My old man. A year or so after I left my mortarboard at graduation in 1971, I had two jobs to start....both for my dad who decided “it’s time.” It was time for me to move on up from footing digger thru chimney cap installer (and everything in between) that he had let me learn over many Summers between elementary and high school. In short, I had spent a whole lot of time in the company of many trades and journeymen; seasoned carpenters, masons, tile setters, roofers.....you name it. If it went into, on-to or surrounded a new house....I knew all these guys by last name....first name being Mister. The exception being John Winterrowd, a card carrying Carpenter from Michigan that came to Georgia specifically to work with my father in building new homes. John was family. He gave me my first full year of "Homebuilding & Crisis Management.101" when I finally settled in that I could do this.
I knew it all. Everyone knew that “I knew it all” because I kept telling them that I knew it all....much to their mutual chagrin.
Why wouldn’t I? I had survived each task for many years and many Summers and by the fact that I spent 1 to 3 months between school years on the jobs with my dad....less play days; less vacation days; less lazy days....the aggregate time was less than my ego-stoked brain was telling me.
All the guys on the job-sites knew what to do about me because I wasn't yet "tempered" from actually knowing how to address or work with all the Subs involved. Fortunately, my dad stepped in to save me from winding up wounded, lacking limbs and digits or becoming ONE with a newly poured footing. He knew what to do, too.
My first indication of too much pride....and not enough brains was my 2nd week on these two properties that faced each other on Pin Oak Circle in Doraville, Ga. I had the permits; the front loader was there on time the next day and we cleared out the site, driveway and front/rear yards. After the first lot was cleared, I had corner stakes ready to drive into the ground for the corners and to set up batter boards afterwards.....I chose to do this...solo. I'd seen it done, assisted in doing it and it just didn't look that hard....keeping in mind this was welllll in advance of YouTube, too....I was figuring out in trial/error fashion before picking up the pick to start digging.
A few days later I was still squaring the corners and then re-leveling the horizontal grade boards and finally getting the plumb-bob to land in close proximity to where I wanted my corners. Once I had “perfection” I got the pick and shovel out of my vehicle and started to dig the footings.....I chose to do this.....solo.
About a week later I was still clearing rocks, roots and mud/muck from the footing trenches and making a general mess of my batter board systems but I was determined, because I had learned how to set out and dig footings early on when I was younger and with less muscle. Now I had muscles....I also had brains that turned on and off subject to how much muscle got involved....this being one of those times. Now that we were into the last week of June my dad drove around to visit...got out of his Town Car and woke up the neighborhood....hell, he probably set off burglar alarm systems in downtown Doraville a couple miles away in the heat of chastising and verbally boxing my ears.
"Boy” obviously forgetting my name but not using any profanity in the middle of a well established neighborhood.... ”you do understand you’re paying interest on construction money every damn day that you’re fiddling around here!!”
“I can’t build these houses without batter boards and footings!” was my smart-arse come-back.
“Boy....you’re not this stupid. You know better!! If you want to be a General Contractor....then act like one. You call your framers to set out and lay out; put up batter boards (at that time $75.00) and then call your footing diggers to bring their picks, shovels and crew out here to dig and pour ($125) your footings.”
I was holding up progress and paying interest on each house for almost THREE WEEKS in trying to save $200 for two jobs that I chose to do by myself instead of hiring it done. In the process, I lost my masons for the blocks and framing crew that were planning to be on the job by now.....but drove by earlier into the week, saw what I was doing and took other sites to ply their trades since I was nowhere near being ready for them.
“You’re right. I could do this faster but it’s hot and there’s a lot more rock here than I expected. I’ll make it up down the line after getting dried in.” I knew...most importantly....my dad knew I was lying to myself. He was going to need to keep tabs and volunteered a kindly, elderly gent by the name of James Baker to help be site labor to pick up the slack as well as to push me in the right direction.
However that slip up became a problem when the trailer with the front loader pulled up and blew the horns that he was there. He wasn’t leaving either....Eldon Goodwin....pulled his equipment all the way from Lithia Springs to Doraville and he was ready to work. Since I knew it all....my computer brain went into action and came up with “Black VisQueen!!” (black plastic on a roll) James said....”no, that’s not the way it’s done. You know what you have to do.”
"Listen up. It’s that black plastic that goes under the slabs to keep moisture out....it’s the same thing. We can tack it to the rim board and drape the foundation and the bricklayers can cut back at the brick ledge. THAT’S what we’re going to do while Eldon is cleaning up and grading down the drive.”
“You’re de’ boss.” says James Baker. A quick drive to Associated Distributors in Doraville for the rolls of black plastic; grabbing a few pocket fulls of roofing tacks.....the house was waterproofed in less than an hour. Eldon backfilled and then back dragged for compaction.
