November 3, 2005
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The tagline (up there to the right), "homebuilding adventures in da 'hood", implies many kinds of homebuilding: physical, spiritual, familial, social. Despite the frustrations of financing, planning, permitting and construction, building the physical home is the best understood of all these. Everything is visual, measurable, tangible, and there are lots of laws and hundreds of years of cumulative artisanal wisdom to guide you as you go along. As long as all the participants act in good faith, problems can be ironed out as they come up: in the construction industry it seems there's "nothing new under the sun". Our wildest ideas are just variations on a theme: the themes themselves (the 28 trades) are well-known, and experts abound. You'll see some of those unusual ideas here as we get around to building them (or have to give them up).
Here's the first unusual construction detail:
[steel_frames.oct29.jpg]
Because of the sod roof and block walls, and being in an earthquake liquefaction zone, the city required these commercial-grade ductile steel frames to make the structure super rigid. They also insisted we pour their footings first, install them, then pour the slab around it all (after passing inspection, comme toujours).Problem: the steel contractor began the installation four days earlier than they told us they would: at the beginning of Halloween weekend, virtually inviting pranksters (and the merely curious) to come explore the novelty after they left for the day. I was concerned that, without the slab or stem walls to anchor them in place, they might be toppled accidentally (imagine: uprooting the corners of the foundation, crushing the rough plumbing, and squashing the thrillseekers too!). The steel contractor's solution appeared to be to omit all temporary bracing, so there's nothing to climb up. (does that sound odd to you too?) Note that the center of gravity of that 2-story steel frame (on the left) is actually ABOVE the center brace, and the footings are only 3 feet deep or so.
Solution: Hire a security guard? Pay protection money to a local gangbanger? No-- instead, we seized the opportunity to build our social home structure while safeguarding our physical home structure. I just camped out there for a couple of nights myself.
The first night was Halloween. I planned to set up a wilderness-looking campsite complete with tent, camp chairs, stove, campfire, etc. and me dressed like a lumberjack. But it was a busy day in other ways, and I got started late, so no campfire or wilderness props after all (tho I did lug them over there). But Joy's carved pumpkin was a nice touch, and the candle in it burned happily all evening.
I missed the early trick or treaters, but ended up giving out all my candy: first to several surprised groups of costumed kids and their parents, who had not expected anyone to be at the vacant lot, and later to homeless people and some adult neighbors who came by to see what was going on. One lifelong resident on that block (49 years!) sat with me and shared his chips and my hot apple cider (simmering on the campstove). For more than two hours, James regaled me with stories of the block and his own philosophical insights to life the universe and everything. He is a deep and complicated person. I am privileged to count him as a new friend on that block.
My own wife and kids stopped by early in the evening to say hi, before returning home to welcome trick-or-treaters at 29th Street, where we live now. My kids all thought it was weird, what Dad was doing, but they are used to Dad doing weird things now and then. Kathryn was thrilled: at least one of us is able to spend some quality time on 37th drive, building relationships! Not many wives would be thrilled about their husbands leaving them before dinner to sleep alone in a vacant lot in a "rough neighborhood". I have a rare and wonderful wife.
But I did not sleep there alone that first night. Ricardo Hong, intrepid World Impact urban missionary, joined me shortly after James left. Thanks for the deep talk, my friend. May you be suffused with God's wisdom, grace and strength. Be fruitful, and multiply those churches.
So... what was your most memorable or adventurous Halloween?
Comments (3)
The house I grew up in was built with a party room underground with a tunnel going out to the hillside - it was used for prohibition parties. One Halloween we had a party and everyone had to come through the tunnel. it was dark and we had hung string like cobwebs, had scary music and the like. When the kids finally made it to the room entrance, they would be admitted to an apple dunk (with coins in the apples) and all sorts of wonderful games and treats. It was so cool. And it was my mom's idea (as usual, she was great). of course, I had to wear the same bunny rabbit costume that a patient of my dad's had made for me, for the third year in a row. The only thing that could liberate me from the costume was height.
No kidding! A smuggler's tunnel! That kind of house you only see in movies and books. What a privilege to grow up in a house with such character and mystery and history.
My condolences about the bunny suit. Our mom gave us a lot of creative latitude regarding costumes. Once I spent a whole weekend making clothes to suit "a refugee from Guadalcanal". (WWII was the big topic of play with me and my brothers, that year.) I think I scared some younger kids that year, and perhaps some parents too, running around in bloody rags hollering like a wild man and brandishing a WW1-vintage bayonet (that's the one we had that was real, not plastic imitation). And that was with no mask or face makeup.
Incidentally, that was one of the many Halloweens that my brothers and local friends and I were driven around to all the various neighborhoods in the back of a pickup truck driven by Takafusu Miyoshi, formerly a Japanese paratrooper himself. The irony was lost on me until much later.
As a kid, I got to go to a real Halloween party once, at a "haunted house", lots of kids. Done by the local fire department in my town. It was a lot more fun than just going trick or treating.