Meyer’s Mississippi Building Adventure

DAY 7: What I Learned By Getting Dirty in Mississippi

This site grew out of a simple premise put forth from a simple man: “promote, encourage and celebrate hard work.” Much like the bossman, I’ve have grown greater appreciation for a hard day’s work from getting directly involved with all the tradesmen and women who have passed through this site. Doing the research for the content around here has opened my eyes to how important each and every trade is to keeping our country and our planet stitched together. While the folks in the suits on Wall Street and Washington make decisions that impact all of us, its the workers, farmers and truckers in the trenches that make live worth living. For every flip of the light switch, flush of the toilet, good night’s rest in a dry bed and meal we eat there is a long line of hard working men and women who got the job done to deliver those basic standards of living we take for granted. We don’t think about that long line of workers as often as we should. Hopefully, that will change when the news of this site and others like it continue to spread.

The concept of “you learn something new everyday” is my mantra. If I can’t find some new factoid to add to my brain by the end of my day then I feel like I haven’t got anything done. What I learned this week is there’s a world of difference about what you might pick up with a Google search and what you might pick up by picking something up in your hand. I started out the week of this project completely clueless when it comes to a home building project. Although, that’s not entirely true. I knew what a hammer looked like and what its purpose was. I actually used a tape measure to some degree and was familiar with the concept of a T-square but never needed, owned or used one. As building skills go, that was about it.

Flash ahead to the last day of the work week and I had drywalling wired. Cutting through a piece of ½ gypsum board in a water heater closet with punch out for the plumbing? Not a problem. Shaving down the window sills to make them flush with the wall? Got it covered. The difference between forward and reverse on a power drill? Okay, that one I’m still working on. Bottom line, if you got a room that needs drywalling, I’m your man. Can’t do much more beyond that…. yet… but it’s a good start.

Then there is the idea of giving back. We were all out of our comfort zone, away from family and pets, but we had a purpose. For us it was to help a woman and her family get back into her home that was destroyed by a storm. We then learned this particular woman had served our country. She volunteered just like we did, but you really can’t compare our one week with her years of service in much more dangerous and exhaustive conditions. Sylvia wins that one hands down. We weren’t getting paid for this week, but seeing the look on Sylvia’s face when she toured the room and getting a big hug from her was payment enough.

I’m also extremely grateful to know I was just visiting and will leave it to the professionals to continue the real hard work. Final pain assessment: Extremely minor multiple cuts and scratches on both legs. Soreness in the back, arms, legs. And a purple toe from something that got dropped on it but I have no memory of. Will I sign up on another work project like this? In a heartbeat. Am I afraid to get dirty? Naaaaa. That’s the fun part. For those of you who have given back, good on ya! For those of you who haven’t… you don’t know what you’re missing.

DAY 6: Quitting Time

Final day of work. Heading off for jambalaya and a cold one with the work crew. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do after a week of hard work? I’m pretty sure I’ll get this part right without asking for instructions. Will file a full report from New Orleans tomorrow.

DAY 5: Every House Has a Story

We finished the upstairs drywalling today and started on the downstairs. We won’t finish by the end of the work week but we’ve certainly pushed the house further towards completion. Most importantly, we also got to meet the future owner of the home, Miss Sylvia Fleming. She stopped by the site to see how the progress was going and I’m happy to report she was very pleased. As Sylvia walked through her new home, she was positively beaming. We got a kick out of pointing out all of our accomplishments. Makes me wonder if regular working crews take time out to pat each other on the back with things like, “Nice drywall cutting.” Or, “Way to go with that shaving down the door frame.” Somehow, I don’t think that’s how the conversation goes on a work site.

When Hurricane Katrina was taking aim on Gulfport, Sylvia was pregnant and already the mother of five children. She decided to ride the storm out by going further inland to stay with family. Once the storm passed and the damage was done, Sylvia and her neighbors were stuck without power, without water and without food.

Fortunately for her kids, Sylvia was prepared for the disaster. She had just returned from duty in Iraq six months before Hurricane Katrina showed up at her front door. Thanks to her training, Sylvia was able to teach her kids some basic survival tricks. She told us, if she could stand active duty in Iraq, she could handle Katrina.

