Habitat for Humanity

I am writing this post on a dare from my bride. We worked on a Habitat for Humanity project last weekend and when we were headed back to the house she commented to our friends that there would certainly be a blog about the event. So I have spent the last four days trying to decide how to answer this challenge. Should I not write the blog and show her? or should I write it and acknowledge the fact that she knows me all too well. Hence the blog.

Our friend Doug (you may remember him and his bride, Janet, from the "boot camp" entry) investigated and recruited us to go with them this past Saturday to help on a house in Waxahachie with HfH. My bride and I have been starved for a good service project ever since the mission trips to Mexico stopped a year or so ago. So we pulled out our Army/Navy surplus fatigues, our work shirts, gloves, and hats and we all rode down to Waxahachie (after a stop for some scalding McDonald's coffee..really, it needs to be hot enough to melt a silver spoon?) for a morning of house building.

When we arrived there were the obligatory introductions, the standing around for instructions, and the conjecture about how hot it would get before noon. By the way, by noon it was over 100. The girls were tasked to helping with the garage, Doug and I were assigned to the framing of the walls. The wall framing was going to require some heavy lifting. I did not inform the powers-that-be that my bride was every bit as strong as I am and less vocal. They would learn soon enough.

Someone had ingeniously marked all the boards literally telling us where to nail them together, where to place them. There were all kinds of little tricks, some I knew, some were new to me. I realized after about an hour, it had been years since I did that much hammering, and when I did it as a kid on the farm it was without the benefit of bifocals. I can still drive a nail, but I can't drive several sequentially without resting. To tattle just a little on my buddy, Doug, he hit his own finger, which was a good 2" away from the nail. After a certain amount of grimacing and an outward show of controlling his language, he asserted that the hammer ricocheted off the nail and hit his finger...sure. There were new terms used, a "bottom plate" goes along the foundation and is the anchor for all the framing. Anyone want to guess at what the "top plate" is? I knew what "studs" were, I have spent a life time missing them while trying to hang pictures and shelves. However, to put in a window, you have to have a "stud" and a "cripple". Doug and I spent most of the morning trying to decide who they were talking about, the "stud" or the "cripple" After Doug smashed his own finger I think the argument was over. The girls shifted over to our work area when the work on the garage slowed. So we all got to work in the same area for a little while.

My bride and I have learned after all these mission trips to Mexico, that everyone needs a sense of humor. We have been down there with guys who took it way to seriously and sucked a lot of the fun out of it for the rest of us. It is a little disheartening to be shoveling gravel and rock while the "leader" of the group stands on a high spot and "surveys" the work flow. Grab a shovel high-pockets, it is a much more effective management style than barking orders and hob-nobbing with the actual boss. All that said to say that the guys in charge did not have a great sense of fun. My bride will tell you that I take that as a personal challenge. After a pretty long morning the guy in charge of our little group had not smiled and only spoke when telling us we were doing it wrong. At one point he was going to show us how to "toe-nail" the window sill before setting the sill in the frame. Okay, I know how to do this, but we had not done that way in the first wall section. So he grabs the hammer from Janet and proceeds to bend about six nails.I could feel his frustration and embarrasment rising as each nail tilted in the wrong direction. With five of us standing around, dutifully watching him bend nails, I said to the group, "Yeah, this looks a lot easier." All but one laughed. We spent some time at lunch trying to parse the difference between smart-aleck and smart-ass. The straw-boss probably would have liked some input. My bride indicated that I might be both.

There was a lot of telling what to do, then griping that we didn't do it right. At the end of the morning the project foreman told us to "dump all the tools in the back of his truck" We did, then had to unstack it and do it "right" Okay, you can tell me what to do, or how to do it, but not both.

All that aside, I loved talking to the guy who will live in the house. He was out there working harder than any of us. He had a great sense of humor and seemed like a nice guy. The house was really small, probably less than 1200 sq/ft. He would live there with his wife and three kids. It made me appreciate again what I have and the simple good fortune that brought it to me. There was the usual good feeling of doing something good for someone else simply because I could. I love the sore muscles, the hands and fingers nicked from the hard work. The sense that, at least for a small portion of one day, I had done something for someone else. Setting aside the "me-world" for "you-world" always brings a smile to my face and my heart. This to me is true religion.

Godspeed to the travelers who find a little joy in helping others lift their packs.
Don