pain I caused.

Why couldn’t I have said to Pat, “Listen up, old man.  Annamarie is my woman, and I’m her man.  She is beautiful to me, and I don’t give a damn what you think.”

It was because I was not a man, not then.  Annamarie, I am weeping.

Sketch #5 Crackers

Sketch #4 Gene and Pablita

Gene, the son of Adolfo and Pablita Gallegos, lived in another trailer house, a little farther up the arroyo.

Settlement in the high desert strung out along the flood plains of the streams and rivers that trickled and flowed out of the mountains. The original land grant colonists had built on the bluffs, above the irrigable, mosquito ridden flats. Their fields stretched down to the banks. A road was established, parallel to the river, linking the homes together. As time went on—and families grew—the holdings were divided into strips, perpendicular to the river. This configuration maintained access to the acequias. At some point, individual properties became so narrow that it was impractical to resubdivide them in the traditional way (and only the Anglo newcomers were crazy enough to settle on the flood plain), so the next generation inherited lots above the road—land that was dry, overgrazed, and deforested.

Gene was of that generation that could no longer subsist on the land. Pablita had told me that, “We had no depression here. We had chickens, we had beans, we had milk.”

Someone told me that Gene had been a cop once, but had gotten kicked off the force. When I knew him, he was painting cars and selling a little mota. Five bucks got you a 35mm film canister, fifteen a small baggy.

To raise a little scratch, Gene also sold off his father’s tools. I bought an elegant twenty inch long jack plane, with a Bailey shoe and a Stanley blade works, and a perfect 12 point Disston hand saw—with a V for Victory emblem etched in the blade—and neither with a spec of rust, for maybe twenty five bucks. He asked me not to mention this to Adolfo. I treasured that saw until someone who knew its value borrowed it and never gave it back. A lesson in karma, I suppose.

Painting cars out in the open was problematic. Even on a calm day, a lot of dust would settle on the wet paint. So Gene built himself a paint teepee.

Of course, an inverted cone shape was not ideal. Gene elongated the teepee form into a sort of A-frame with rounded ends. The building plan and ridgeline bent somewhat, to accommodate an outcropping.

The structure was fashioned from slender tree trunks, maybe six or eight inches in diameter at the base, and set about two feet apart, in opposing pairs, sloping to the center. Tar paper was draped over the framework, and a lathe of chicken wire set over the paper.
Finally, Gene applied a few hasty layers of cement stucco over the whole affair. It was a feverish work of genius. Vincent Sculley could have written a paean to it, how its organic form resonated with the mountains in the distance; my straw bale and natural building friends would have been in awe.

Gene’s paint shop took off. It became a local landmark and gathering place—even when there were no cars to paint, Gene’s buddies would visit, drinking beer and blowing weed all day long.

One morning I looked out the window and the teepee was gone. In its place was a pile of shattered and scorched stucco, a great deal of which was mounded over the car that was ready for a final buff-out.

I can’t recall how much time Gene spent, despondent, paralyzed. But soon after the debris was cleared, a flat bed loaded with adobe bricks showed up. A tidy rectangular slab, about 36’ by 24’, was laid out and poured.

Then it was adobe time. Pablita managed the mortar pit. The mortar, or mezcla, was little more than the hardpan beneath your feet, soaked with water, and worked with a hoe. Pablita demonstrated the action. She told me that when she and Adolfo built their house, she led an ox around in a circle, to churn up the mud. The beast’s urine added strength to the mix. In the old days, the finish floor was of the same mix. After it dried, the ox was led in and slaughtered—and its blood mopped in to seal the floor.

A simple roof went up. An Ashley stove went in. Once again, Gene was back in business.

At some point during these events, a young redhaired woman showed up. She was slender, but her belly was round. Even though she was Anglo, she spoke excellent Spanish. Gene was in heaven. “I always wanted a redhead,” he shared with me.

I wish I knew how the story went. Did Redhead have Gene remodel the shop into a snug little casita—and rent the trailer to another couple of Anglo misfits?

Janet and I found the arroyo again in 2005. We asked some people we saw if they remembered the Gallegos. A woman knew a niece, and offered to see if she could find her, but we declined, content to leave the past a mystery.

Sketch #3 Adolfo

TO A TWENTY FIVE YEAR OLD, Adolfo seemed ancient.  Perhaps he was 70, perhaps more.  He enjoyed making jokes at his own expense.  “Llamo Gallegos, pero soy un poco Indio,” he admitted, then added, “Todos somos un poco Indio.” 

He was lanky and looselimbed.  His forehead was tall and narrow, and sloped down to a large brown nose, perched on which were heavy framed glasses with thick lenses.  “Estoy un poco ciegos,” he apologized, when he didn’t recognize me. 

“Que es ‘ciegos,’ senor?”  I asked.

Adolfo lifted his glasses and blinked.  He staggered forward, groping at me.  Then he replied, in perfect English, “It means I’m blind as a bat, my friend.”  

I got to know him early in the year, at ditch cleaning time.  Land owners with irrigation rights had to provide manpower to clean the ancient hand dug acequias—probably dating to Spanish colonial times—or pay a fee to the ditch association for hiring laborers.  The individual requirement was proportional to the acreage under irrigation.  The work took place before the sluice gate was opened for the new growing season.