Sadly, her house and all her possessions were lost. The house that’s being built for her and her family is twice the size of what she lost. It’s also being built on land that has been in her family for generations. Her youngest commented that “it’s just like getting one house stacked on another house!”

Thanks to the G.I. Bill, Sylvia is just a couple of credits away from her Bachelor’s degree and intends to open up her own day care facility. A single mother and a veteran who held her family together under the most trying of times. That’s a pretty good reason for spending a week putting up some drywall.

Tomorrow: A Pain Assessment

DAY 4: Random Thoughts from the Workday

For the week of this volunteer build, I’m part of two groups. One group are a bunch of good hearted folks with no trade skills (my crew). The other group are a bunch of good hearted folks who work in the trades. This is a more “mature” crew who are making the “naïve” crew feel the need for more training.

After a long day of drywalling, all my team really wants to focus on is what’s for dinner, what games are we going to play tonight and what to order on our Sonic run. The tradesmen come back from their day of framing a house and putting up walls to talk about the best way to measure the studs they are using or the better placement of a wall beam or the wiring of a circuit. I wish I understood what they were talking about. What I’m really hearing is that they get the job done right and it’s not over at quitting time. They are still working out problems in their head that they’ll be able to fix once they get back to the site the next day. Finally, a hard work ethic makes a lot of sense.
Here are some other random thoughts that hit me today:

REPETITION DOES A SKILL GOOD

It’s amazing how much you can improve your skills by doing the same kind of work for three days in a row. This might not come to a surprise to those of you who are already working in the trades but for novices such as myself it’s the little things you embrace that make the day go smoother. The proper way to measure, the strongest way to cut, the best way to wield a power drill; these are all simple tasks that anyone should be able to master if given enough time to practice. This is what learning on the job is all about.

DROP THE SHORT CUTS

This is a big one. Unless you are in a hot dog eating contest, there is really no reason to go fast with anything especially on a work site. Trying to make shorts cuts will only cost you in the long run. Measure things twice, top and bottom. Keep your work place clear of clutter. Watch your back. And yes, safety third.

TAKE PRIDE

When you’re in your own home, you can “fudge” a fix up project and not let it bother you. But when you’re working on someone else’s home, you better get it right. This means not walking away from a task until it’s the best it can be. Sink the screw. Shave that drywall. Plug that hole. It matters.

LUNCH REALLY MATTERS

We all need a break in the day. When I’m ensconced in my normal routine, my typical break in the day involves a sandwich and “The People’s Court.” I’ve gained a lot of legal expertise thanks to these viewings. However, this week it’s all been about brown bag lunches and sitting on any available space. You’re hanging out with your work crew sharing tips, swapping jokes and planning for the rest of the day. Today, I was thinking about all the other work crews across the country taking their own lunch breaks. Dirty, grimy and happy to be on the job. Plus the ham salad today was exceptional.

TALKING TO YOUR TOOLS HELP

Even though you’re working on a crew, quite often your tasks involve a moment of working alone. For me, I’ve found that talking to my tools helps them understand what they are supposed to be doing, how they should be performing and what they might be getting wrong. This is essentially the same conversation I have with my dog but for some reason, my tools are listening more.

DON’T FORGET TO LAUGH

I’ve learned that I only need to set my watch alarm for three times: getting up, taking lunch and quitting time. No need to look at the watch any other time. If you can have fun doing what you do then the time flies. It became obvious on day one that there was a recurring theme of cussing on our job site. We don’t have the benefit of “bleeps” as someone I know does. Because we’re working in someone else’s home with open windows and neighbors, I suggested we institute a swear jar. One buck for every cuss word. Naturally, we all needed to agree on what was allowed and what was forbidden. We agreed that if you could say it on primetime television it was okay. That left us with three forbidden words. At the end of today, we had $37.00. When our work week is over, we plan to donate the money back to the base camp or lose it all in the slot machines at the nearby casino. It could go either way…

Tomorrow: The Fun Goes On

DAY 3: Measure for Measure
And so the drywalling continues, as in will it ever end? I became a bit more proficient with the power drill gun today. Who can’t have fun wielding one of those babies around? What’s really interesting about this work experience is how much I’ve forgotten about math. Clearly anyone working on construction needs to have a rudimentary knowledge of measurements, fractions and to a greater extent, jigsaw puzzle building. Typically, whenever I need something added up or subtracted, I hit my handy on screen calculator and don’t have to worry about getting it right.

