Tuesday, June 13, 2006

When Is A Treehouse A Home?


My merry band of hippy carpenter buddies got a call from a guy who said his treehouse was badly screwed up and in need of some decent carpenters. Being both decent and a carpenter, I got a call from one of them asking me if I'd go take a look. Wow. It was indeed a treehouse and it was indeed screwed up. Apparently, a hundred dollar an hour engineer had hired nine dollar an hour wood butchers and had been unable to supervise everything they did-- and besides, what does a hundred dollar an hour engineer know about carpentry, anyways? So we twenty five dollar an hour carpenters were called in and we took all the money the hundred dollar an hour engineer had and ALMOST finished his treehouse, which, incidentally, he engineers for a living.

The poles you see running to the ground are not supposed to be there. As the interior of the treehouse was being done, as well as the underneath (treehouses have exposed bottoms, which must be covered or you get cold feet) the engineer casually came up to the job in the woods one day and mildly "suggested" that we put poles on the corners "just to be safe", because the nine dollar an hour carpenters had cut down the wrong tree and attached one of the beams to a different tree and now the whole west side was way over spanned and the beam could actually "snap" if we all walked to the one end at the same time....

This, while we were all sitting beneath it, eating lunch out of the rain...

6 comments:

Sabra said...

Good Lord, Scott, please tell me this happened before you had your back shaved clean and tatooed with "Killjoy lives here," and that you weren't naked!

Ooohhh... Shudder, shudder, shudder...

I had this dream ... My life was almost perfect - and then - suddenly - something happened - it was kinda like - but not exactly - the twister that carried Dorothy and Toto off - I find myself laying on the ground, face down, fully covered in a black garment - this could not possibly be something I've added to my wardrobe by my own volition - it is large enough to be a tent and I'm a size 4 - or - was it once used to cover a treehouse being sprayed for termites - it was hot, very, very hot... And my mouth - my vanilla vodka martini was no longer clutched in my hand - it was gone! I was thirsty, I was parched... But my mouth was full of sand! I got up and I tried to run away - run far - and fast - must get back to, to... to . . .

I couldn't run... I was stumbling and falling, flailing, massive folds of material twisting around my ankles, tripping me - and - and - and my shoes - as I tried to lift my feet - my shoes - they sink - sinking in - deeper and deeper - first one, then the other - I can't get them out fast enough to run... It was of no use, the efforts to run...

... I could hide - under that black flowing garment - but you try running in the sand in stilettos!

Which just goes to prove that even if you can't run, you CAN so hide...

Hey, Scott, maybe you'll want a job???

Sabra said...

Oh, and P.S., Scott - I posted my "kids" today, too!

Anonymous said...

That's not a tree-house. It's a condo on stilts.

Scott from Oregon said...

sabra- When Pan AM went belly in the bucket, my pops got involved in a bicycle store for many years, until he was rehired for a short time before Pan Am finally flipped. How come "hubby" doesn't take a day job and spare you the sack?

amusing said...

SO is that why you wanted me to go back to the beginning? To discover that Sabras run amok in your life?

Where are my oreos and milk, pal? Here I am (or am I?), though damn your prediliction for images! It seems that we will end up having coffee after all because I am going to have to go find wireless somewhere -- or else go mad waiting for the download.

As far as the treehouse -- if only we could grow trees in New Orleans, this height could solve the problem -- since the engineers haven't figured out how to make the levees work...

amusing said...

And where the hell can I find a $25/hour carpenter? It's double that AT LEAST here...