Jack just gets under the wire in time this week – –

Roofing work is both necessary and difficult to get done. Our house is old and has steep roofs at strange angles. We couldn’t find anyone locally who seemed willing to accept the challenge. These days, a roofer seems almost as rare as a good deal on beef.
But ‘word of mouth’ is a great thing and through friends of Wendy’s we were put in touch with Mikey!

Mikey had fitted a woodstove for one of Wendy’s day job board members. He lives in Norton, which is a two hour drive from here, but was willing to make the journey once he saw the property where we wanted our own wood stove fitted. It is near a well-stocked fishing stream. Mikey and his work associate James showed up with all the tools and a bunch of fishing poles.

So far so good.

They did an excellent job and we mentioned our roof, more in hopes that he knew someone than anything else, but “that’s what I do” he said. “I fit stoves as an extra job. My main trade is roofing.”

What could we say? As with so many things in life, we lucked into a wonderful moment through relationships.

So last week he and his team—consisting of James, Mikey’s sister Christie, and her son whose name we never did catch but who closely resembled Johnny Depp—camped out every night at our property (and presumably fished) and came in every morning and worked on our roofs here all day (and sometimes till the light was waning).

They all worked hard and never wasted a minute. We began to think of them as the Starship Enterprise – Mikey was Cap’n Kirk, issuing the orders; Christie was Uhuru, running from front yard to back to shout things at the roofers who couldn’t see or hear each other, and picking up tools that suddenly came flying over the guttering; and James was Scotty—when it was going wrong, he had duct tape. Or glue, or something.

There was a funny night when they thought they would finish – at least Cap’n Kirk did—and the nephew “Johnny” (who might have been a Klingon) threatened to quit if the captain issued one more frustrated order. If you’re not the person on the roof screaming at the crew to keep it together and get home tonight, it’s adorable to hear. If you are the person being screamed at, probably not so much…

Family is family. The next morning they were all still talking to each other, and right cheerful. And by that extra day’s evening, the roof was good and tight. We know because the day after they all went home, it started raining. And didn’t stop for two days.

Wendy, being Wendy, wanted a slight home improvement during the roofing: the opportunity to position a rain barrel to provide water to our washing machine. I know Mikey is a good man because, at 9 pm as dusk was not so much falling as giving way to pitch black, he fitted her rain barrel for her, and gave a courtly bow before driving off into the sunset—well, starlight—in his pick-up.

Our new roof is warm and cozy. Our new friends come highly recommended. And Wendy is already making plans for the washing machine…. Sigh…..