I can fondly recall sitting in the back of my required high school math class and thinking, “The only reason I’ll use math is to count all my money and if I have so much money that it needs counting, I’ll hire someone to do it for me.” Oh, to be young and stupid again as opposed to old and stupid.

Today putting up the drywall on the second floor of Miss Sylvia’s Gulfport home, the lessons of adding fractions came crashing back in a big way. We were divided into two men drywall teams; each given a section of the house to work on. My cohort and I were doing window sills and water heater closets.

Now clearly to the experienced drywaller this would have been a breeze but to a couple of “novices” it became quite an interesting challenge. Most of our measurement discussions devolved into a form of “Who’s On First?” As in:

“This piece is 37 ¾ at the top and goes to 38 ¼ at the bottom.”
“So we need to cut off an inch.”
“No we need to cut off half an inch.”
“But ¾ plus ¼ equals one inch.”
“Yes, but you’re going the wrong way.”
“I’m only going one way. One inch this way.”
“No. Half inch that way.”
“Which way?”
“The right way.”
“What are we talking about?”

Variations of this routine carried us through most of the day. This was interspersed with lots of moving hulking pieces of drywall from one hall to another and from upstairs to downstairs. “One hand high, one hand low makes the drywall go, go, go!” This all became a living game of Tetrus as we shuffled pieces about.

All of our materials have been donated for the project and we’ve got a warehouse at base camp that’s like a mini Home Depot. It seems that with every day, I’m adding more and more things to my pockets. First it was the nails. Today was the tape measure, exacto knife and pencil. Tomorrow, it’s going to be tool belt time. Yes, you would think this would have been the first thing I acquired but I was so caught up with the work boots and work gloves the tool belt completely slipped my mind.

On a side note, for lunch we headed out into the neighborhood to support one of the local businesses. Lucky for us, the local business was Gulf Port Po’ Boy. This was a brand new shop, only opened for a month. It’s awesome to see a new small business starting up in these tough times. The menu featured a variety of authentic soul food take-out and was being cooked by the Vietnamese owners. Only in America. We feasted well today. Highlights: the fried pickles. Scary: the pickled pig lips. If this was “Dirty Jobs” I’m sure we all would have been sampling the pig lips. I’ll stick to the fried pickles and leave the pig lip adventures for Mike.

Tomorrow: A Warehouse Tour

Day 2: Adventures in Drywalling

The weekend before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Miss Sylvia packed up her six children and got out of town. She didn’t want to take any chances with getting left behind or stuck in the long lines of evacuation. The family went to Texas to avoid the storm’s wrath. By the time they returned, the only thing left standing from their home was the beams to the front porch and their home was three miles inland from the coast. Five years later and Miss Sylvia has finally found the help to get her house rebuilt. There’s more to the story of her family which will be coming soon but on this, our first work day at Miss Sylvia’s it was all about the drywall.

The new home is part of the distinct style of rebuilt houses that are cropping up around the Gulf Coast. Although it looks nice from the outside, inside there are plenty of bare walls needing the drywall treatment. My expertise in drywall extended to the vague knowledge of its purpose. Drywall is the basic wall material that is used in nearly every home and building. Larry was the site supervisor. He’s a retired army man who has decided to spend his golden years working with volunteer teams all across the country. He has the patience of Job.

At first glance, putting up drywall seems easy. There’s the wall, there’s the piece of drywall; you just put it up. As Larry was soon to instruct us, 5/8” drywall goes on the ceiling while the ½” goes on the walls. Thicker on the ceiling because of firecodes. Makes sense. The room we were working in was small and loaded with the refuse of the previous team’s work. After stumbling and tripping over piles of woods and trash, Larry suggested that we clear out the site first to give us room to work. Even with this sage advice, this was still a cramped space to work in. I mean this room was so small, I had to step outside to change my mind. Hello? I’ll be here all week. To get an idea of how we worked in this room, check out the stateroom scene from “Night At the Opera.”

