Rooftop ready for Rudolph
I woke to the sound of grinding, a high-pitched screeching that was coming from above me. Next came the pounding, a rhythmic banging that forced me to toss off the covers and go see what was what.
The roofers were here, dozens of them.
After months of neighborhood meetings and e-mails and those invoices in the mail, the day had arrived. All the homes in our condominium community were getting new roofs.
So much time had passed since the last HOA meeting and my writing those hefty checks that I’d forgotten. I scampered around to toss a sweatshirt over my pajamas and slipped my feet into gardening boots, and like a frantic Granny Clampett, raced to the garage to move my car down the street. I had to make room for the cherry-picker truck that would park in my driveway, and also move my Subaru away from falling shingles.
And they fell, those shingles, like heavy gray leaves, joined by falling strips of pink plastic. Extension cords cut through the potted mums on the porch, and dark-green tarps covered the grass. The shrubs out front were littered with empty water bottles and the occasional wrapper from a protein bar.
“At least five days,” said the crew foreman when I asked how long this would take. All along the street, rooftops were covered in stacks of pink bundles of new shingles. Men wearing sun hats and harnesses walked upright, seeming not to be bothered by steep angles.
Meanwhile, inside my house, bits of plaster rained down on my living room. I hurried to find some sheets to cover what I could. I’d forgotten about the warning that when they replaced the skylights, stuff would fall into the house.
For those five days, I escaped from the neighborhood as much as possible. The pounding of nails became a distraction; I found myself matching the hammer rhythm to a song I knew. “Stayin Alive” became an ear worm with its own percussion section.
Each time I returned home I walked the block back to the house from where I’d parked, and I’d watch the workers. Some climbed tall ladders carrying heavy pink bundles on their shoulders. Men crouched at dizzying angles holding nail guns attached to long cords. Their workday started at dawn and didn’t end until sunset.
As a reporter in Ohio, I once watched an Amish barn raising. Bearded men in flat-brimmed hats lifted the structure from earth to sky in a matter of hours. This week, my neighborhood looked a bit like that, only the workers were not Amish. Most of them were Spanish-speaking, young, agile and diligent.
Watching them as they crawled around up there, I thought of the hard physical work I’ve done in my life: the hot and dusty farm work during my college summers; carrying camera and lighting equipment on documentary shoots for public TV. Yes, toting and chasing my toddlers would count as physical work, too. This roofing work was far more strenuous, and dangerous.
As the workers finished my roof Wednesday night, I walked out to the street to have one more look. I couldn’t really tell the difference – couldn’t see what my $10,000 had bought. I’d never really paid attention to my roof before.
There at the very top was a man surveying the work. I heard a screech as another worker pulled down the ladder. Others were clearing the last of the old shingles and pink plastic and water bottles from my yard.
The trucks were moving down the street, ready to climb the next roof come morning.