Life’s lessons one brick at time

 

For you it was the months when the maple sap ran and the syrup was put up; when the rivers and creeks broke up and drained the snowmelt on the Sawtooths; the rivers – muddy and raging first, then clear and stained and pastoral – haunted by steelheaded rainbows; you had electricity and green lamps and south-facing windows where cup-sized pots started seeds: the tomatoes and cabbage, cukes and Cannabis sativa.

I was very far away, and although high spring and high summer and high Indian summer were for pouring concrete – walkways and sidewalks and basements and stoops and steps – we did the brickwork in the sloppy spring.

We had a two-man crew. Meaning my boss, the mason, and me. So, I was the hod. In the summer I worked the jackhammer, the sledgehammer, the wheelbarrow and the rebar. When we actually poured the concrete I worked the wheelbarrow, a thousand cubic feet or whatever of concrete – Portland cement and gravel and water. My boss leveled and troweled and planed, then I collapsed, usually, in the sun and heat on the green grass, and your thighs twitched and your lower back twitched and it was impossible to throttle down. Sure, just because you pay me for this, that means you can tell me I can’t take my shirt off.

I was the bricktender in the spring when we did the chimneys. Carrying bricks (they loved Dover Cream in Minneapolis back then) up the scaffolding, mixing mud in the wheelbarrow with the shovel, mixing mud in the mixer, cutting bricks with the chopsaw.

We replaced a couple chimneys a week. I suppose those were the original houses in Minneapolis’ great expansion South– and Northward. Not just time, but the elements over time decayed the brick-and-mortar chimneys. The mortar receded or crumbled; cracks developed.

Task the first was erecting scaffolding around the chimney, there on the side of the house, all the way to the top.

Task two was tearing down this, the old chimney. Most of the time it gave way by hand. We lifted the cement cap off and then broke away bricks and mortar, singly or in planes. All this old detritus was thrown down 18 and 20 and 25 feet to the front lawns of very nice homes that could afford to have their chimneys replaced. Then I gathered all the debris and hauled it in the wheelbarrow and got it up into the dump truck somehow. That was another function of mine that I didn’t mention.

One time I was on my knees gathering the ruins in my wheelbarrow – the slabs of bricks and single bricks and the little pieces of mortar off the sloppy grass – and when I lifted up a piece of debris, there, under it, on his back, was a tiny little bat, the size of my thumb. His mouth was wide open. He was screeching without a sound while he was gasping for air. He’d come from somewhere inside the chimney.

I had my gloves on, so I sort of nudged him on the side. Like “Shoo.” But he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. So, I picked him up. Did you ever look at a bat up close? It’s not easy to sustain any eye contact.This wretch – in the best sense of the word – was gonna die. This isn’t like a big, fat six-month-old mallard that you hold tightly on the sides, over the wings and then – one-two-three – throw him up in the air and he flaps his wings out over the pond and sails out a ways and plops down and lives happily ever after. This bat wasn’t flying.

Looking back, I suppose I should’ve taken him over to the side of the house or by the stoop and just laid him down. The night would come, and he maybe could somehow get up and in the air and live happily etc. etc.

That seemed too Spartan to me. Too cruel. Cynical. You know they, the Spartans, used to leave newborns overnight on the slope of Mount Taygetus to test their survivability. Their durability. Their viability.

I believe I just put him out of his misery.

It took me a long time to realize that wasn’t me. I wasn’t made for that. I wasn’t built like that. Doing that work just wasn’t for me. Lifting and carrying and moving that much weight. I only weighed 140 pounds at the time. I wasn’t durable like the others. Not viable. Plus, I was sensitive. Whenever I tell people how sensitive I am, they don’t believe me.