On the way over to the job site, we were told a great drywall story about another crew of volunteers working at a different house. They were told to drywall the walls which they did with great zeal. So much zeal, in fact, that they drywalled right over the windows and didn’t bother cutting them out. We were admonished not the make the same mistake. It was close, but I’m happy to report at the end of the day, the windows were still visible.

Here’s what Larry taught us about installing drywall. You start from the top and work your way down. You want to avoid multiple pieces because that means more seams that have to be patched up. And when it comes to screwing in the drywall it’s all about the studs. If you miss the stud your screw is wasted. I also learned to measure twice, cut once. Additionally, with drywall work comes lots and lots of dust. By the end of the day, I looked like a mime in work boots.

Of course all of this isn’t news to all those construction workers who are part of mrW. What is news to me is how hard that hard work is. What kept us going was some inspiration from one of our team leaders: we were asked to think about the memories from our own homes and to imagine the new memories we were going to provide to Miss Sylvia and her family. That makes drywalling a breeze. I just hope this inspiration can make its ways to my aching feet and back.

Tomorrow: Measure for Measure

Day 1: Of Stinging Caterpillars and BBQ Fundraisers

Dateline Gulfport, Mississippi. After an extended and unwanted layover in Dallas, our intrepid group of volunteer builders made their way to New Orleans. I was a bit disappointed not to be greeted by a band of musicians playing authentic New Orleans jazz but I’m sure I’ll have a chance to hear the real deal at some point this week.

The ride to Gulfport lasted about an hour. It was a long stretch of road with shrubs and trees on both sides of the highway but little else. Certainly a far cry my normal LAX airport return. Along the highway, a few boarded up businesses dotted the landscape. At one point, there was a huge rollercoaster sitting abandoned in the distance. If I were writing a movie about a haunted theme park, this would be the perfect setting. Were these businesses shuttered because of Katrina and never came back? Or was it a another sign of our country’s economic woes?

At base camp, we were greeted with comfortable but austere bunkhouse accommodations. In preparation for my first work day tomorrow, I decided to catch up on some light reading with the pamphlet entitled “Venomous Animals of Mississippi.” Inside were descriptions of the numerous venomous rattlesnakes that have made Mississippi their home. One can’t think of snakes without flashing to the infamous snaking cataloging episode of “Dirty Jobs” wherein Mike was repeatedly bitten by snakes. I nearly wore out my Tivo replay button on that one. I’m please to report that according to the pamphlet, if someone gets bit by a rattlesnake I should not make any “cuts and apply suction to the area.” Dodged the bullet on that one!

However, what gives me more pause than the rattlesnakes are the stinging caterpillars. STINGING CATERPILLARS? What fresh hell is this? At least you can hear a rattlesnake coming but stinging caterpillars? These things are like the ninjas of the insect world. First of all, how could a fuzzy little caterpillar cause so much trouble? Now instead of waiting breathlessly for a caterpillar to turn into a butterfly I might be provoked to squash them with my new pair of work boots. Can we really take the chance that they won’t sting and release their own tiny caterpillar venom? Now I know what work boots are really for.

Before heading to base camp, we stopped off at The Shed for some authentic Mississippi BBQ. This was the real deal, folks. In a joint that looked more like a garage sale loaded with junk, signed dollar bills tacked to the ceiling and graffiti autographs everywhere, they were serving up some of the sweetest tasting BBQ you can imagine. As we headed into the Shed, there was an auction going on over in the open stage area. This seemed like a curious event for a BBQ joint.

We found out that Charley, one of the local shrimpers, was just diagnosed with cancer. He’s a father of two and has been on hard times since the oil spill. And now this. So on a warm Sunday night in Gulfport, about a hundred of Charley’s friends and neighbors gathered at the Shed to have some spare ribs, auction off some donated items and reach out a helping hand to one of their own. By the end of the night, they raised $10,000 for Charly’s treatment. That’s really gotta be the best BBQ I’ve ever had.

Tomorrow: Adventures in Dry Wall