Ya Git Old

[mwheless]

Do you have their snail mail address? Or their email?
Does she still teach school in Sinton?
They came by to visit me in the Morgan City/Patterson LA area on their
honeymoon voyage to Naw'lins. Can't remember the year?????

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harry Edwards" <laughingwolf at ev1.net>
To: "survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the 60s"
<austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
Sent: Friday, July 01, 2005 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: Ya Git Old


Ya, the very one. Reese has been married for many years to Pat Hathcock
and living in Seadrift. I know Pat but not her.           td


On Jul 1, 2005, at 12:43 PM, mwheless wrote:

> Twisty, Was Michael Waddell married to Linda Reese Vaughn whose mother
> was
> from Menard? Did Michael and Linda have a daughter named Clara? Just
> curious.
> marilyn wheless
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Harry Edwards" <laughingwolf at ev1.net>
> To: "ghetto 2" <ghetto2 at lists.whathelps.com>
> Cc: "ghetto survivors" <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
> Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 6:57 PM
> Subject: Ya Git Old
>
>
> Some of you probably know Michael Waddell. This timely essay by Michael
> was forwarded to me from a mutual friend.    twisty
>
> subject: ya git old
>
> git it?
>
> used to be. I would go strate ahead on, in the trades, carpentry. Ya
> have a tool belt, and to start with you have and prize the few thangs
> yuh carry there. Used to be cloth one. Apron-like, to keep the stuff ya
> werk’t with at hand. Convenient.
>
> Nails. An essential, those pointy things with haids, they call ‘em; the
> heads are actually flattened circles of aim, targets, to give rise to
> expressions from some straw-bosses among my hearties, and mighties,
> such as—hit the nail, man! th’ nail! Hit th thang, don’t try to Scare
> it in!—
>
> The apron would hold a handful of nails, and perhaps a pencil and a
> measuring tape, that could go ten feet. That's all.
>
> You graduate. you get a leathern belt, that holds a utility knife, in a
> special sheath-shaped quiver (quoit or quirt, or quirn, kern or
> coin—qui vive!?), a pocket is provided for a thirty-foot tape, pencils,
> rectifying squares, nail-punches and –sets, a triangulora divisor, and
> other arcane stuff, unknown to the publick. A hammard, mine was a Plumb
> Bludgeon, with candy-apple transparent ochre shellack’t finish on the
> wooden handle, a 16-oz. curved-claw short-handled (relatively) framing
> implement, a tool. I had not made the acquaintance, yet, of the
> Bluegrass steel, the Louisville Bluegrass straight-claw. The tool. The
> nail-drivers’ tool. I could hire on any day, ‘hello! I’m a nail-driver.
> You gotta ennie jobs? here?’
>
> They can tell if you’re shuckin’ cause they have this test, see. They
> tell you to grab a belt of nails, and give you an empty pocketed strap,
> and point to the 50-pound box that sixteen-penny commons come in packed
> ever witch way; they tell you Fill your pockets. Then they watch you,
> and time you at this. There’s a way to fill yer pockets in about three
> seconds; there’s a way to sort all the haids in one direction, a manner
> of getting all the pointy ends t’other—a convenience. this handshake is
> known to all real framers. A secret.A leger d’main. A palpable, tactile
> point of manual dexterity. Experience.
>
> And I was hired.
>
> time was.
>
> You never give it a second thought; you grab a handful and frame up
> that wall, nail after nail after nail after day after day, after wall,
> after floor, after house . . . afterthought: what does it mean
> ‘finish’t’? When, do you know, when you’re done? When, you walk away?
>
> Well, remember that ceiling, that fell on me, metaphorically I mean,
> about a year ago? That I wrote you the account of? That the rockwool
> insulation had brought down, being sodden with an overflow of water
> sweated out of the air conditioner into it’s overflow pan, that had got
> stopped up by some growth of bacterial mucus, so that the water didn’t
> drain down the pipe that for years had led the sweat outside, like a
