Memories transcribed from my journal at the time.
Oct. 10th, 2017
And now you’ll be wanting to hear a piece about Goertzenville itself, which is where my life is happening, however little that is reflected in what I here write. Everyone (being the Lawrensons, & G. Boys and Girls) has been here for full three weeks now, and the work has become routine. There were two weeks right after I came where there was something different happening every day - and the people driving slowly by thought things were coming along quickly. The two days when we were raising rafters were very stressful for me - and I think with good reason; the lifting team was almost entirely girls with heavy 2X4 props - the “Royal Pushers” - and once we got it up to Jireh on the peak, he was the only one standing between us and a headdinger of an accident. Then came sheeting and shingling, and we missed all of the latter while we were in the states - they did nothing else for a week. Now it’s been the same since we came back: interior walls, landscaping, windows, doors, and a ton of electrical. I, Dad, and Isabelle have done nothing else. I feel like I could wire an outlet in my sleep - but I love it. I don’t want the electrical to end - and at the moment it doesn’t look as if it ever will. You, though, want to hear about us - the people doing this.
Breakfast, at 7:30, is the first thing that happens every morning, and we usually start work at the house after 8:30. I have mostly been in the habit of catching a ride there, but I’d like to walk every morning and get there before everyone else - I did that this morning and I can now walk you through what it’s like to come upon it alone it the middle of the bush.
The cows all look at you and the dogs give one last bark at your back and trot after the sheep as you undo the mesh fence at the gate. The house stands long and not very low in the grass and mud, its grey Typar and handsome grey shingles making the yellow studding inside contrast nicely and everything look new and clean.
Inside, the empty walls are see through and fun to walk through - except where wires are strung, which is almost everywhere. Wires stick down from the ceiling and wires dive into boxes and hop out again to keep running. And a great cloud of rolled-up wires hangs over the location of the future braker in the utility room. In the sunroom is a table with a half-full water cooler and a box of ruined chocolate bars from the Roseau tuck shop on it. Around the walls, folded up, are the broken lawn chairs into which tired workers sink at breaks and over which flirty cousins fight over during after-lunch chat time.
Then you hear the rumble of the quad and the workday begins. At first everyone is just arranging workspaces and putting on tool belts (and in my case, my trusty blue hard hat), but within a very few minutes everyone has found their boss and been given a starting job. Isabelle and I show up beside Dad and he points us out a circuit on his paper or in the walls and we go wire it and come back, or, like yesterday, he shows us a roomful of lightboxes to marrett and it takes us all day. I enjoy that fiddly, repetitive kind of work, and it meant I could talk with Isabelle, since we both had our heads in the rafters and neither had to think. She taught me some body bonkers, and I was singing a Christmas carol absentmindedly when I realized just how much I was looking forward to Christmas this year. I missed it almost entirely last year. As soon as Halloween is over we can start celebrating.
Actually, I spoke too soon. We had a little Christmas celebration when Opa came back from Grunthal Lumber with a bunch of new building supplies this morning. There was a whole box of S1 staples, a bunch more clamps (all the store had), a dozen - no, twenty! - more LED lights (I could do that last one in the garage now!), and new sizes of wire - peachy orange 10-gauge and oh, so fat 8-gauge wire in a big coil. Only for one home run, it was that special.
The drywall came this afternoon, too, and a crowd of us gathered at the back of the garage to watch the nifty little machine with three wheels from Grunthal Lumber lay the stacks of it - different lengths - down just inside the doors.
Nov. 8th, 2017
[I want to paint a picture] for you - the most dramatic one, for me, at least, of the build so far. Let me set it up. [bunch of technical stuff about the electrical process]
...we found a local electrician who would get the permit, put his name on the project, and let us do the work.
I happened to be out of a job just as Dad needed a helper and he got me to staple up some bubble packs along the walls. From then on I did nothing but electrical work and became completely invested in the progress.
Nov. 14th, 2017
The work grew routine as the weeks wore on. Nearly everyone but the Uncles pitched in here and there, but Isabelle and I were the dubbed electricians, and since Dad spent time thinking and Isabelle had to do school in the mornings, I did the most manual work. Frank Enns (the electrician) came a handful of times, and when he left after putting up the big grey breaker box in the utility room, Dad called the two of us in to have a look see.
