'Everything was picture perfect for concrete to be poured and then the inspector came out and made us pull up the plastic all around so he could inspect every inch of the footing.'
'Nitpicking little bastard,' said the brick mason's wife, who had joined us. A chunky fortyish, she'd stopped at that nearby convenience store and was drinking a Pepsi from the can. 'I help my husband all the time when he gets behind with his jobs and has to work a Saturday. They never make
'I'd act surprised,' I said, 'except that I met his boss last night.'
Lu made a face. 'Rufus Dayley. Did he tell you how he was having to pay an inspector overtime? You'd think it was money out of his own pocket.'
Nitpicking or not though, the inspector had finally passed the footing and the plumbing rough-ins as well. They had poured the slab on schedule last Monday.
'Feel how smooth,' said Lu, running her gloved hand across the dark gray surface. In truth, the finish was like marble.
The mason's wife tried to look modest and launched into a monologue about mechanical screeds, rough smoothings, and troweling machines. 'Then, 'fore we left, we sprayed the surface with a curing compound so it wouldn't dry out too fast and check on us.'
I didn't understand half what she said except to realize this was an artisan who took pride in her abilities. And with good cause, according to Lu.
'Once the carpet goes down, you'll think this is a hardwood floor,' she told me. 'Smooth, no bumps or dips, and a hundred percent termite proof.'
I should hope so. My mother used to drive tobacco sticks into the ground for flower stakes and a month later, the sticks would be riddled with tunnels. Termites do love Colleton County's sandy soil.
'Bet they didn't find any faults with this slab,' I said.
The women exchanged glances and Lu Bingham shrugged her ample shoulders. 'Some men would fault God if they thought she was a woman.'
'Who's this inspector, anyhow?' I asked. 'Anybody I know?'
'Bannister?' hazarded the mason's wife. 'My husband keeps up with them, but I forgot to ask him.'
We walked over to the fluorescent orange building permit that was nailed to the utility post. Five categories were listed under the bold heading INSPECTIONS REQUIRED: Building, Energy, Electrical, Plumbing, and Mechanical. On the
For some reason that name touched a chord with me, but I couldn't think in what context. 'He from Cotton Grove?'
Neither knew and we quit wondering about him the minute our crew leader arrived.
Betty Ann Edgerton had been three years ahead of me at West Colleton High. She was the oldest daughter of a sharecropper on one of my daddy's farms; and after one frustrating semester spent struggling with office machines and typing, she had single-handedly changed Industrial Arts into a coed department.
'I ain't going to college,' she argued before the local school board (of which my mother was a member), 'and I shore don't want to spend my life cooped up in no office typing all day, so how come I can't learn how to build a house? Women buy houses, too, don't they?'
She eventually married a classmate who aced Business Skills and these days they own a flourishing little contracting business, work three or four crews, and are building houses all over the county.
'This here's like a holiday,' she told me, happily revving up her Skilsaw. 'I stay so busy these days estimating bids and then checking in behind our crews, I don't hardly ever get to use a saw no more.'
Hers wasn't the only saw that got a workout that day. Annie Sue hooked up some outlets to the utility box so that bright orange extension cords could power the tools; and by eight o'clock, the quiet Saturday morning was shattered by the high-pitched whine of power saws and the pounding of hammers as we anchored a heavy wooden floor plate to the slab. Using a carpenter's rule and some arcane formulae, Betty Ann and another woman who spoke the language quickly marked off where all the outer doors and windows were to go.
We divided into teams and were soon laying out two-by-sixes on each side of the house. Each exterior wall was nailed together flat on the ground, then hoisted into place, up on the plate, with door and window openings already roughed in.
Betty Anne was everywhere, explaining and directing. Annie Sue couldn't begin wiring until the walls and ceiling rafters were in place, so she fell in with a crew on the other side of the house where her friend Cindy McGee was hammering away. * * *
The work was grueling, yet at the same time, enormously gratifying. By midmorning though, I was glad I'd been sensible the night before and started the day rested. It'd been years since I'd lifted and hauled under a broiling July sun, but at least I knew enough to wear a loose long-sleeved cotton shirt over my tank top and a baseball cap that shaded my face. Some of the town-bred women came in shorts, tube tops and sweatbands, and by ten o'clock they were turning pink on their shoulders and noses. One worker was the manager of a chain drugstore and she'd thought to bring along a case of sunscreen. Every time any of us took a breather, we'd go slather ourselves. The smell made me feel I should be pounding through surf at the beach instead of pounding a hammer. There were over thirty of us; yet even so, I was surprised at how fast the work was going. Despite our self-deprecating chatter, we gradually shaped ourselves into a raggedly efficient work force. In fact, we were setting the exterior wall framing in place when photographers from the Raleigh
By lunchtime, all the exterior and most of the interior walls were set in place.
'At this rate, we'll have the rafters up by quitting time,' Betty Ann encouraged us when we broke for lunch.