 As a renter, I was not obligated to participate.  But I still volunteered, and on the appointed morning, Adolfo and I—shovels in hand—arrived at the head of the ditch.  There, we were logged in and assigned a number.  We took our places at the edge of the ditch, along with three or four dozen other men—mostly younger even than I was.  Adolfo was by far the eldest.

Then, the majordomo jumped down into the ditch.  He took two paces down its course, and thrusting his shovel into the ditchbed, he called out UNO!  Without breaking stride, he continued—two more paces, chop, DOS!—and on, until he had called off a number for each man.  When the last number was called, we all leapt into the ditch and shoveled furiously, dirt sailing, birds and critters skittering and flittering out of the willows and Russian olive along the bank.

 All of us, except for Adolfo.  Instead of leaping, Old Adolfo pushed his shovel into the ditchbed, and gripping the end of the handle close to his chest, he gently swung himself over the edge.  He landed like a cat.  Then he began to dig in an easy, rhythmic motion, scraping and lobbing in one graceful arc.  Somehow, he kept up with the rest—some, one quarter of his age.

As soon as we completed our six foot segments, majordomo marked off the next set.  We advanced almost without pause.  By the end of the day, my ruptured blisters were bleeding through my gloves.  My lower back was screaming. 

Adolfo was tired, too, but he looked like he could go another round or two.  That’s a good thing, because it would take several more days to complete the work.

But that was it for me.

Apropos: Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

In August of  2001, while attending a convention in Montreal—I spent as much time as I could get away with, away from the meetings and seminars—wandering the streets and neighborhoods of the enthralling city.

On the outskirts of Vieux Montreal, I passed by an entrance to what initially appeared to be a large office building—but on closer look—I saw daylight pouring into the space from above.  Intrigued, I entered the space—originally a narrow street or alleyway between two older buildings, which had been roofed over with glass.  This atrium ran the length of the block, with shops and cafes along the sides.  Above were balconies and office windows.  As I walked through the space, I noticed, way at the far end, an upright slab of concrete.  It was crudely wrought, and marked with furtive graffiti. 

I approached—and as is my habit—I overlooked an explanatory plaque—and walked around the slab in wonderment.  On its far side, the graffiti was vivid and colorful.  It was only on completing a circumnavigation of the monolith that it dawned on me—this was a remnant of the Berlin Wall.  The plaque confirmed the assumption—the slab was a gift, from city to city.

The magnitude of my simple and innocent act—walking around, freely, casually, unconsciously, what had been an insurmountable barrier, for the better part of my life—began to sink in.  Tears welled up in my eyes.

Janet took me back to Montreal last August, to celebrate my Six-Oh.  I made sure to show her what I had discovered, eight years before.

Are there any conclusions to be drawn from this experience?

If nothing else, it points to the futility of using the same concrete barriers, cast in the identical profiles, to separate Israelis from Palestinians.  Or for that matter, of any wall, based on ideology.

Sketch #2 George McNaughton

It must have been George McNaughton who turned us on to the place.  George lived in El Rancho, just down the road from the trailer house.  He would have known about it, and now that I think about it—George—who spoke some Spanish—introduced us to the landlady, Pablita Gallegos.  Now the image is distilling—George, telling Pablita how he knew me from working together in the Honda shop, George, describing Mary Ann as my wife, Pablita, gently correcting his pronunciation.

I wish I knew where he is now.  If there was any one person who helped me shake off my demons and mellow out a little, it was George.  He was only a fair mechanic, but his world was larger than a 350cc engine. 

He was renting a shotgun house on a sliver of land—it couldn’t have been more than 25’ wide.  You had to go through the house to get to the lot in the rear, where he kept his goats.  I’d leap the neighbor’s fence and find him sitting on some straw in the pen, nursing a kid in his lap with a baby bottle.  He loved their milk, and would bring some in a mason jar with him for lunch.  I tasted it, and was shocked at its gaminess.  He apologized, explaining that there was a billy goat in the adjoining field, and his odor was enough to rankle the milk. 

I borrowed his truck once, to pick up my own truck engine from the machine shop in Santa Fe.  It was a ’55 GMC, and George was intensly proud of its big Pontiac 287 V-8.  The rear fenders were rusted through, George warned me that the one on the driver’s side lofted outward at highway speed.  “So stay over to the right, now.  If you roll the window down, roll it all the way down, hard, so it doesn’t rattle.”  Even then, it was getting hard to find replacement glass.

He told me how the truck had cost him his last job as a butcher.  “I’d have to fiddle with the carb every morning, to get it started, and my hands would get greasy.  Of course, the fat from the beef would dissolve it, and by lunch time the grease would be gone.  But I guess the boss couldn’t handle it.”

But George had an uncompromising sense of dignity.  I recall him, tall and towheaded, blond hair sweeping over blue eyes.  When we’d go out, he wore a dapper three piece suit of pale blue denin.  His dream was to build a home on some property he owned with Cynthia, somewhere up there between the Chama and the Rio—La Madera, maybe.  In some high valley, miles beyond the power lines. 

He was crazy about Cynthia, and would speak of her in terms that would make a gynecologist blush.  But their stars were crossed, and she wound up marrying some guy from Santa Fe.

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sketch #1 Home in El Rancho

here it sat, the little trailer house, like a Coors can tossed out the window of a passing pickup.

You approached it from the east.  Its berth was scraped out of the side of a hill, as tall as the trailer itself, so you didn’t even see it until you were almost past.  And if you were sailing down the road at that harmonic speed where you float across the washboard ruts, you’d miss it altogether.