He packed up and took off grumbling that “He’d be back for the other house once the siding guys were out of his way”....and drove his gear back to Lithia Springs about 33 miles away with his flatbed and large front loader.
The bricklayers arrived. They set up on the new back fill with small planks of wood for support and had the house finished in a week. Before pulling off, they waterproofed the house across the street....got paid up and gone....we were back on track. The house load of wall board arrived and was loaded in ahead of my schedule....which to me meant they beat me in loading the whole house with heavy gypsum before I had installed the steel columns beneath the main beam....which I chose to do solo and which is a whole ‘nother story (I’ve got ‘em). However I was still waiting for my painter to prime the exterior woodwork, soffits/fascia before I could put on gutters and downspouts.
AUGUST had now arrived....the dog days were upon us; plus daily pop up showers and torrential rains. Hot....yes it was. Humid....pathetically muggy. Made me wish I was back in high school enjoying the air conditioning. However...we were getting there....I was scheduling everything at this phase from sewer line connection to drive and walkways plus landscaping. It’ll be a big next week if everything works out.
A big rain happened over the weekend and I figured that wrapping up the final concrete placing and landscaping would be running behind. I pulled up early on Monday morning to find James Baker standing at the basement drive-under garage doors shaking his head.
I knew there is always trouble when James Baker was shaking his head.
I slid down the muddy grade to the openings and then started shaking my head too....the basement was flooded. Not only flooded, but the blocks were full and squirting water from little aggregate holes in the block faces. “No big deal! We’ll get the gutters up to catch the roof runoff and send it away from the foundation.” Called the gutter-guys and had the gutters and downspouts installed that afternoon....”lucky for us, they’re calling for more storms this evening.” Went home and didn’t think about it until....the next morning.
There was James Baker....back at the garage door openings...shaking his head. “Oh no.....” was the only thing I could think of when I saw the water pouring out the garage door openings; not only water...but muddy water which meant only one thing....the VisQueen had failed.
Immediately the brain shut down and the muscle started to take over. Grabbing a shovel, I started excavating the tons of wet dirt that Eldon had just left a few weeks back against the foundation....all the way to the footing. I asked James Baker....”please pick up all the brick bats and junk and get it out of my way....I can do this. The back fill is still loose.” About 70ft of wall to excavate from the shallowest 3ft to about 7ft at it’s worst. About 3 days later, I was down to the footing drains in a variable depth trench about 3 feet wide.
I asked James Baker to broom down and brush off the dirt and mud stuck to the blocks after taking down the VisQueen and splashing mud on the foundation face. I could have done it myself.....but it was the worst of the Dog Days which was wearing me out too quick between heat, humidity and every known biting bug found in the state of Georgia. I had the loose mix of parging brushed on a few times until the craters of the blocks were filled, tightened up and dried. Just to heat things up and top off this whole experience.....I had James build a fire with scrap materials and put the 5 gallon pails of tar next to the fire to heat up and turn from solid masses to a very hot liquid form.
I didn’t let James Baker into the deep part of the foundation because this was my fault....loose dirt moves and I would feel terrible if the guy were buried alive from my own stupidity. I should have known better. I had seen enough block foundations to know that “I was dreamin’” when it came to the facts about VisQueen and waterproofing.
I was at the very bottom of a personal abyss in suffering when I lost my footing walking a bucket load of tar (in my arms due to the narrow path) along the foundation to where I was brushing....and fell face first and smack into newly painted tar. Along with getting hot tar on my jeans, boots (actually inside my boots) and just about everywhere....I was sorta pinned to the wall like a fly on flypaper given the sticky cooling tar just applied. Peeling myself off the foundation and then wading out of the mess at the footing I was sure that Uncle Remus had me in mind while coming up with one of his tales about the “Tarbaby.”
I “took five” while sitting on the interior bank of the dirt contemplating where I was at that moment. I may have been hoping that the wet dirt wall would fall back in on me and put me out of my misery. However I could see the light at the end of the tunnel with the amount of wall already finished and the amount of wall ahead. I knew that I would be done late into the afternoon and that I could finally get out of this muck, tar and hell-hole that was barely wide enough for me to walk...much less tub-carry a bucket of tar through that stinking trench of wet dirt, root ends and little bugs with HUGE dentures that assumed my purpose for being in their territory was to bring them lunch....which turned out to be me.
The smartest thing I ever did to help finish up this exercise in comedy....I asked James Baker if he would please walk the hot tar buckets around from the other direction...the much longer, but considerably less treacherous way. He had to circumvent about 2/3rds of the house to get there which had me apologizing for making it tough on him by just asking him to do so.
“Nawsuh...I’ve been wonderin’ and waitin’ for you to ask. You’re in the hole....I’m just totin’ pails.”
