Doc and the Bimbo Posts

I live in a beach shack.  That is not quite true.  I live in three beach shacks that were haphazardly shoved together to form most of the floor plan of my home. How this all came about is unclear.  According to an old former neighbor of mine, there was a logging railroad that ended across the alley from my present abode.  On that property were two railroad shacks.  These buildings were added to a large tent platform which is now Judy’s sewing room and our laundry room. When this was accomplished, I do not know, but the logging railroad was abandoned in 1935.

The architect responsible for this combination should have been fired, imprisoned for life, then have his dead body eaten by rabid dogs.  None of structures were leveled to each other, nor can they ever be. When we moved into our home, the laundry was connected to the kitchen with a ramp. A large portion of the house is supported on creosoted 20-foot long 6X6 railroad tie stock. Need ventilation under the house, why just put a two-inch notch in the 6X6.  Who needs to have a crawl space under the house when the average male in the late 1930s was 5’6” and weighed in at a whopping 140 soaking wet.  Oh, and let’s put the 4-inch sewer line directly under railroad tie so that 60 years later I have to exhale and shove with all my might to get my fat body to the water pipe leak.

I have had to crawl under the house too many times. When Carter was president, I stupidly signed up for the weatherization project.  To take full advantage, I dug out the crawl space to provide and extra 6 inches needed. In the process I had to replace all the pillars (mostly bricks) with concrete ones, and all the old posts with pressure treated ones that were 6 inches longer.  Took weeks even with the help of my two sons and a German Shepard who would silently crawl under the house to check up on me.  I’m in the dark, on my belly, digging in a claustrophobic space, when I feel hot breath on the back of my neck. Damn! Time to change my underwear again. But after a few times I got used to it.  That was until I reached back to pet her and found that the hot breath belonged to a ferret who had escaped from the neighbor’s house. 

But my worse under the house experience was time that the sewer pipe leaked. Actually, the pipe itself was fine, the leak was at a “T” in the pipe that had one time been attached to a toilet. It looks like the location of the toilet had been moved 3 times before I bought the place.  Take out the old shitter, then stuff some newspaper in the hole and secure it in place with plaster of Paris.  Worked just fine for 50 years until the once in a hundred-year cold snap.  Plaster cracked and popped the makeshift plug out of the “T”.   The really bad part of this break was it was under the plastic moisture barrier (thank you Jimmy Carter) and I did not know anything was wrong till the following spring when sewer files started coming out of tub drain. I looked under the house while Judy flushed the toiled. The plastic moved slightly upward right in the middle of the house.  The next day I had to follow the sewer pipe till I found it.  Yep, the same sewer pipe that was dead center under the railroad tie support beam.  I crawled along, cutting through the plastic ground cover to expose the pipe as I went. This was made so much worse, not by the smell, eventfully you get immune to the smell, but by the presence of a gazillion sewer flies that coated every surface just inches from my face.  Judy and kids were worried about me, bless their hearts.  Every minute or so, one of them would pound on the floor over my head asking if I was OK.  To reassure them I needed to open my mouth, at which point in time, several flies would enter my mouth. Somehow, I survived that one.  And no, the German Shepard did not follow me.  Even a doggie love for her best bud has its limits.

I’ve reroofed the house twice.  The big storms come in from the southwest.  Three-tab roofing does not hold up to 100 MPH gusts.  After a particularly bad winter storm year, every summer thereafter I was up trying to replace damaged tabs without doing more damage myself. After 10 years of doing this, I replaced that 15-year-old three-tab with metal. This finally solved my wind damage roof problems but added some other issues.  If I ever need to go up on the roof, I can’t, without the aid of mountaineering paraphernalia.  I am not joking about this.  About a month after the metal roof job, I heard an awful sound just as I was taking the garbage out.  I looked up just in time to see a cat falling off of the roof, screaming the whole way to the ground.  I do not know cat languages, but I think it was something akin to the Will Smith, Chris Rock exchange at the OSCARs, minus the slap.  My climbing on the roof gear usually consists of a rope with loops tied in it at one-foot increments.  Up the ladder, grab the first loop, pull my self up on the roof far enough to get a foot in a loop, then manage to turn myself onto my back and inch, or more precisely foot my way up to where I need to paint an eave or fix a metal chimney support that has rusted out.  After the job is done, I need to reverse the process working my way down to the ladder.  The up and down climb usually takes longer than the actual repair job.   Seems like a nice compromise from having to spend hours each summer fixing broken 3-tab roofing.  Did I mention that I am 74 with an old man’s bladder?  Did I mention that I also have occasional problems with explosive diarrhea?  I can live with pissing myself but shitting my pants too!  At least the roof is a dark red to hide the skid marks.

The interior of the house also has its stories.  Every room has been down to studs, some more than once.  I’ve rewired the whole house, added 200 square feet to the living/dining room, redid the bathroom twice, remodeled the kitchen, put in an on-demand water heater, and added a sunroom.  I’ve had to dig a new drain field, replace the septic tank, redo the water pipes. I even added a half bath in what was once a closet when my mother had to move in with us. I raised 4 kids in that house with only one bathroom, but when Dorcas moved in, we never got to finish a shit or take a shower before she was banging on the door telling us to hurry up.  I hired a good friend to put in the bathroom, but he refused to do the plumbing citing some shit about certifications.  So, there I was under the house again, sweating copper pipes together, catching the insulation over my head on fire with the propane torch, and generally having a good time.  Lucky for me that infamous sewer fly “T” was in the perfect spot to hook up the toilet.  There is a God in heaven and he had punished me enough.

