Me and Wally

We have a house guest. My old friend Wally Brown is here while he recovers from emergency back surgery. Wally lives by himself out in the sticks of Alaska and lives this unique lifestyle where he feeds a wood stove for heat etc....no place to recoup from extensive surgery alone. He was by this spring to help me execute that huge Birch tree I blogged about and he was awaiting surgery with the V.A. in Anchorage. He couldn't stand up straight and his pain was obvious. Well, he recovered a little from that and then deteriated  through out the summer until the pain became so bad he called the ambulance about 10 days ago. As luck would have it my friend Dr. Craig Humphries, the back guru has recently opened a practice here and he removed a bone spur the size of "Connecticut " that the other doctor had missed....somehow.  But the story is me and Wally....

In the early 1980's I was working for Mark Passe who had Specialty Builders. We were doing a 32-plex housing unit in Kenai and I was a running a framing crew on the job when he hired Wally to be project manager. Now I had worked for the Passe family for years and we kind of had a system that helped us to be the most aggressive framing outfit on the Peninsula...until Wally arrived. First thing he did was call a crew meeting in a unit we had just rolled up a couple exterior walls. It went pretty much like this....He points at my sneakers and says that tomorrow everybody will have steel toed boots. Then he points at my Cat Diesel Power bill cap and says tomorrow everyone will have hard hats. Then he grabs the boom box and says we ain't ever hearing Rock and Roll bounce through the project again AND while you're at putting that music away pick up all those damn Dr. Pepper cans (we would drink a case a day) and NEVER throw them around again...And finally the coup de gras, the crème de la crème....He pointed at the Rum soaked Crook cigar that I was smoking at the time and said I NEVER want to see that again where I'd routinely drive a couple sinkers on the wall an inch apart for a cigar holder. YIKES, this guys about as much fun as a fart in a scuba tank.

So being Jeff King, one never to be bullied and who tries to make everything fun including work and always the purveyor of righteousness, I quit. I grabbed my saw, grabbed my cigar out of the cigar holder and with a few choice words hit the road... after all I'm the best wall walking, truss rolling, fearless frame carpenter in Slowdotna and finding another job is duck soup......Well that evening Mark came by with a 6-pack of beer and tells me I can't quit. He tells me the problem is that after I quit his dad and brother quit also and he just can't have his dad quitting. Then he asks me to just consider Wally a project, he tells me that the guy is almost genius level framer so he figures if me and Wally can get along he has the best of each world, the guy that thinks the most and the guy that works the most....Well it took many a framing a job but we slowly built some mutual respect and now here we are after all those years the last few people from that era still in the area and still friends.

Wally is a bit eccentric in a kind of McGiver way. At one time he applied for patents on a unique car engine motor if you remember the old Mazda rotary 'Wankle' engine. He was radio repairman is Viet Nam. He built his own unique cement house. He likes cats. He's a bachelor for sure. In fact I noticed just a minute ago that he invented his own tooth brush holder with our Kleenex, how about that?

So Wally needs some help and we need to be steady, like friends. I have to tell you it kind of brings out MP's mothering instincts. So we're helping him walk and eat right....unfortunately his timeframe here coincided with my training diet so he's a little chagrined at lean protein and veggies every day ( the other day he asked if we ever have any chips around). But he's liking the high def TV and sports stations and we even put out the old Fred Flintstone night light to guide his way....So get better W.B., I might have quit a few jobs in my life but I ain't quit on you.............