A Work in Progress

            by H. Nathaniel Corrigan-Gibbs

 

My parents bought our house in 1980 for $100,000, which then seemed like a steep price for a “fixer upper.”  The previous owners left a set of documents describing all of the problems with the house.  It came in the form of a hefty three-ring binder that included everything from termites and dry rot in the rafters to a haunted wine closet in the basement.  This is not to mention that the washer and dryer were located where the house’s only shower and toilet should have been, nor that the floor was dangerously flimsy.  (There is still a hole by the front door where my grandmother put her high-heel through the aging “hardwood.”)  But, where most people saw an enchanted cupboard and leaky plumbing, my parents saw potential.  They purchased the house, and we’ve been fixing it ever since.

•                       •                       •

By the time I came into the picture in 1988, the house had already been through quite a lot: the leaky ceilings had been patched in a few places, a temporary toilet was installed, and the Berkeley bungalow began looking more and more like home.  The last pressing concern was a family (a large family) of pigeons that had moved into our attic.  Though my sister and I somewhat enjoyed the company of the pigeons, my parents were much less amused.  They decked out the house with stern-looking fake owls and spike strips under the eaves, which did nothing to deter the birds.  However, my dad found that a hand-pumped BB gun from Ace Hardware seemed to do the trick.

Don’t be alarmed, we aren’t gun nuts by any measure, but it was just that no one could argue with the efficacy of this extermination technique…and it was fun.  Unfortunately, I didn’t even know that my dad had been shooting at birds through the kitchen window until I drove up from preschool soccer practice with my mom, to witness a flapping bird fall out of the sky into our neighbor’s driveway.

“Awwwww,” I said in what I’m sure was an innocent little kid voice.  “What happened to that bird?”  Just then, my dad, ignorant of our presence, came running around the side of the house, wielding a rusty snow shovel in one hand, and a rifle in the other.  He threw the BB gun aside and, to our horror, began whacking the pigeon with the shovel.  My sister, a future green party member, insisted on a proper backyard pigeon burial ceremony.  She never forgave my dad.  The house, however, has been pigeon-free since.

•                       •                       •

Long before we moved in, our backyard had been taken hostage by an old-growth bamboo forest.  But it wasn’t only our flowerbeds it was after.  Every few days, the bamboo would send an unwelcome shoot into our neighbor Ron’s yard.  Minutes later, there’d be a knock at the door.

I should pause here to explain my family’s relationship with our beloved neighbor Ron.  Were it not for his trucker hat, big mirrored sunglasses, and navy blue SUV, Ron would look like an angry Santa Claus; he has a graying beard, a bit of a belly, and puts on the same scowl every morning before leaving the house.  He wears either a UC Santa Barbara T-shirt (the alma mater of his son and two grown daughters) or a UC Berkeley T-shirt (should it be football season).  As legend has it, Ron made a fortune off of the real estate boom of the 90’s and retired before he hit fifty.  So, with no money-making concerns to speak of, Ron fills the majority of his time watching Cal Football and holding us accountable for the stray bamboo shoots that wander into his yard.

“Larry,” he would say to my dad, teeth gritted.  “I found another one of your sprouts in my yard.”

“I’ll get right on it, Ron,” said my dad, half-heartedly. 

“Well, I wish you would, so that Ellen can get back to her gardening.”

It didn’t seem to bother Ron that even in the absence of bamboo, his wife Ellen would hardly have enough dirt to bury a pigeon in, seeing that all but one corner of their yard was paved over with concrete. 

In spite of all this, our family took the bamboo issue seriously.  Strategies for bamboo eradication were a favorite topic of dinner conversation. I suggested borrowing a koala, but after much deliberation, my dad decided that the best plan of action would be to blanket our entire yard with RoundUp herbicide (which I think is just a politically correct name for Agent Orange).  However, even after watering our garden with enough plant poison to kill off a Vietnamese jungle, the bamboo didn’t yield.

Nevertheless, in an act of particularly poor judgment, my dad casually told Ron that we’d have all the bamboo out by July 4^th.  To Ron, this remark constituted a legally binding verbal contract.  To my father, this was a vague sort of target date, the kind a mechanic might give an impatient client.  That’s why, when July 4^th came and went, and the bamboo was still “on it’s way out” (in my dad’s words), Ron built an eight-foot fence between his yard and ours, and never spoke to us again.  Rumor has it they paved over the last corner of their backyard when they couldn’t get rid of the bamboo.

•                       •                       •

            I only tried to garden once at our house.  One summer, I decided I was going to grow an avocado tree.  The backyard was an unlikely place for avocados; the soil was as arable as a bed of sand, and had a tendency to blow away in the wind.  Not to be discouraged by such things, I started an avocado seed germinating in a cup of water inside.