     

Opposite was an arroyo that flowed from the barren barrancas and foothills to the south.  Widening and flattening, it merged briefly with the road, then resumed its final couurse, between adobe houses shaded by lombardy poplars, between their fields and orchards, and at last, into the weaving, tamarisk choked mud flats and trickles of the Nambe.

a city boy no more...

the arroyo is in the background

If you didn’t fly past—if you stopped and pulled in beside the arroyo—you could mount the stoop—a pallet with a scrap of carpet, set on cinder blocks—and enter the trailer house through its sun blasted door.

It was only on the other side of the door that the little house revealed its modest charms.  Its walls were paneled with maple or birch, the rising and falling patterns of the bookmatched grain resonating with the rugged terrain beyond.  Windows wrapped the south end, scanning the Sangre de Cristos to the east, the Jemez to the west, and the empty lands between.  A plaque above the centermost window denoted the pride the Great Lakes Mobile Home company took in its manufacture.

IMAGE FROM THE ATLAS MOBILE HOME MUSEUM http://www.allmanufacturedhomes.com/              

At the opposite end of the space was a perfunctory kitchen.  Beyond, a miniature bathroom, a nook large enough for a child’s bed—and finally—a bedroom with enough room to walk around one side of a double bed.

Somewhere there was a closet capable of stowing a partially dissembled motorcycle.  There must have been a bench in the nook, because I recall overhauling the engine block of my ’61 F-100, inside, where it was clean and warm.

Maybe not so warm.  Waking up on a winter morning, with the temperature at 5 below zero, there would be a halo of frost on the wall around your head.  There was a propane furnace next to the kitchen, but even set at full blast, it seemed to make no difference in the bedroom.

Or warmer than warm.  In the summer, with the sun pouring in through the bay windows, you knew how a dog felt, locked in a car with the windows rolled up.  Haling from the muggy east, I was not familiar with swamp coolers, and it took me half the summer to understand the basic principles.  By the time I figured it out—all it needed was to trim the rotten end of the water supply tube, and snug it down with a new hose clamp—the worst of summer had past.

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New Mexico Sketches

In a recent FaceBook chat, author-architect Carol Venolia posted about living in a 60 square foot travel trailer.
see:
http://www.naturalhomemagazine.com/multimedia/image-gallery.aspx?id=9918 

That got some engrams knocked loose, and I began to reminisce about a small space I inhabited once.  The result has been a bittersweet process.  Searching for records of the past--and finding photos and letters from old friends and lovers--too many of them gone; many more, somewhere beyond the reach of a google search.

The goal is to build on the following sketches, combining and amplifying them, to come up with a New Mexican Moveable Feast.  It's a terrifying prospect, because there were events where I caused great and needless pain to people.  But you have to begin somewhere...

               photo by Lynne Motley / 1985

Last Trip

IT WAS THE BIG BROWN NOSE and demonic, toothy grin that I recall most vividly. The eyes were concealed behind leatherbound goggles, and the entire assemblage capped by a half shell helmet. He was easing up on my left on a BSA twin, a Lightning, I would guess.

We were already rolling along at a pretty good clip, somewhere west of Glorieta. The acid was starting to wear off, but I was still high. I glanced over at him, and nodding a greeting, goosed the throttle.

Coming from the east coast, the landscape still seemed bleak. The high desert is reluctant to share its sparse beauty with newcomers. Mary Ann was helping that process along with this ride.

She had gone out there a year or so earlier, solo, on a sweet little CB350-4. Rented a flat on Galisteo Street, just below the Paseo. Got a job at the Harley shop. I stopped off to visit, on my way to Alaska-so I told myself.

Quickly, things got too comfortable. Within a day or two of arriving—broke—I got a job at Boddy’s Honda, turning wrenches. Richard, the shop foreman, was skeptical of my ability—maybe because when he asked my name, I told him my old friends called me Gonzo. So, first morning on the job, Richard gave me a new CB750.

“The transmission is bad. Can you overhaul it?”

No big deal. In Honda school, you had to tear down a transmission and reassemble it, without the manual. But it’s really not hard, once you learn the system. All Honda trannies—large and small—share the same configuration, which is logical and intuitive.

“Sure,” I replied.

“OK. Let me know if you need a hand.”

All I had to work with was the set of hand tools I carried in my saddlebags, but by lunchtime I had yanked the engine, split the cases, and inspected the transmission. However, there was nothing wrong with it—the trannie was in perfect shape: shifters, dogs, gears, shafts—all sleek and gleaming. So I poked around, and found the problem: the shift linkage was fouled. A tweak with some channel locks and it was back in the groove--there had been no need to pull the engine. By late afternoon, I had the engine back in the frame, and was hooking back up the last of the cables when Rich walked by my bay.

“Need a hand getting the engine out?”

“Nope. It’s back in. I’m going for a test ride in a few minutes.”

“What about the transmission?”

“It’s fine. The clevis from the shift lever was bent. I straightened it. Sorry I didn’t find it until I had it all torn down.”

“No kidding—you had that engine apart and back together in one day—the flat rate manual gives it 24 hours! Who helped you lift the engine out?”

“Nobody.” I demonstrated how you sit astride the rear seat, lay forward with your chest on the gas tank, and ease the engine up onto one of the frame tubes. You dismount, balancing the engine with one hand, then squat beside the bike, and roll the engine onto your haunches. Then you hump it onto the bench.

