I’ve been two weeks at a barn raising, of sorts. A few months ago, my Sacramento son-in-law Chad commented around the camp fire of a pending expense he had to replace his family’s roof. He wasn’t sure where to get the money, and wasn’t hinting. Sue and I had just paid $14,000 for our smaller roof. Chad said his roof was shot and he wanted to replace it before winter.
Gino, my old friend and craftsman, happened to be visiting California that week. He was around the same fire. When he heard Chad’s sad lament. Gino said, “Order the materials, fly me out, and I’ll help you put your roof on.”
That’s what Chad did. Two months later, he bought Gino a round-trip plane ticket from Philadelphia for Nov. 1 to Nov. 14. I drove up with my truck and tools to pitch in and slept on the couch for two weeks. The three of us spent 13 of 14 long days on the 4,500 square-foot roof rolling out felt, chalking lines, and pounding in shingles until sunset.
My daughter Kristi was engineering the state’s water full time, but she pulled double duties filling in for Chad at school parent meetings and keeping us all fed. Each evening she prepared a home-cooked family meal to be enjoyed around the kitchen counter, or watching “Family Guy.”
Each morning I drove their two boys, Tyler and Jack, to school and stopped at Noah’s Bagels on the way home. Gino, Chad, and I ate our breakfasts on the roof.
Gino brought the expertise. He’s built or rebuilt every part of a house, and he’s put on a lot of roofs, though never a roof so large that a roll of felt would not reach end to end. This would be his biggest roof ever.
Chad and I began as grunt apprentices. Gino did all the finesse work, cutting around vents, water-proofing six valleys, keeping the lines straight as they rolled over three dormers. Chad and I covered the vast surface areas, one shingle at a time, with me handing and him hammering.
In the afternoons, I’d go pick up the boys from school and we’d hit Starbucks on occasion. Then it was back onto the roof. Jack would climb the ladder each afternoon and ask, “You guys need anything?” We’d put him to work throwing scrap shingles off the roof .
For the first week, I was wearing out frequently. The roof heat and slope and the coarse shingle sand shifting under my feet, caused me to climb down for regular breaks. Sometimes I’d run cold water over my head from the garden hose, or just sit in the shade for a half hour and cool down. Gino didn’t over heat, but he’s in his 60s, too. His ankles swelled up and his knees throbbed in the evenings. He sat in the living room after dinner, uninterested in going to any night clubs, content to watch television with ice packs on his knees.
By the second week, our stamina was much improved. I no longer had to climb down the ladder and hide in the shade three times a day. Gino’s ankles recovered as he got used to the ever-shifting slopes. Chad stopped sweating like a soaker hose.
For all three of us, what hurt the most was our blistered feet. As we turned round and round on the roof for two weeks, our feet were forever sliding to the far ends of our shoes. Perhaps wearing sneakers instead of work boots played a hand in our hurtful feet.
We did take one day off. We worked through daylight saving time and Election Tuesday and fell asleep before Trump won, but we called off work for one Football Sunday. Chad and Kristi have Hulu as their primary television provider, so none of our favorite games (Chad’s Cowboys and my Steelers) were televised at the house. Chad and I drove to the Folsom Lake Bowl sports lounge for the 9 a.m. morning game and got front-row seats before three big screens that showed Eagles, Cowboys and Steelers playing separate games side my side.
Gino, our Eagles fan, stayed back at the house, preferring instead to sleep in, talk on the phone to his loving Patricia, and ice his knees. We came home for the afternoon games and enjoyed cold beer and the much needed escape from the roof.
Chad was a happy man when the roof finally got finished the Sunday afternoon before Gino’s early Monday departure. We were worried we might not finish on time, so we poured on the steam. We finished at 2 p.m., Sunday, in time for Chad and me to rush to the nearest sports bar and watch the second half of the Cowboys versus Steelers game. The Steelers won 99-percent of the game, so I got to do a lot of cheering. Then the Cowboys won that last 1-percent and Chad got to cheer. Gino opted to stay at the house and take a long shower.
In the end, we felt good and tired. We said our good-byes. I drove Gino to the airport, and thanked him one more time. He said, “It wasn’t work. It was fun. We joined a young family, shared their daily lives for two weeks, and helped them save real money on a home repair. We got in a lot of laughs.”

Steve Gibbs is a retired Benicia High School teacher who has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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