Hardly a year goes by without some major indoor or outside project. Being on the coast is hard on structures.  Being 74 is hard on my body. It’s been several years since I have been under the house. I’m older, fatter now, with arthritic knees.  Although I don’t believe that there are jobs that Americans won’t do, I have come to understand that there are jobs that Americans can’t do.  But there are millions of Central Americans who are willing to and can squeeze between a 6X6 and sewer pipe without having to exhale. So, I am in favor of opening the broader and letting as many of the asylum seekers in as possible, as long as they are skinny and not claustrophobic.  Mountaineering experience would be a plus as well.

During January, I fell twice without the aid of a single malt.  When you get to be my age the balance and knees aren’t what they used to be. The first fall was my wife’s fault. She asked me before coffee to retrieve one of her items stored in my shop. Even though it is my shop, her items tend to overflow from her space into mine. My space is full of plastic totes full of fabric, her cloths that will fit her again sometime in the future, Christmas decorations, and other miscellaneous items that do not belong in the fortress of do it yourself.  I could say no but as we are approaching 52 years of marital bliss, I know when to keep my mouth shut most of the time.  Besides, I take a bit of revenge from her having to clean the sawdust off the things she requests me to fetch.

Like I said, my first fall was her fault.  First no coffee. What little balance I have left in the old body requires daylight and coffee.  Next in line is proper foot ware. Crocks don’t cut it. I have to wear crocks as I am not allowed to stretch out on the sofa in shoes.  This means I spend most of my time in the house in stocking feet. Problem is my shop requires a short walk on outside to get there.  I just can’t bring myself to do this is socks. Nothing worse that walking around in wet sock all day and I get ass thumped if caught on the sofa in wet socks. I just don’t understand this as she lets the dog on the sofa after she comes in from the yard with muddy feet and a wet body.  I guess I know where I rate in the pecking order. So rather than putting on real shoes I am stuck with crocks. I like crocks, but with type II diabetes I cannot feel my feet and the crocks tend to slip off my feet a bit, a situation to which I am often unaware of, especially without my morning coffee.  The result was a nasty fall onto the concrete, bruising my hip and scraping my elbow.

Why I can feel my feet is a condition called neuropathy.  Judy has trouble with this word often calling it necropsy which is a term that has something to do with the examination of dead tissue.  Or she will call it necromancy which has something to do with communicating with the dead.  To which I commented,

“at least in my favor you didn’t call it necrophilia”

“What’s that?” she responded.

“Having sex with a corps” I foolishly said.

“Does rigor mortis last that long?”

Yes, she really said that. I had no idea that a 72-year-old who I have known for almost my entire life could be that kinky.

Two days later I fell again. This on was all my fault. We had company and I had promised the Katie, our 13-year-old great niece, a fossil hunting trip. The Oregon Coast is fantastic fossil and agate hunting area, especially in winter as the sand washes off some of the beaches to expose Miocene mudstones filled with clam, crab, mussel, and petrified driftwood fossils. With the sand off the beach, you simply walk around staring down at the mostly flat rocks, looking for telltale shapes which are easily removed from the soft mudstone even with a flat head screwdriver.  There are also abundant marine mammal fossils here, but as these creatures were rapidly evolving during that epoch, they should be left alone for the experts to remove and study.  Fossil hunting during the winter is like walking on an asphalt paved parking lot looking for embedded bottle caps. Surprisingly it does not rain everyday nor does a gale wind blow all the time on the coast. No hiking for miles in rough terrain in the middle of the Gobi Desert in the blazing sun or hanging from a cliff by ropes for me.  If the tide is right, the sun is out, even I am up for a leisurely stroll on a rocky beach.  This going to be fun, or so I thought.

Only problem was the beach with fifteen feet below the parking lot down a wet, muddy, and cobble strewn path. Got halfway down, lost my footing, and landed on my shoulder on the flat beach below.  Lucky for me I missed the big rocks. And yes, I was wearing real shoes, not crocks.  I am not that stupid. But the fall knocked the wind out of me and exposed my skinny ass to the tourists who had navigated the path with more skill than I.  One of the tourists ran over to help me up as it knocked the wind out of me.  Being helped up by a tourist was bad enough but my plumber’s ass was hanging out of my pants making it doubly embarrassing, with the emphasis on the bare ass.  She even assisted me with pulling up my pants, telling me it was okay as she was a nurse.  With all that has gone on in the last couple of years, I can relate to the fact that nurses are real life heroes, as they can perform their duties in the most disgusting of circumstances. More than my pride was injured in that fall. I hurt my ribs and right shoulder.  Took a month for the ribs to recover and the shoulder is slowing getting better.  Needless to say, my fossil hunting on the beach is over till next year as the sand is already covering up the treasures. Only plus to me be a tottering old fool is I got to take it easy on the couch for a couple of weeks and play videogames.  Any fetching in the shop was done by Judy and she didn’t bitch about it even once. Every time I offered to get off my ass, she patted me on the head, told me she loved me, and noted how good I was getting at killing Nazis. Damn, I married well.