“Well, if you want to go by Gonzo, you’re Gonzo, alright. If you want to call yourself Jesus, you’re Jesus.”

It’s no big deal, really. I worked with some serious flat raters in big shops back east, guys who were faster than me.

***

That weekend, Mary Ann wanted to show me one of her favorite spots. We loaded the bikes with a small tent, sleeping bags, and some food and water, and set out for the Pecos Wilderness.

In my pocket, I had a couple of squares of windowpane, powerful stuff. I had tried a dose, back in Takoma Park, just before I left. I went for a walk along the creek, and the acid came on with the rush of a jet engine. Nearing the road, the sound of the passing cars took form, growing as the car approached, and dissolving from sight as the sound receded. I walked up a hill, along a little street I never new existed. Some old bungalows backed up to the park. As I walked beside them, one of the bungalows, with a low slung, wide eaved hip roof, became a merry, portly woman, who hitched up her long skirts and danced a jig for me. I was eager to share this stuff with Mary Ann.

We must have camped above the tree line, because I remember taking off my boots and all my clothes, and running through a meadow, and down a hill. The sun at that elevation was dazzling, and as the acid came on, clouds, mountaintops and trees took on new forms, merged, and recombined. I felt scree and thistles cutting my feet, but did not perceive it as pain. It was like I was shaking off the demons of the past.

But Mary Ann held back. Maybe she was worried that I would leap off some crag and try to fly away, or some local might see us and freak out and shoot us, so I chilled out. Although she was always more adventurous than me, she was a lot more circumspect. Plus she knew I had no common sense.

***

I started pulling ahead of Brown Nose, and he gunned his machine in response. We were heading up a long incline, and my mildly tweaked R-60/2 was pulling him all the way. But after we crested the hill, the BSA overtook me. I had to watch it anyway, because the beemer got a little wobbly over 95.

And so it went, I’d pace him up the hills, and he’d gain it all back going down. Soon, I could no longer see Mary Ann’s 350 in my mirrors. Brown Nose was in the lead when he peeled off onto the two lane spur into Santa Fe, and I had to yield to a couple of cars. Trying to catch up, I roared up the shoulder, slinging gravel and passing traffic like crazy until a bridge abutment blocked my path. Never caught back up. It was over.

I killed the engine and waited for what seemed an hour for Mary Ann to catch up. When she did, she wasn’t so much angry as disgusted.

I suppose it was a good thing, though, because then and there I decided that I had experienced all I needed of the psychedelic state, at least for the time. In the thirtyfive years since that trip to Pecos, I’ve never dropped another hit. Even tapered off of mota, and finally quit that, too.

But I reserve the right to try it again some time. Like if I were diagnosed with terminal cancer, maybe.

Or if Brown Nose blasted out of the hills again, to give me another chance.

time ripped away

It took a moment to recognize the name on the answering machine, and when I did, a shadow passed over; this cannot be good.

Kevin Starke, the brother of Cheryl, an old girlfriend. Maybe it’s about a project—Kevin had studied architecture, and had been doing some construction in the area. A day went by, and I forgot to call. Today, I returned the dreaded call: Cheryl died this past weekend. Breast cancer. Kevin said she went unusually fast, so was spared a measure of suffering. So he says.

I met Cheryl when I was turning wrenches at Cycle City; this would have been back around ’71 or so. She had a beauty of an R-60/5, silver, with an Avon fairing and nice bags. A serious road bike.

We went on a few rides together, me on my funky Earle’s fork machine, Cheryl on the R-60, and at some point I found myself in her apartment one night. But I wound up sleeping on a spare cot. There was some gulf I could not cross, to really reach her, to connect with her.

Not that I didn’t try; not that I didn’t want to. She had an angelic face, and I’m fighting tears as I picture her smile. Her body was luscious, marred only by a jagged scar, horizontal above one knee—from when an unseen driver ran her off the road one night. She had the affectionate disposition of puppy, but the persona of a kitten.

But I couldn’t find a way to talk to her, much less to touch her. It’s not that she was holding me away—she couldn’t reach me anymore than I could reach her. And at best, in those days, I was a moving target.

For a while, she was hooked up with an older guy, whose nickname belied a high degree of intimacy. When I moved out west, we exchanged some letters, and she would tell me about the cross-country rides they took, Cheryl on the beemer, and her man on his glide.

Some years later, when I was living back here, we got in touch again. She was dancing in a topless joint, working her way through school. One afternoon she called to see if I was home, and I invited her over. It didn’t seem important at the time, to mention that my friend Tom was visiting. Without any warning, she burst in and ripped off her coat, and wearing little more than a g-string and some pasties, she jumped on the couch and broke into a dance. I can’t recall at what point she realized I wasn’t alone, but she went on with her dance, refusing to be embarrassed. Still, we were all a little unsettled by it, and she did not stay long. That may have been the last time I saw her, except for the few times we’d bump into one another.

My brother Art liked her; he’d visit her from time to time, maybe every other year. She was a serious gardener, like Art; they had that in common--but not too much else.

The last time I saw her, she was manning a booth at the folk festival, promoting a cohousing community. She told she was living by herself, in a house she designed and built out there, by the foot of Sugarloaf. The house was built on sustainable principles, and had solar panels on the roof. She’d finished school, and gotten a pretty good job in the school lab. Finally quit riding. She let me know she was still looking for a man, but not having a lot of luck.

