New Toys and Snow

My new favorite toy : a nail gun. It makes life so much easier, gives you an adrenaline rush the first time you pick one up, and just makes you feel hardcore. I got to play with one our last day of work in Hurley. Once more it rained, so once more we worked inside on the addition. We mostly did our best not to mess up unskilled labor, such as nailing boards to the wall to allow room for insulation, moving two-b’fours, and putting up insulation.

Sonny’s son and the carpenter put beams in the roof, ran wire to the light switches and lights (they worked!), and build some more walls. Even more than using the nail gun, I enjoyed watching them work, seeing what they were doing. At first, I tried to do this discretely, because I thought it might be awkward. However, after Phil made enough comments about how they’d “learn y’uns real good” and after they didn’t care, I realized that everyone else saw it as a learning process, and it was okay for me to watch.

Equally as awesome, it was okay for me to listen. When Sonny came out, we had three men who worked or had worked the mines. Sonny was in poor health because of it; his son still worked in the mines. They exchanged stories that I only half-understood for the jargon. Some of what I did understand amazed me. They told about working hours on end in mine shafts not tall enough to stand in, and how hard it was to eat lunch laying down. They told about moving from one company to another for better conditions – and how this had ended disastrously for some men they knew. They made jokes about “scabs” who broke picket lines in Kentucky. My favorite was about a scab who drove past 20 men picketing. Those men told him he could go through – but they didn’t say anything about the hundred men further in. Those men picked up the man’s truck and flipped it!

We left an unfinished project, but some good friends. Which, overall, is what I’d rather do.

When we got back to the community center after our final day of work, we received some frightening news. Snow was coming! It brought us into Hurley and it was going to bring us out. After much discussion and some time spent on Weather Underground, we decided to stick out the night so as to avoid driving in the dark and the snow, and pray for wet (but not icy) roads the next morning. We found highway driving that wasn’t as direct as our route in had been, but it seemed a wiser idea.

Then we headed downstairs for the community cookout. It always includes live bluegrass music from the family of an active and wonderful member of the community center. Cecil had brought his mandolin for the express purpose of playing with them, and they got excited when he told them he wanted to join for the night. They played for an hour and a half and we joined in for as many songs as we knew and enjoyed those we didn’t.