> postnasal drip fix’t for the attick’s nose???
>
> The insulation got so heavy that the sheetrock ceiling in a four by six
> foot section, done give way; Pow, two seconds and it’s on the floor. It
> floored you! you said.
>
> Dust fuckin’ everwhurr.
>
> Now in that same space of room, there’s the new bath facility quarters,
> under construction; Here’s where we get old. I put down the italian
> tiled floor pieces, in the area exterior to the tub&shower combination
> chamber, at its deep end. The closet-flange has been set, anticipating
> an imminent porcelain S-curved pee-trap, known to the laymen as the
> john, or crapper. American Standard makes a fine one. I put down the
> underlaying cementitious backer, then the thin-set, and then the pieces
> of slate-looking verdigris tile, placed with eighth-inch cross-shap’t
> neoprene spacers at all quadrants . . .
>
> I have left unframed, an open access, in place of  a long wall
> -to-be-    for the convenience of being able to walk into this evolving
> space, rather than around it, thru a door, carrying the mud, the tiles,
> the werk.
>
> Thru a squar’d and measured locus I fix three points, two one-inch
> holes will be drilled thru the sub-floor, and the backer, and another
> hole between them, which will be the slip for the two-inch drain pipe,
> to carry suds ‘n aftershave and such, from a pedestal sink, that will
> be placed just in that spot.
>
> I place all the tiles, and in this one spot, one tile must be saw’d
> with the diamond blade wet-saw, to have its own three holes, matching
> those foresighted in the present floor. Then it’s pegged, so to say.
> Buttered, pressed in. Set. Wait a day they say, before doing the grout
> lines. 24 hours.
>
> And a day later I place the pedestal sink upon the appropriate
> position, to find that it’s about a foot too close to the virtual
> toilet . . . and I chew on this for another day, and it’s a real kick
> in the haid.
>
> Ya git old; but ya learn to take up the cut tile piece, bite your lip,
> lower one, and not too hard, and shake yer haid, and pop up the ceramic
> before it gets set any tighter. And notice how good the mated surfaces
> are evidenced, a wee bit of insight and experience that won’t see much
> effect, or have much affect perhaps in the enduring world, of temporal
> affairs, and indeed, of temporizing.
>
> Been thurr; done that, dun that. dunn that, and that.
>
> Yesterday I was putting the plumbing supply lines for the pedestal sink
> into the wall, that I’d abhorred using earlier (this wall stands below
> the ridge line of the house, and I wish’t not to diminish its structure
> with holes, cut for piping—a matter of conscientiousness, coming from
> some ‘experience’—of maximal vs optimal structural design—I should have
> gone for optimal at the first go-round). Hmmm . . . maximal, it has the
> ‘-mal’ configuration in it, at its end, -mal maybe equals BAD. that’s
> so crazzie . . . nnnaaaaahh!
>
> Once these lines were gloo’d—they were all PVC plastic tubings, and the
> house water pressure supply was shut off during this measuring and
> fitting improvisition work—I crawled, or crept, out from the low space
> of the pier and beam floor, thinking now to open the house supply valve
> to test that all the fittings held, strong and without leaks.
>
> Quick I run to the exterior cut-off valve, turning the handle several
> times; I hear the Ka-kaGaBoing thud of the starved water meeting up
> again with whatever remains down the pike, in the vascularity of this
> living creature, The House. Aaaaiiieee!! it Lives!!
>
> Quick I run in to the new bedroom, with bath facility sans son
> quatrieme mur—to see how it goes.
>
> How it goes is, all over the new tile floor, water holds, coming from
> the sputter of the two outlets, we call the Hot and Cold, that I have
> forgotten to put temporary stoppers in, for the pressure test phase.
>
> I rush outside again. This time, to turn off the house’s water supply.
>
> Turns out, the tile floor is quite waterproof; I have inspected every
> line below-deck, and minimal damage has been done. I’ve just . . .
>
> just got, older.
>
>
>
>
>