I would have liked to have visited, to catch up on our lives apart, to see her house. But I never got around to it, and the time slipped away. In this case, it’s like the time was stolen, ripped away from a woman who will always seem young to me.

By the Light of the Moon

LAST THURSDAY NIGHT, a few steps inside the slender park, and just out of the streetlamp’s reach, I paused to take a leak. The night was overcast, so I’m not sure if the moon had already risen, but it was light enough to see a faint mist rise from the issue.

I was on the lookout for horned owls, despite the early hour. It was not even nine yet. Annette had gone to the theater with her old library buddies, so I worked pretty late, left the car for her by the train station so she wouldn’t have to take a cab, and started to walk home. I could straighten up a little, do some reading. But approaching the pub, I recalled that Rick would be behind the bar tonight. Some bartenders pour scotch like it was nitroglycerine, so fearful they are of barely covering the bottom of your glass, but Rick serves you a double if not more. Because there was rain in the clouds, I ordered Laphroaig. But I digress.

It was Steve who—moments before—tipped me off on the horned owl. Steve lives on the corner, just outside the park, and has a keen eye for the local wildlife. He knows when the red fox goes on morning patrol, and keeps close tabs on the hawks—the coopers, the sharpshins, the redtailed and redshouldered—as they pass through the region.

Steve was out front as I walked by, with his ancient ginger cat weaving between his legs, tail erect. I stopped to tell him about the pair of dove-sized hawks I saw on my way in last week. He agreed that they were probably sharpshins—not redshouldered fledglings, as others suggested. Then he told me how he encountered a horned owl—twice in the past week—while riding his bike, just a few miles up the creek.

“Are you sure it was a horned?” I asked. Annette told me many times, of sleepless nights, listening to screech owls, hunting their way up the creek around midnight, and back down again before dawn. She’d repeat their call, that quavering whoo-oo-oo-oo-oo, in a descending tone.

And last year there was that barred owl—Annette recognized his call, which to me was just another dog, barking at passersby, from a yard backing up to the creek. But I stumbled into the bamboo and poison ivy, and caught him at close range in my 10x42’s—the breast as majestic as a Bourbon king in flecked ermine, the unmistakable headlamp eyes. When he took flight, revealing a wingspan nearly as great as Annette’s height, my heart paused.

“No, I saw his horns against the sky. No doubt. Second time, I came around this curve and he’s flying low, right towards me. I must have surprised him, because as he passes over my head, I see something fall, and plop! I look down and there’s a headless rabbit lying there, right smack in front of my bike.”

“No bull, man, that’s something else.”

I was searching for something meaningful to say when I felt something brush my pant leg. It’s the cat. I bent over and kneaded the flesh behind its ear, and smoothed the fur over its arthritic haunch. They were both just looking for some company, I guess, but it was time to get going. I said, “Dude, I’m half drunk and headed home,” and shoved off.

Still no rain. The Laphroaig was a good choice, however, because I was in shirtsleeves and the wind was picking up. It was going to be one drink at first. The bar was crowded, but quiet, because it was a solid, dreary line of men. I joined the line, and started watching a tennis match. Monofils edging out Nadal.  I wanted to check out their moves, but the camera covered the whole court, and the only time it zoomed in was to show Monofils shaking his wild afro, slinging sweat in great arcs.

The scotch disappeared into the man, and the man into the match. Presently, a blistering forehand by Monofils drove Nadal far to the right--his backhand side--and the return was wide. Set over, glass drained. My feet were ready to find some sidewalk.

I caught Rick's eye and drew my forefinger across my throat. He came over and picked up my glass.

"Thanks, Rick."

"My pleasure. I hope things are going better for you."

"Well, things are starting to pick up. There's a good chance I'll be in the black by the end of the year."

I was reaching for my wallet when the guy next to me gently intruded.

"Pardon me, would you mind if I asked what business you are in?"

"Not at all. It's about the worst business you can have in a recession." I explained briefly what I did, but did not offer him a card. "What's your name?"

"Carter Adams. And you?"

I told him.

I had noted his presence earlier, working on a huge hanger steak and washing it down with a martini. He was a short, compact fellow--a wrestler once, perhaps, built for power and for speed. Wiry, closecropped black hair sprang from a round head. Dark eyes and a genuine smile displayed confidence. That he did not crush my hand when we shook intimated a refined temperament.

"And what do you do?"

"I teach and coach football."

"Public system?"

"Yes." He mentioned the name of a local high school.

"My cousins went there, late sixties and early seventies."

"Hah--that was before I was born, man."

“What do you teach, physed?

“Tenth grade English.”

“Wooohhh! Do I detect some cognitive dissonance here?”

I caught Rick's eye again, and lifted an imaginary glass to my lips. A new glass arrived.

“Not in the least. Do you have something against English teachers?”

“No way. I’m the grateful product of some inspired public school English teachers. What books do you teach?”

Carter told me that his school gives the teachers wide discretion. At least a third of the kids are college bound, reading at adult levels. A similar proportion struggles at an elementary school level.

“There’s only one required book: 1984.”

“That’s a hoot. Not Silas Marner—which by the way, I faked my way through.”

“You and most of your classmates, for sure.”

“Still, Orwell seems a little edgy for a big school system.”

“If you think the book is edgy, let me tell you about how I taught it last year. I knew from previous years, that when you pass out the texts, and the kids see it’s 300 pages, you lose half of them before you even start.

