Day: August 7, 2018

Perhaps it’s the wave of the future. In most households, when there is an emergency up on the roof, it has  historically been the woman who rushes to find the man and ask for help.

We have always been gender neutral, or perhaps female dominant, in our house when it comes to repairs. It’s always been Maria who has done it.

Jay Bridge, our friend and handyman was up on the roof taking off the old and deteriorating asphalt tiles.

I was in my study writing, and the lightning tracker on my phone (yes I have a lightning tracker which i watch obsessively when there’s a storm ever since my SUV in Hebron was struck by lightning and was destroyed ten feet from where I was sitting) started flashing urgently.

I looked at it and it said a severe lightning storm was rushing towards the farm just a minute or two away and  to our West, and I looked out the window and saw lightning already hitting the ground all along the ridge across the street from the farm. The thunder was loud and close, bang after bang.

I rushed outside to warn Jay to get off the roof, but he said he was keeping an eye on things and I saw he was scrambling to get the tarp hammered down. I thought of trying to climb up the ladder, but I knew that would lead to disaster, so I did the next best thing: I ran to get Maria.

I was very worried about Jay on that roof with a medal ladder in a severe storm with thunder, lightning and high winds. My weather app was going bonkers with warnings and alerts.

My tracker showed lightning strike everywhere around the farm.

I am older than Maria, and was slightly abashed that I couldn’t help myself, but I knew Jay would need some help up there to get that tarp down and get down quickly, and he was far too stubborn to get down before the tarp was hammered on.

I yelled for Maria in her studio and she came rushing to the rescue, pausing only to put on her sneakers and in a flash, she came around the house and  scampered up the ladder like a cat. She said she had offered to help Jay, but he refused. I suggested she didn’t ask him.

In seconds, she had pulled one end of the tarp and Jay the other, and he quickly laid down some wooden slats and hammer the tarp in place, as I watched the sky turn black and the wind pick up and the lightning bolts flashing closer and closer all around the farm.

Jay did not protest, he  seemed to welcome the help.

I have to say, it was quite dramatic, the two of them up there.  I was not sure I should have called her to go up on that roof.

But I had sent Maria up there, and she is even crazier than Jay, the two of them would keep hammering until the tarp was on even as the thunder and flashes intensified and the rain started to come down.

I did what I am equipped to do, I grabbed my camera and shouted encouragement from down below. The two of them together actually moved like lightning and worked easily together. No one is braver or faster with a camera than me.

In two minutes, the tarp was down, the storm had arrived, Jay and Maria had come down the ladder. Jay gathered up his things as the rain came and headed home, Maria and I sat on the porch and watched the story passed as I watched my lightning tracker.

I have to say I am quite proud of having a wife who can hop up a ladder light that, be as sure-footed on the roof as I am on the ground (more, actually) and wield a mean hammer. I liked calling her for help when somebody has to go up on a roof in a storm. I did some of that, especially in Hebron.

I’d rather take pictures of it.

I can’t say enough for donkey manure, our Three Sisters vegetable garden. It is exploding with corn, zucchini, beans, tomatoes and squash. Got to get off line now, massive lightning and thunder striking all around. Time to shut down the computer.

Maria and I think we have the nicest and most stylish handy man anywhere. Jay Bridge showed up this morning to take the shingles off of our porch roof, they were disintegrating and when it rained last week, water poured onto the porch from the roof.

We had to move quickly, we were afraid the roof itself would soon be rotting and there are storms coming every afternoon this week during this  relentless heat wave.

Beyond that, Maria was preparing to get up on the ladder and put a tarp on the roof herself, she feels personally responsible for any trouble that happens to our house for some reason even though she hates to be doing that kind of work instead of her art.

Yesterday, I texted Jay, who is also a friend,  and I said Maria was planning to get up on the roof this morning. He answered me in seconds, bless him, and said he would come this morning at 10 a.m. and put a tarp on the roof before the afternoon storms come.

Jay is not like the other handy men I have known.

He is, by training an engineer, and has the engineers penchant for working alone, and working methodically and with great skill.

Jay is an intellectual, I realized soon after meeting him, a voracious reader and follower of culture.

Everything he does is done perfectly, and with great respect for price. He only takes projects that interest him – he built our Little Free Library and refused to take any money for the labor – he said it was his contribution to literature.

He retired from engineering a few years ago, and took up farming and carpentry.

Jay showed up in a classy orange plaid shirt with khaki pants and a straw hat precisely at 10 a.m.

The heat and cold do not seem to bother him, although I did bring him a cold bottle of water. He always has lunch at home with his wife Judy, and always has tea with her. He left for lunch and tea at l p.m. and was back at 2 p.m.

I called him once when the pipes burst in my study, and he said he would be over as soon as he finished his tea. Jay works in his own way, we do not bother or trouble him. He is a true patron of the arts and loves theater. He lives on a farm and has 90 sheep, which he shears himself.

He has a wonderful dry sense of humor, although he is not chatty. He is unflappable. When we first went to lunch, he confided that he doesn’t talk much.

That’s okay, I said, I talk a lot. We have good times. We appreciate Jay, and we know we are very fortunate to know him. Maria is quite relieved, and so am I. I headed her off just in the nick of time.

Our apple tree has been around for well over a hundred years, say the arborist, it is a beautiful tree, in many ways a centerpiece of the farm.  It brings us apples every other year, and this year looks to be a good one, the sheep and donkeys are already crunching on the apples that have started falling in the pasture.

These green ones are beginning to turn red and soon enough I will be crunching on them as well. I think our tree has a beating heart.

A leaf blew off of the old Birch in the front yard and then hung suspended in the blue bird bath. It was hypnotic.