Edward O'Kelly Week in anticlimatic

Jumped into a fresh job site this week, new home construction, first whole-house I’ve had a chance to do since late last summer. Now that the three month solo grind of carrying hoses up and down stairs all day has concluded, we’ve entered what my brother and I call “Edward O’Kelly” season. If you’re a history buff, you’ll know that Edward O’Kelly murdered Robert Ford inside his own bar. But for us, the reference is to the climax of the film with Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck regarding said assassination.

My brother and I are much alike, and in some very arcane ways we overlap perfectly. One of these ways is a hyper sensitivity to ambiance, as is cultivated by paying soft attention to each of the five senses, in a particular time and place, and mindfully savoring the complete stack of those inputs, as one would an appetizer at fine dining.

In the final scene of this film there is a moment when the narrator mentions Edward O’Kelly by name, and juxtaposed is a shot of the man staggering up a snowy hill towards a building, with the sound of a hammer in the distance. It’s this specific scene that my brother and I immediately recognized as the closest objective ambient snapshot of what it is like building homes in the winter, in the north. Hiking up a hill of snow with 100 lbs of tools on your back in the virgin dawn.

This morning was an Edward O’Kelly morning. All the fellas were in very high spirits. The home owner is a huge man, looks like a retired linebacker, and is always there. Close talker and a toucher, I can’t say I like him immediately- but I could see him growing on me. The electricians were the same crew I’ve seen on the last 3 job sites, so it was a merry welcome from them. They too have grown on me over the years, even if they do still force everyone to listen to soft rock. Electricians are typically the closest thing we get to women, on the jobsite. The HVAC team consists of one guy who looks like John Candy, and has almost the exact same personality, so already I’m in love with him. The rest of the builders are Colombians, which means VERY decent music when they get the aux cable, and an overall pleasant and reliable group.

There are a few bad apples out there, most of them drywallers and painters, but for the most part you will never find happier or more satisfied men than you will at 38 degree jobsites covered in sawdust, loose nails, splintered fiberglass, and sketchy temp-wiring. The howl of the salamander heater drowns out the hammers and the drills, and everyone is just having a blast hacking and cutting and shoving and pulling and climbing and crafting.

For instance, yesterday I spent the entire afternoon building a ladder and a platform to get my body up to the roofline so I could fine-tune some wood notching on a vent hole. I screwed boards across these ascending rafters, and when I was high enough I screwed an entire sheet of wood down, and then screwed a ladder to THAT, and then screwed the top of the ladder to the highest point in the rafters, and at last I had my path to BEGIN working. Which I saved for today.

Since it was frozen in there, I had two layers of gloves on, and was having a hard time- way up there- getting my little saw bit into the tiny groove it has to seat in to be attached, so I took off my gloves for a second to do that. One of them fell between my legs and floated two stories down to the basement before landing on an electrician. We then spent the next 5 minutes making sport of trying to return it to me without either of us moving much from our post. Eventually he was able to get them at least on the landing for my weird ladder path, and that finally achieved the “something helpful” he was going for. God bless him.