“So I cooked up a little conspiracy with the school secretary and the security officer. The next day, I walk into class, looking and acting terrified. They pick up on it right away, because normally I’m pretty laid back, really happy to be in the classroom. Then I announce that there is concern about my teaching, and that I have been accused of violating chapter 451 in the teacher’s code—a failure to ‘adhere strictly to the prescribed curriculum.’ It’s totally bogus of course—but I explain that I might be at any point, ‘removed from the classroom.’"

"Holy smokes--I know what's coming."

"Right. I start to take attendance and the secretary walks into the classroom, up to the podium, and announces, 'I'm sorry to interrupt, class, but Mr. Adams will be leaving us. Your substitute will arrive shortly.'"

"She leaves, and I stand up, looking crushed. Before I can speak, the security office walks in, announcing that I am under arrest for 'a 451' and handcuffs me. Then he grabs my collar and walks me out."

"Cool. And the 451 reference is beautiful."

"I let a few moments go by, and then I walk back into the classroom. Several students are in tears; others are slackjawed. I explain the hoax, and then tell them that in the book we are about to read, incidents like that are a matter of routine. To the ones in tears, I ask, 'for heaven's sake, why didn't you protest?'

"Anyway, every one of those kids devoured that book. They all got it--that a population can be brainwashed, and subdued."

The conversation paused. The hanger steak was almost gone. I'm proud of this guy. I thought of Riefner, who taught 9th grade English in my button-down junior high school. The first time I encountered him, I was a skinny undeveloped kid, fresh out of elementary school. Rief was serving as hall monitor, leaning back on a wooden chair, watching students on their way to home room. Two girls in front of me walked by him. "Skags!" he hissed. They giggled. Then I walked by.

"YOU!"

I stopped in my tracks.

"Where's your belt?"

Before I could reply, he snarled, "YOU! Report to me tomorrow morning wearing a belt. If you don‘t, I‘ll find you!"

Next morning I dug out the only belt I had, a hideous thing with beadwork on the back that spelled out Miami Beach, given to me by my mother's maiden aunt. I went to Reif's classroom, but he was not there. I asked a girl--my god, she was a woman--where he was. She started calling, “Mr. Riefner, Mr. Riefner,” and looking around, attracting the attention of the other students. She leaned over and opened the doors of a credenza, peered in and called, "Mr. Rieeeef-ner!" As she leaned, I peered down the scoop neck of her top, deep between her breasts.  The view made me lightheaded.

She closed the cabinet door. "He's not here." The classroom was ringing with laughter.

I blurted, "Could you please tell him I came by, and I'm wearing a belt?" Another peel of laughter. I spun on my heels and ducked back into the anonymous hall, unsure of where I was, or where to go, or how to take my next breath.

When I got to his English class, two years later, he was still working on me. In the middle of a session, with no warning, he'd fire out, coal black eyes blazing, "ABRAMS! WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE?" But he'd also take me aside in the hall, putting his arm around me, and give me a copy of The Painted Bird, or A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. His breath reeked of tobacco, and the tweeded arm was scratchy.

Once I asked him why he gave me an "A" on a composition. "I really didn't think it was that good."

"It wasn't. But I grade on the curve, and your classmates are idiots."

The hanger steak was gone. The martini and the scotch were dwindling. I made a V with my fingers, and Rick brought up reinforcements.

We talked on, mostly about families. How his three nieces, each just a year apart, were so different in temperament.

“I used to think it was all about upbringing. These girls were brought up in the same household, same parents, same circumstance. But if you met them on the street, you’d never think they were sisters. It became clear to me that there’s something in our nature, that makes us who we are.”

I told him about Annette and her twin sister, who complete each other’s sentences, and of my own brother, so alien to me. Again, our glasses were empty.

It always seems like there's craziness in the air on Thursday nights. Good craziness. But the craziness could turn bad with a fourth scotch. Monofils had shot his wad; Nadal had come back. I asked Carter how to find him again; he said “Come by the school anytime, I’ll be there.” I knew I probably never would.

***

After the piss, I was walking across the footbridge—the one where, whenever Annette and I cross together, I always embrace her and kiss her—and I thought of Killer.

Killer was a cat that belonged to a former girlfriend of mine, back in New Mexico. The name was meant to be ironic. Household mice and crickets were in little danger. I still have a snapshot of Anna Marie in her chair, reading a book, with the Killer asleep in her lap.

In the fall of 1974, we rented half of an old adobe house in Chimayo. The other half of the house, split down the middle with an adobe party wall, was owned by a family named Martinez. I never knew the parents very well, but the son introduced himself one day, while I was out front, replacing the ball joints of my truck. I saw his boots first, and slid out from under the truck. He greeted me with a 35mm film can of mota, and we got along fine until one night, when, like so many of his cohort, he drifted across the centerline of the twolane. It seemed like there was a wooden cross and a wreath of plastic flowers at every curve, all the way to Espanola.

Anyway, the Martinez’s had a big tomcat that would torment Killer. He’d come in with tattered ear, or a festering abscess. One afternoon, the tom caught Killer by surprise, and they went tumbling down the hand dug well that Mrs Martinez still pumped from every day. You could hear them fighting as they were falling, and two hellacious yowls as they thumped to the bottom. But it was Tom who bounded out of the hole first, with Killer in savage pursuit. I don’t think he was bothered much after that.

