Russell Lee:
Road worker mixing concrete in Menard County, Texas (1940)
United States. Farm Security Administration

"I swear I'm just along for the ride."

Ten days later, we might have recovered our porch refurbishing project. A bungled footing pour had set the effort back by requiring some remedial reengineering and considerable additional digging. Four failed inspections, and the inspector still needed to clear for ThePour, which had sometimes seemed like a mythical, perhaps unattainable future objective. The morning of ThePour, we still had yet to receive the requisite permission. I stopped by the job site to chew Pablo, our concrete contractor, a "new one," telling him to stop fucking me and do his job. "We will pass this morning's inspection," I insisted more confidently than I should have. He started explaining to me that one footing might not yet have been dug deep enough, that he might have to jackhammer out the sidewalk and dig from the top down rather than from the side in. "Fine," I replied, "Whatever it takes."

I left it at that, leaving to take our GrandOther to school, promising to return in an hour. When I returned, Wilbur, the smallest member of the crew, was stuffed down in that space beneath the sidewalk, scraping deeper. Before my little talk with Pablo, that footing had not yet been adequately readied. I fetched Wilbur my headlamp to help with his spelunking and retired inside to wait for the inspector. The inspection finally granted us permission to begin ThePour. Pablo reported that the concrete truck would arrive at 1 PM. The pedestal forms also passed inspection, though the inspector would not comment on their aesthetics. I took it on perhaps unwarranted faith that they would be appropriately formed because I had no alternative to faith. Like any reluctant gambler, I would have preferred to count the cards if only I'd remembered how to count.

The concrete truck arrived precisely on the hour and Pablo's crew and even Pablo lined up for what promised to be a sprint. Concrete pours are more or less continuous. In our instance, the truck's snout couldn't reach the far side of the house, so a wheelbarrow brigade carted loads through a minefield of obstacles to the top of each footer hole. There, part of each load would be transferred into the upright pedestal forms via bucket, and the remainder would be dumped into the sub-footing hole in a ceaseless process; no rest for saint or sinner. Pablo jiggled each form to settle the contents while his team moved concrete. I stood on what remained of the porch joists to watch, splashed by concrete drops a few times. ThePour became inexorable, uninterruptable. Whatever happened occurred in seconds with no do-overs allowed. That hole Wilbur spent the first half of the morning expanding quickly disappeared beneath loads of liquid stone.

My home felt more solid with every wheelbarrow unloaded. I had not noticed how unanchored The Villa had been until I started feeling the mass of the new footings settling in. The place became more solid than ever, even before the concrete had cured. After ThePour, the crew scurried around cleaning up their mess, hosing down equipment and sidewalks, and leaving little piles of soggy concrete they'll dispose of in the morning. By the end of the afternoon, all visible surfaces of the new subfootings had been smoothed along with the pedestal tops. Those will require another pour to create the final caps. A wall must also be reinforced and poured in the next few days. We're suddenly less than a week from completing this stage of the effort. Then, a new contractor will take the stage and begin replacing supporting beams and leveling the roof's sagging front edge.

I can't say that the ComingToFuckingJesus Meeting did anything to hasten the end of the effort. It might have influenced the additional digging on that one front subfooting, which, had it not happened, would have prevented inspector approval. Maybe that meeting did nothing to influence any outcome. It did convince me once again that I'm not well-suited to being a hard ass. I lack the necessary assertion gene. I really do just want everyone to get along, and I'm apparently willing to sacrifice myself and my interests to pursue that end, even when that end's not achieved. None of us can very accurately foresee what will be. We behave as if we influence futures we cannot even distantly imagine. We don't quite know nothing, though we frequently behave as if we understood what we couldn't. ThePour finally occurred. I consider this milestone a miracle not because it occurred right on time and to the original specification but more because it didn't. I didn't know for sure that ThePour would happen two hours before it started, and I consider that situation evidence of multiple miracles. I swear I'm just along for the ride.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz