Roofing Fool, Destruction Tool

By Greg—07/17/2006
Categorized in meaningful labor

Midnight Roofer is now Severe Thunderstorm Roofer. Admittedly, today’s not the first day he’s spent time better spent cowering in a basement on the roof, but the lightning seemed worse this time, and the wind was definitely greater than before. All through the storm, as the lightning traced wrinkles across the face of the sky, as the thunder boomed and the wind threatened to knock what was left of the pear tree into the neighbor’s yard, he hammered away. Once I saw him in the backyard and I thought he was finally calling it quits, but soon enough, he climbed his aluminum ladder again and went back to work. Every so often, like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump, he shouted something incomprehensible, whether to a person, or to the sky, or to no one and nothing in particular I do not know. Now that the weather is calmed, he has returned to form and is singing arias as he works.

In related news, Wednesday morning as I left for work I saw people in the abandoned blue house across the street. Salvage They were hammering on the window sills and door frames (in the photo at right I enlarged the lower right window—you can see the figure hammering there); they were salvaging what they could from the place: I suspected then that it was only a matter of time before the demolition would begin. Little did I know that it would take place almost entirely on Friday.

By this afternoon, even the foundation was no more.

(There’s more about each photo on Flickr.)

Comments

are his arias sacred or profane?

does he prefer mozart, handel, verdi, rossini?

is he a tenor, bass, baritone, countertenor, sopranist?

by Jeremy—Jul 17, 09:02 PM

these are all good questions, to which, i’m sure, there are no good answers.

by kathy—Jul 17, 09:18 PM

oh, sure there are! although he refrains from singing boldly, he’s clearly more baritone than anything. he doesn’t really exhibit having had any training, however, so he’s more like a lead singer in a pop group than anything. as for sacred v secular, surely secular. he’s not much of the sacred sort. his favorite composers, however, i do not know.

by greg—Jul 18, 06:20 AM

baritone? i don’t think so. strangely, his “singing” doesn’t really strike me as musical in any way. this is why we must not try to represent Sever Thunderstorm Roofer and his practices to the world in any way. he’s an enigma unto himself.

by kathy—Jul 18, 10:28 AM

you mean like taylor hicks?

by Jeremy—Jul 18, 10:39 AM

Taylor is enigmatic—especially in his current role as a Ford pimp. But he is not quite the same as TSR, whose enigmatic nature can reasonably be attributed, at least in part, to too much LSD in college.

by greg—Jul 18, 10:56 AM

ha! there is something tayloresque about…wait a minute…isn’t he STR, not TSR? maybe we should revert back to Midnight Roofer, since that really captures his essence better.

too much LSD? perhaps. constantly verging on heat stroke, which is killing off the brain cells? probably.

purposely eccentric for eccentricity’s sake? i think so.

a good roofer? ummmm….

by kathy—Jul 18, 11:05 AM

Oops. STR’s right.

Incidentally, he told me the other night that the best roofing material is bamboo. He’s planning to plant it in his yard, then harvest it every year to put on houses.

by greg—Jul 18, 02:07 PM

he is NUTS if he’s thinking of planting bamboo in his yard. does he have ANY idea how freaking invasive that stuff is? i am surprised we don’t have it coming up in our toilet. he would do better to buy a field next to someone he really doesn’t like and plant it there. might he plant kudzu to use as insulation, while he’s at it?

uh, not that i feel strongly about invasive non-native plants or anything.

by mary—Jul 18, 08:48 PM

So were you holding out hope that M/STR is sane until the bamboo, or is your judgment of sanity such that hammering on a roof during a thunderstorm is merely stupid, but planting bamboo is what’s crazy?

by greg—Jul 18, 09:03 PM

hey he is the midnight reefer… i mean roofer!