I concentrated on keeping my wobbly gait within the three center planks of the bridge. My right foot is freedom, my left is slavery. Right is innocence, left is ignorance. Right, nature; left, nurture. Killer B. Killed, I called him, after that journey down the well.

Above the dark rim of tree canopy, the moon winked through a gap in the clouds. Just then, a rushing shape hurtled over my head, heading up the creek.

“Who-whoo-oo-hoo,” it called.

ON DESIGNER DAVID DISPIRITO

[ALAN'S NOTE: this piece represents my first rejection from an editor. the assignment was to do an interview, and the piece came out as a profile. a fine distinction, it seemed to me...]



“We want these people to enjoy their homes. That’s what we’re all about.” Even if we give them things they are not even aware of.

So says David DiSpirito of Gloucester, VA, a Certified Professional Building Designer who specializes in universal and accessible design. David has earned a solid reputation as the go-to guy in his region, sought out by builders, people with special needs, and a conventional range of clients seeking design services for new homes and remodeling.

This story begins some 40 years ago, on Long Island, NY. David grew up very close to his two young cousins who suffered from muscular dystrophy, where he could see first hand the challenges people with disabilities face even with the simplest of tasks.

“It was fun to do wheelies in the wheel chair, but I could just get up and walk away. Of course, the chair wouldn’t fit through the bathroom door, and I remember how humiliating it was for the boys to be carried to the toilet by their parents.” Those memories, of the difficulty and embarrassment of struggling to manage the most basic human needs, stuck with David, and molded the approach to his practice.

However, the path he took to reach this point—which will seem so logical in retrospect—did not unfold in a straight line.

David’s minor in college was in architectural design, but initially, his ambition was to become a Mechanical Engineer. He got some hands-on construction experience, working summers, helping his father on some light remodeling projects and new home construction. One day, his father took a set of his drawings for a material estimate to a local lumberyard which also offered free house plans to customers who purchased their framing and trim packs. David “auditioned” with a set of plans—and that marked the beginning of his career, drafting house plans—“on the boards,” as David refers to manual drafting.

In the late 80’s, after a stint working for a registered architect, David took a position as an energy specialist at the Long Island Lighting Company. At the time, LILCO was under a state mandate to develop ways to conserve energy use in homes. David was doing energy audits, 20 years before it became a buzzword. He gained valuable insight working around experimental energy efficient homes, comparing the performance of strategies such as super insulation and passive solar design—radical approaches in that time and context, but rapidly becoming accepted as greenbuilding becomes mainstream. Because of this experience, many of the homes David designs are as much as 30% more efficient than required by code.

In 1990, David was recruited by Newport News Shipbuilding, where he took a position designing machinery and components for Seawolf class submarines and other naval vessels. He spent nearly seven years there, honing his problem solving and computer drafting skills, and doing residential design—including plans for his own house—on the side.

Not long after the birth of his first daughter in 1995, David—dissatisfied with the quality of available daycare—decided to take on a new career—that of a full-time father. This decision gave him the opportunity to do more free-lance design work. With a few commissions lined up, and some encouragement from local builders, David bought a computer and established Homesite, Inc.

“It was a culmination,” explains David, of his varied experiences—in home construction, energy systems, computer drafting, and problems solving—that led to the success of his new venture.

David refers to his specialty as “Universal and Accessible Design.”

He elaborates: “You find that when you study the material, that there are no consistent sets of terms and definitions. There’s “accessibility,” as defined by the ADA—it’s the gold standard; the one we aspire to even for residential work.”

There’s also “barrier free,” “visitablity,” “universal” design, and of course, the concept “aging in place.” There is great overlap among these; each approach includes many of the same concepts and practices, but there are some distinctions.

Universal design refers to creating space that can be used and enjoyed by people with the widest possible range of abilities. David advocates the principles formulated by the North Carolina State University Center for Universal Design, which have been widely adopted—in fact, they are an essential part of the curriculum for the NAHB Certified Aging In-Place Specialist (CAPS) program. [see sidebar based on http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/about_ud/udprincipleshtmlformat.html#top]

Accessible design more specifically addresses the needs of people with disabilities. In the context of the ADA, it can refer back to legal and technical requirements found in the ADAAG—The Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines. This is a federal mandate that regulates all manner of accommodations in public sector facilities—including multi-family residences as well as places of employment. Barrier-free design for residential work is similar to accessible design, but doesn’t have the legal compulsion afforded to the ADA. In the residential world, Barrier-free and Accessible design are many times used interchangeably.

Visitablity is a subset of Universal Design, in which a guest of limited abilities can enter, occupy, and enjoy a portion of a residence and its essential amenities, but not necessarily all spaces in the building.

Aging In-place is an extension of Universal Design emphasizing remaining in one's home safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level. Aging In-Place allows the homeowner to live in a familiar environment throughout their maturing years, and to enjoy the familiar daily routines and the special events that make life worth living.

The gold standard that David aspires to is ANSI A117.1, which is the set of building standards that underpin the ADAAG. This is the working document that defines clearances, heights, and related criteria for doors, hallways, bathrooms, ramps, handrails, signage, and other building features which otherwise might be barriers or obstacles to people with disabilities.

