Sugarhouse: Turning the Neighborhood Crack House Into Our Home Sweet Home by Matthew Batt

Author:Matthew Batt [Batt, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Retail, Humor, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780547634531
Google: yJ24GkUx6C4C
Amazon: 0547634536
Barnesnoble: 0547634536
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 2012-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

In class, Tony arranges a four-by-eight sheet of plywood that will be our “floor.” As he readies his air compressor and nail guns, the handlebar mustache men needle him with tool talk.

“Those just brads you’re loading there?” The middle Handlebar is kicked back in his chair, his fat arms crossed like two hams.

Tony loads a clip of nails like somebody who’s watched far too many Clint Eastwood movies. “They’re flooring nails,” he says. He does not look at the Handlebars, but he knows they’re there. They always are, I imagine.

The class is a total blur. Tony litters the floor with planks of hickory, and because none of us except the divorcée would volunteer, he hammers and nails the boards together quicker than he can narrate. He puts a board in place, taps it with a rubber mallet, and then thwa-cock, thwa-cock, thwa-cock, “and that’s how you put the wood down,” he says. His young son has shown up and sits in a chair to the right of the Handlebars looking grievously bored. He’s clearly seen his father at his pedagogical best before.

Afterward, like all good “nontraditional” students, the divorcée, the accountant, and I vie for Tony’s individual consultation time. This, of course, is what we had hoped for. I sketch my pine/maple floor for Tony as he coils the compressor hose. He glances at it and squints. “Not much of an artist, are you? Or is that accurate?”

“Yeah,” I say, “I don’t know.”

“That section’s all poked out there, right in the middle of the floor?”

I nod. “I just want something to stand on that won’t make my wife hate me,” I say.

“Good call,” he says. “Then lay down your new floor on top of the old and let that tongue or whatever be. Put a threshold around it and I bet nobody’ll even notice. If you can’t fix it, frame it.”

Whether that’s a renovation truth or a cliché, I will soon find out.

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