Somehow, Dad found out about gray paint for battleships on sale, cheap, at the Navy yard. He went down there and bought four barrels of that gray paint. They were big as ashcans and we stored them in the cellar on the other side from the furnaces, at the bottom of the steps under our dart board. All the porches we built we painted with this gray paint. Then, early Saturday mornings, unless it was raining hard or too cold, we’d go out.
First we’d tear down the old porch. We have crowbars for this and Dad showed me how to start at the top so nothing fell down on us. The last thing to go would be the rickety old steps; there were sixteen of them. Then we’d chop and saw the old steps and posts into pieces and stack them in the back of our car, where we’d carried the new wood for the new porch. The new lumber we’d have laid in the alley in a certain way so I can hand each piece to Dad as he needs it. He has it all worked out.
He has his tools lined up in a wooden box with a place for each tool. My dad has good tools from the days when he was a carpenter with his dad. There are two saws, one rip and one cross; two hammers, both Stanley, one carpenter, one mason; a level, chisels, everything you need to build. He has another wooden box he built for nails. Eight sections for different-sized nails, from four- to sixteen-penny with and without heads.
The old wood we’d take home at the end of the day and store in our cellar. We’d burn this in the furnace to save on coal during winter.
Next, Dad would bolt the wooden beam called a plate onto the wall. He’d stand on our ladder while I’d hold the bottom and hand things up to him. After that, we’d set in the cut-off-pyramid-shaped concrete foundation blocks to hold the posts for the new porch. These had bolts sticking straight up from the top where they were cut off. We’d set the posts up and Dad would stand up high on the ladder, with me holding it, so he could pound in the framing for the deck.
After that, we’d be up there, working from above, nailing down deckboards and putting on railings. About then, I’d start painting. Dad would nail along fast and we’d usually end up at about the same time. From start to finish we could put up a porch in under five hours.
At first, I hated losing my Saturdays, especially when it was school time. We worked Saturdays almost as long as a school day, and the only free day I’d have left would be Sunday. Sunday mornings are ruined by getting dressed, going to church, then having a big breakfast afterward. It’s eleven o’clock before I can even change into play clothes.
But I didn’t say anything. Then, gradually, I learned to like working with my dad. Not many kids have time alone with their dads.
He’d try to tell me the little important things about building, how to hold the hammer and swing from my wrist. You let the head of the hammer do the work. He showed me how to bear down with the saw only on the down stroke and just pull it back, letting the saw glide. He taught me how to load a brush with paint, how to hold it in my hands so I wouldn’t get blisters, and how to tip the handle in the direction I pulled the brush, stroking with the grain of the boards.
We’d talk about other things, too. He’s always asking about school, what I’m learning, if I like it. I don’t lie to him; I tell him how I hate school and don’t think I’m learning much, how I’m bored all the time.
Dad only went to eighth grade and keeps telling me over and over how there’s no chance if you don’t have a college education. As far as I’m concerned, eighth grade seems about right, only four more years not counting this one. By then, I could probably make enough money just building porches.
Dad put up a chart in the cellar and marked on it every month’s rent we were behind. When we started, there were thirty-five squares, seven across and five down. When we’d come in from work he’d cross one off. Once a month he didn’t; that was for the month we were living in.
Mr Marsden was the one who told us which porches to build. It was always the porches of people who were paid up with their rent. It wasn’t very fair; most of the worst porches were people who didn’t have any money. When some of those’d start to sag or fall down, we’d stop on the way to or back from a job and Dad would put a brace here, or a few nails there, to help hold them up. He did this for nothing. Lots of times people didn’t even know who’d fixed their porch.
After a while, you could walk down those alleys and tell from the new gray porches without stairs, the ones we built, just who were the people with jobs. Anybody selling things from door to door would be smart to walk down the alleys first and look to see who had any money.
During two years, from the time I was eight till now, we built more than seventy porches. Sometimes in the summer we’d do two porches in one Saturday. Those days we wouldn’t get finished until it was almost dark. We’d take our lunch and only come home for supper. Mom didn’t like us to do two but we were proud of ourselves.
We got all that back rent paid up. I remember the day we came back and Dad crossed the last box off. He gave me his paper chart, which was brown and marked with paint now. One of the thumbtacks was always falling out so there were a hundred thumbtack holes across the top of the paper. It was a used piece of butcher paper he pulled out of the trashcan and it had meat marks on the other side.
‘Here, Dickie, throw this in the furnace; we’re finished. From now on we’ll be getting ahead of the game.’
He stood there, wiping paint off his hands with some turpentine while I pulled open the furnace door and threw the paper in. It went up with a quick puff of light. That was just before this summer.
We kept working, building porches over the summer till we were a whole year ahead in rent. We finished just before school started. That last night when we came in, Dad stored his tools under his bench instead of setting them on top where he usually did.
‘This whole year is like money in the bank, Dickie. In a certain way, for a whole year this house is really ours. But we aren’t going to work any more Saturdays while school’s on; you can have your Saturdays for yourself, now. Maybe next summer we’ll go back to work if we have to.’
He stopped, smiled, pulled the straps of his white carpenter’s overalls down over his shoulders. He had regular clothes on under his overalls. It was summer but it was cold and wet that day. It wasn’t raining but it was wet enough so it was hard to make the paint stick. He was wearing his old sweater with the holes in the elbows and all raveled at the cuffs.
‘You remember this, Dickie. No matter how much you earn in your life you haven’t made one dime if you haven’t put some little bit aside. If you only earn it and spend it right off, you get nothing for your days, you’re just a working machine, working for somebody else. The money you save is work you did for yourself, and the only thing really worth buying is your own time. You remember that.’
By this time, Dad had gotten the letter from J.I. saying they were opening again and there was a job for him. They were going to pay him $37.50 a week. That’s more than twice as much as he got with the WPA. Waxing floors in banks all night he made $22, at the most.
I was there when he opened that letter. It’d come in the morning but Dad had already gone to sleep after coming home from the waxing job. He’d get up when we came home from school for lunch and we’d all eat together, then he’d go back to work after we had dinner.
Lunch in our house is usually just tomato soup, pepper pot, or Scotch broth and sandwiches but it was fun having Dad there. He’d always have some funny story to tell about waxing the bank floors. His favorite was how he’d push the machine, waxing away, and keeping his eyes open in case somebody had dropped a little bit of all that money on the floor during the day. He’d tell the story going along as if he’d really found some money, but it would always turn out to be a Wrigley gum wrapper, or somebody’s handkerchief or, one time, it was an empty pencil box. I know if Dad did find money he’d give it back to the bank, but it was fun listening to those stories; it was the way he told them.
His other stories were about the waxing machine breaking down. These machines were old and I think only my father could really keep them