But in his practice, David takes things beyond minimum standards. For example, ANSI A117.1 requires that door openings must be at least 32” wide in the clear—which therefore effectively requires a 34” or 36” wide door. But a wide door is very difficult for a person using a walker to negotiate. The person first must release his grasp, and while maintaining balance with the other hand, push the door open. But his reach is limited—he must take another step forward, releasing his grasp again to push the door open farther, and so on. The risk of falling increases accordingly.

So David, when given the opportunity, will provide a pair of 18” doors instead. “It’s accessible—and—it’s elegant.”

This approach is the key to David’s success in this field, and “elegantly accessible” is his slogan. Accessible features can be a hard sell. Able-bodied people have a disinclination to imagine themselves as disabled—obviously accessible details can be perceived as a threatening reminder of vulnerability, weakness, and ultimately, mortality. But when these features are given an elegant interpretation, “It’s a selling point. People see the value of it.”

Who wouldn’t appreciate a wider hallway? They are included in a DiSpirito home, whether you ask for it or not. Who doesn’t like the idea of a deeper closet? David makes them deep enough—and stacks them over free space below—so that if needed in the future, they can become a shaft for a small elevator system. The floor is framed so that by cutting the flooring and ceiling below, and removing a few joist hangers, the rough opening is ready to go. “The extra cost is trivial,” says David, “basically it’s for a couple of microlam beams set in the wall to bolt the track to.”

By contrast, David designed an elevator recently for a client who developed a degenerative nervous system condition. “There was absolutely no place inside the house where an elevator would fit. So we had to build an addition on the back of the house. It was a tiny addition, no larger than the cab and surround, but it still needed all the components of full scale addition—foundation, walls, and roof.” What could have done for a few hundred dollars—if planned for up front—cost something like $35,000.

David has included elevators in the last three houses he designed. An able-bodied owner loves it—he travels frequently, so he packs his luggage in the bedroom, and sends it downstairs in the cab. (He walks down the stairs down to retrieve them.)

Other features are welcome by able-bodied owners, like large, curbless showers, and kitchen counters at various heights. A favorite is raising the dishwasher on a one-foot high platform. Low counters can be used as desks, or for kneading bread dough—allowing home bakers to extend their arms and use the weight of their shoulders to work the dough.

In 2006, David enrolled in the NAHB CAPS program, to earn his Aging In Place certification. “I could have taught the design portion of the class, but the sensitivity training was invaluable.” In this phase, participants must “disable” themselves in various ways. For instance, to understand what a patient with extreme arthritis might deal with, David had to grasp a tennis ball, place a sock over the hand, and then try to grip or manipulate everyday objects. He and other participants got in wheelchairs and maneuvered through the building where the class was held. Even though the building was ADA compliant, it was still a great challenge for people who were essentially able bodied.

The experience enhanced David’s insight into the challenges faced by the disabled, where the proper swing of a bathroom door or the precise alignment of a grab bar might mean the difference between independence for a senior, and surrendering to a nursing home. David recently completed a project for an MS patient, who at that point was bedridden and completely dependent on others for every basic need. He designed a system of overhead track and mechanical hoists “that enabled the woman to get out of bed, move to the shower, then into her closet, get dressed, and into a wheel chair, and out of the house—all by herself.”

It’s been a full circle, then, for David, from the kid doing wheelies in his cousins’ wheelchair, to the one who can liberate a person from her devastating disabilities.

And do it with elegance.

homer and hemingway

I'm sitting at the bar at Roscoe's, with Hemingway on my mind, and sangiovese in my glass. It's lunchtime, and I am waiting for a bowl of cannelini and leek soup.

Moody I am. The bartender--one of the two lookalike brothers who own the place--started my pour with the dregs of the bottle.

"When was that bottle opened?"

"It was opened last night," he replied, without a hint of regret. Somewhat clumsily--for a bistroteur--he uncorked a fresh bottle to top me off.

The glass is stemless. Our mingled fingerprints mar the tranquility of my miniature sea, the perfection of its transitions from transparency to opacity. grrrrr. Heavy, stemless stemware, the nod to bad busmanship, emblem of a society in decline.

But ahhhh, despite my apprehensions, the wine is OK--a little cranky, perhaps, like the one who consumes it--who woke before 4, like a lightbulb clicked on inside his skull.

The cannelini arrives. It's what brings me back to this joint--that, and the bonhomie of the other brother, whose natural warmth I take at face value. Sadly, neither of us remember the other's name as we greet.

The soup is satisfying, though it might be nicer if it had some whole beans in with the puree--persuade me, please, that it is not from a can. But it does not linger in the bowl.

Now the wine turns harsh; I am no longer welcome. My glass is drained, and out under the cloudless sky, it's no wonder I think of a book review, years ago, on the Fagles Odyssey. It quoted the passage where Telemachus' crew


...sprang to orders,
hoisting the pinewood mast, they stepped it firm
in its block amidships, lashed it firm with stays
and with braided halyards hauled the white sail high.
Suddenly wind hit full and the canvas bellied out
and a dark blue wave, foaming up at the bow,
sang out loud and strong as the ship made way,
skimming the whitecaps, cutting toward her goal.


The lines electrified me, as terse and vivid as Tatie's--and I was surprised that it was as easy to plow through the book as it was for Telemachus' ship to plow through the wine-dark sea.

But now, with running gear secure, and the sun still showering its light on immortal gods, this mortal man makes briskly back for the office.

clouds

WE do not judge you,
as we roll across the sky,
we, the silent clouds.

foggy

SLOWLY words emerge
like limbs and leaves by the creek
as approached through fog