The sage of Pin Oak Circle had just given me my true perspective as “the builder” with that one comment. As the general contractor....I’m figuratively and sometimes literally always in the hole where anything could happen. All I needed to do was ask others to work with me, for me or get the hell away from me.
It’s a perspective that I carried and carry with me for each job since that Summer in the early 1970s.
I finally got that fiasco wrapped up; back filled and tamped by hand and Whacker-packer; gave the plumber the okay to come out to install the sewer line and clean out and tag into the sewer tap....which he couldn’t do with pipes not seated in a well dug trench for inspection. Gutters came down for the painters to prime the fascia ($50) and then went back up for $100.00.....a nega-$number for my rushing thru to accommodate Eldon and his Caterpillar.
Spend more time doing the sole job of coordinating money, materials and labor so that people had things to do with materials that were on site waiting for them in order to get paid on Friday.
Anything less than that is gunning for failure. I moved on. That house sold and the basement remained dry.
I was glad that I didn’t have to see my dad that week. I would have fired myself if he had shown up. I would have just handed him the keys and my accounting and let him have the property back out of the sheer humiliation of trying to do too much of other people's jobs....while not doing enough of my true role as the General Contractor.
I realized from that point on....”I no longer knew it all.” I was the actually the stupidest guy on each site but by bringing the team together and optimizing each skill with what I knew had to take place in logical sequence....this was the only route to succeed in the home building business and still applies today.
My dad taught me a valuable lesson without having to hound me in weekly visits...which he knew would do more damage than good. I had to grow into it....trial and error. There were plenty of both over the years. I was no longer the kid that other subs wanted to plant into a foundation or become part of the backfill of a culvert....that chip fell off when I nose planted into hot tar on a foundation wall in Doraville during the Dog Days of Summer in the very early 1970s.
Dad died in 1987. A lot of good men came by Turners Funeral Home in Decatur to pay respects and visit....including my good friend and mentor James Baker. He was there to pay his respects to Mr. Bud...but also to let me know that my dad was a good man that made sure that I got my head screwed back on straight....which included making me suffer until I figured out there were just enough guys out here to do the work if I just asked for, bargained with and kept tabs on their family, health and wellbeing.
My old man had to suffer the heat and humidity of South Pacific while on Guadalcanal....so he learned how to do his job as a Electricians 1st Mate/Seabee with the least amount of suffering and best of progress. Vice versa on the Aleutians where he had to work in inhumane Winter conditions to stay on schedule outdoors....he had to work smart, hard and fast before freezing. He always had someone that gave him better ideas than he could come up with under the conditions of extreme heat and humidity or ice, snow, half frozen muck, grizzly and brown bears while having a plank and plywood shack in both areas that were heated during the Summer and brutally cold and breezy but full of fresh air in the Northern rurals of Alaska during the Winter.
THUS...the reason my dad put James Baker on my jobs. James kept me on an even keel when I was paying attention. As he explained, he would have to report to my old man when I was doing something truly stupid....such as Black VisQueen instead of the tried and true methods of parging and hot tar that were the only acceptable method to VA/FHA type homes both construction and inspection methods to meet federal financing. He had to find a sure fire way to break me of that habit on my first solo venture wherein all the calls made...both right or wrong....were mine to make.
”Mr Dan" James Baker whispered, "your daddy had me to put hoses into your block walls at night in Doraville....and to make sure that I was there early to take them away before you showed up each mornin’.”
He also allowed that Mr. Bud called him every day at home to find out how I was progressing....actually to find out how I was dealing with it all.
It was quite an event for me. First....for all that time that James Baker worked for me in Doraville or during my tenure with John Winterrowd, he never ONCE used my name.
Secondly....he knew that he could tell me that story, bolstered by doing so at the visitation and in front of Mr. Bud’s casket. After all that time together, he knew I’d either laugh or cry...which I did a lot of both. My dad loved me enough to make me suffer...although probably laughing it up thinking about me and the whole comedy of it all in that trench...but also Father enough to call James Baker each evening to check on how I was holding up.
My old man had his ways.
I lost a lot of bad habits thru the wisdom of these two old school gentlemen. James Baker knew I wouldn’t get mad because he was there to see the transformation on the worst day on the job site which became the best day on life’s job site....because it was the best lesson that no one could teach to a hard headed-thick skulled-knuckleheaded smart arse like me that had to finally figure it out under adverse conditions that I was and still am the sole responsible party as General Contractor.
My name is on the signs and my signatures are on the affidavits, agreements and checks. And my first sign of knowing my responsibility to my dad...and James Baker...was hand digging that trench in order to waterproof that CMU foundation in adverse conditions...because that bit of stupidity was all mine to fix. Yeah...it was a tough love bit of chicanery from these two wise guys....but love nonetheless.