            I remember spending an hour or so each day just watching the avocado seed grow.  My parents were overjoyed that I had found a “pet” that could replace the dog I had been begging for.

            After two or three weeks, I transferred the light green avocado sprout to a pot inside, where I watered it every day, as a more distinguished plant aficionado might a prized orchid.  When the school year started, I would move the plant from the back of the house to the front porch every day after school as the sun moved, to keep it in “partial shade,” as one of my parent’s friends had advised.

            With a few more months, the avocado was ready to be planted.  It had large dark green leaves, and a thick stem, and looked extremely healthy.  Our garden had never been graced with anything other than bamboo, so I think it would be appropriate to say that the whole family was excited about the avocado going in.  My mom had bought a bag of fertilized soil that I used to prepare a special spot for my avocado plant.  I transferred the plant to the ground outside, and patted down the soil around it, beaming with pride.

            “We’ll be having avocados by the dozen next year,” my dad said.

             The next morning, I went outside to check on how my avocado plant was doing.  Instead of the piece of leafy greenery I was expecting, I found nothing.  Upon closer inspection, I saw that there was actually about an inch of the stem still protruding from the ground.  A deer had eaten the rest overnight.  It had also been kind enough to leave a pile of droppings on its way out.

            I was somewhat comforted to find out recently that I had been trying to grow a male avocado plant, which wouldn’t have borne fruit anyways.  However, I would still be tempted to take down that deer with the family BB gun, if given the chance.  In any event, the untimely demise of my avocado marked the end of my attempt to bring domesticated plant life to our backyard.

•                       •                       •

In our old kitchen, there were no cabinets in which to store dishes, food, or anything else, so you could always find what you were looking for just by taking a quick glance around.  The dishwasher sat in the middle of the large kitchen floor, and its top doubled as a cutting board.  The antique gas stove had all the power of a Zippo lighter, and the fridge only stayed cold when it wanted to.

Character notwithstanding, it was time for a remodel.  One summer morning my dad (lawyer by trade, carpenter by passion) and I moved all of the appliances and furniture outside, and ripped up the kitchen floor while my mom was at work.  We only had one problem.

“Dad, where are we going to cook dinner?” I inquired at the end of a hard day’s work.

“Hmmmmm,” he surveyed the situation, looking at the bare floor joists that spanned the space where the kitchen floor used to be, then at the appliances outside.  “Your mother must have something planned.”

She didn’t have anything planned.  After a week of eating sushi take-out in the living room, our family realized that we couldn’t sustain this practice indefinitely.  My parents, ever optimistic, saw this as an opportunity for my sister and me to experience the benefits of living in harmony with nature.  They pushed the dishwasher and stove against the outside of the house, hooked up a sink to the hose bib, and set up the patio furniture in a circle on the deck. It wasn’t the best arrangement.  The already weak stove balked at the idea of being covered in morning dew, and the raccoons left evidence of their presence in the sink.

            “What will the neighbors think?” my grandma yelled at me over the phone when she heard the news.

            “Ron won’t care,” I replied.  “He won’t be able to see us over his fence.”

            Although we were only eating outside for a few weeks, I remember those evenings very well.  As the sun fell below the horizon, and darkness fell, I would have to look closer and closer at my plate to distinguish the chicken from the peas.  Inevitably, the dinner conversation would stray towards the subject of our kitchen remodel.

            “Did we really need to tear apart the kitchen before I left for college?” my sister asked, annoyed at the prospect that she still had to eat dinner with these losers.

            “Look at the bright side, you can see the sunset every night,” my mom would retort smiling.

            “Hmph,” she responded.  Silence followed.

            “Pass the potatoes, please,” I said in the dark.

•                       •                       •

One day a few years ago, prompted by an article he read in Fine Homebuilding, my dad convinced me to join him on a campaign to earthquake-proof our aging house once and for all.  Little did I know that once begun, this sort of renovation is never finished; it just becomes a way of life.

I remember standing next to my dad at the kitchen table reviewing our house’s blueprints as my dad reviewed the changes we’d have to make.  “We need concrete here, and rebar here,” he pointed at one part of the house.  “And rebar here too, and a concrete pad under there.”  As I learned, the answer to everything structural was a bed of concrete with rebar to taste.  Though there wasn’t really any problem with the foundation, my dad was convinced that “the big one,” as he called the allegedly impending natural disaster, would destroy everything in sight unless built to stringent specifications. 

While showering one morning a few days later, I was startled by the sound of cracking drywall and the sight of a flailing leg falling through the bathroom ceiling.  “Sorry,” I heard a muffled voice say from the attic, as the leg retracted, leaving a significant hole in the ceiling and a sizeable pile of sheetrock dust on the bathroom floor.  The construction had begun.