Keep off the Roof

This roof rule applies to me, and has been in effect for at least ten years, though why my family does not want me on the roof is baffling. I have a good track record, never having fallen off one, despite cavorting amongst the shingles on more occasions than I can remember.

Maybe a half-dozen years ago, HeadSodBuster brought a crew of four to my spot, to peel off the siding from the west wall of my home, and replace it with woodfu**er-proof Hardie-Board. I was not allowed up on the ladder(s) or the scaffolding, being relegated to providing water and moral support for those who were.

By moral support I simply mean that I provided a parade of Bell Springs bombers, in order to keep spirits high. These particular bombers are not to be confused with the baseball team of the same name, playing coed baseball in the greater metropolitan region of Laytonville, though the head bomber himself, SmallBoy, was one-fourth of the crew.

The irony of the whole situation is that never in the history of the universe, have I been so happy to stick to a rule. Those who know me well, are aware that there has been some inconsistency in this area, as my hair continues to gray up. I maintain it is simply the middle schooler in me emerging, the tendency to do the opposite of what I am told.

I maintain middle schoolers do not automatically do the opposite of what they’re told; it depends on who is doing the directing. I have also always believed that middle schoolers respond proportionately, to being asked to do something, rather than being ordered to do so.

“May I have your attention, please?” when asked one time, is infinitely preferable to “Sit down and shut up!” The reason I never had to ask more than once was because of the green book. The few seconds it took for me to stroll over to my desk, leisurely open and poise my pencil over the class list of names, for the purpose of making tiny check marks, is all it ever took.

“He’s got the green book out. Shhhhhh.” I never had to actually assign steps in this little charade; we had long since ironed out the creases in my classroom management style. If I were going to do battle with my charges, particularly the eighth graders, it was certainly never going to be about something as mundane as classroom management.

The culprit turned out to be these two elbows.

Rules were meant to be broken, said no teacher ever, unless he was referring to himself. It’s not that I LIKE breaking rules-it’s more of a gift, especially since it usually comes as a surprise to even me. I never know when that pesky Markie is going to seize control.

About that “Keep off the roof” rule, though? Assuming I have a purpose, there is no earthly reason why I should not be allowed on the roof. In San Jose I used to be able to step out of a bedroom window, directly onto a portion of the roof, in order to better appreciate both the sinsemilla and ELO’s Eldorado. 

The Drifters knew what was up, “On the roof it’s peaceful as can be; there the world below can’t bother me, up on the roof…”

Last summer when HeadSodBuster and various members of the farm crew put a new metal roof of the original cabin, I was once more relegated to ground control. Again, I was more than happy, not because I am a lazy fop, but because when a crew is involved, I try to reinvent my thirty-year-old self.

That dude was savage when it came to physical labor. All of my siblings are fierce workers, that ethic having been instilled early on in life. No one has ever had to convince me to put in my work hours. And for those who are admiring my remodeling job in the bathroom/laundry room, but wondering why it took so long, I say, “This is the first winter since I retired from teaching, that I have not had to spend the winter trimming cannabis, in order to make ends meet.”

There is one more reason why being on the roof is necessary, and that has to do with keeping the stovepipes for our two wood stoves cleaned. In recent weeks the kitchen stove has been smoking worse than an old 235, six-cylinder chevy, with a cracked head.

The kitchen stove pipe sticks out the peak of the roof, but because the design of the original cabin included a dormer, there is an almost flat roof that allows me ready access to this pipe. I have only to take extendo-dog and prop him up against the dormer roof, at the most fifteen feet in the air. 

Back in the day, I not only climbed that ladder, I did so with a bundle of shingles over my shoulder, over and over until the roof was loaded. So climbing an extension ladder to gain access to a roof is not a mystery to me. Possibly the only lesson that I have mastered as an old dude, is that nothing good ever comes from moving too fast.

Besides, if we want talk about risky behavior on a ladder, it would not have been Tuesday’s ascent to inspect the stove pipe, under dry conditions, it would have been last week’s foray far higher up the snow-laden ladder, in order to clear the white stuff off the dish antenna for the net. 

Of course I am joking; luckily there was no one around to say otherwise.

Gluten-Free Mama protested when I told her I had to clean the stove pipes.

Does this ladder look as though some
idiot has climbed it? I think NOT!

“Can’t you ask SmallBoy? I don’t want you climbing that ladder.” Though I was certain SmallBoy was poised on the edge his seat, awaiting my beck and call, I decided to disappoint him and at least scope out the scene myself. After all, only a few weeks ago, the lad had held the same ladder for me, while I made the exact same climb, for the purpose of wire-brushing the cap to remove some built-up creosote.

I did not think the build-up warranted the smoking and indeed, the little spruce-up did nothing to alleviate the smoke. This past week, with GF Mama in Willits, housesitting, I was not as worried about the smoke. That’s why I have windows and a door-to let the smoke out.

GF Mama, however, is susceptible to both dust and smoke, and I have done everything possible to do the heavy lifting on the remodel, when she was out of Dodge. The smoke, however, was omnipresent and that just could not be.

I climbed the ladder one time, the other day, and that was before I even started the job, to see what I would need to remove the cap. That way I could run the brush up and down the pipe to clean out the creosote. Once I had filed this piece of information away in my mind, hoping it would stick around for a minute, I started the job with the basics.

I separated the stovepipe from the stove itself, and then again where the pipe goes through the kitchen floor, and into the guest bedroom above. I had a six-foot section of the pipe, which included a zig and a zag, at ninety degree angles, so that I could keep at least a couple of feet of air space between the stove and the pantry.

Otherwise the stove would have been too close to the wall and a fire danger. Before I even examined this segment of the pipe, I glanced up the pipe still in place, to see just how bad it really was. To my astonishment the pipe appeared to be almost free of the nasty black crud.

Gluten-Free Mama was studying the stove where the pipe had just been removed, and observed that there was a lot of ashes and soot built up here. Simultaneously, I finally got around to inspecting the pipe in my hands, and zeroed in on another problem: The twelve inches of pipe between the two elbows, had three strikes against it: creosote, ashes and soot build-up. What this translated to was that I would not have to climb the ladder again. 

Well, not until it snows again, anyway.

My nephew, Jason