As we neared being ready for our rough-in inspection, everyone began to root for it and for us, and Uncle Duane warned Oma to buy Champagne against the passing of that electrical inspection. At the beginning of one week we knew we would try and finish by the end of that week. Well, we didn’t quite make it. We’d work Monday and then call Frank and tell him we were ready for the rough-in. We worked Monday and weren’t yet ready, so Dad told Isabelle to skip school on Tuesday and we pushed hard all day. The job was to go over every circuit and make sure it met code and looked neat and tidy. Every box, every light, every switch was looked over, the code book consulted on questions we thought we knew but didn’t, and the places where wires hung out of the wall unable to be finished halted over multiple times.
By the late afternoon things were looking very good and professional - except for the hearts and flowers drawn on the wire, and the places were the studs read, “Jireh strung this wire” in proud print. So in the foolish lull before supper, when the kids speculate about the supper menu rather than their next job, the sun sinks pink and blue behind the trees and the Uncles talk louder about their tiredness than their lack of help and ambition, Isabelle took up her sharpie and attacked the girly evidence on the wires, and I found a chisel and took it to the possessive statements and the beginner electrician diagrams on the door frames and studs. By the time we quit for the night all evidence was satisfactorily obliterated, and that night after supper Dad called for the rough-in.
Nov. 21st, 2017
Heath and Isabelle had driving the next morning. I rode with them as far as the build site and walked up the driveway in the chilly morning stillness, my feet crunching on the gravel. When I came up to the house Dad had Takis and Bowen carrying box after box of electrical supplies out the front door and hiding it in the van. But that job was over quickly, and then everything was ready and waiting - myself in some suspense - for that fateful inspection. I had promised Isabelle I would tell her every detail of the affair should he come while she was gone, but Dad said Frank would likely want to come himself and look things over first. In the meantime, all we could do was wait - and find a different job to do. I felt lost without wires to keep me busy, and lopsided without the electrical pouch on my toolbelt. As it turned out, Uncle Duane’s job of ducting needed help with Tuck taping a lot of poly, so I did that. Frank came the next day, pointed out one small thing to change across the board, and said the inspector would come next Wednesday. A whole week of suspense!
That was a wonderful week, in a way. I was doing a whole new job which I enjoyed, I got to talk with Isabelle a lot, seeing as we were doing the same thing, and Heath, Jireh, and Bowen also were nearby. We talked about books and poems and songs and movies, and practised saying that everything was done by Frank. If anyone asked a question like, “Who taped this Thermopan?” one or more person would always reply quickly, “Frank.” It became a buzzword.
Wednesday morning breakfast was a nervous, yet proud, affair. Uncle Duane kept talking about how we’d celebrate, Uncle Joel how we’d insulate. Isabelle came to the build with the first wave, deeming school too commonplace for such a day as this, and the cry of, “the Inspector’s here!” found us taping poly, Isabelle above the back bedroom and I in the MBR. She stepped through the rafters until she was standing near where I was, and we shared a tense glance. I tried to continue taping nonchalantly, but kept fumbling with my knife. Dad was the only other person in the whole big, silent house. It was too silent, too respectful. I tried to say some off-hand things, but the words stuck and my voice shook. We heard footsteps and a strange voice talked to Dad.
“This duct is blocking my view,” I said to Isabelle. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s in the garage, looking with a flashlight,” she said. We had to occupy ourselves somehow. Try as I might, I could only tape in that one place for so and so long. I climbed down the ladder to move it, but got right back up when he came into the house. My knees, at least, would not smile sheepishly at un-called-for moments. I realized I had a string of coins hanging on my toolbelt - the circles of metal that you pop off to get the wire into a box. I untied it with trembling fingers and tucked it into a pocket.
"Where is he?" I whispered.
"In the mudroom," was the reply. I somewhat envied Isabelle her position, but was glad only my lower half could be seen. The inspector was talking with Dad, and then we heard him say to himself, quite clearly,
"I dunno Frank, I dunno." Isabelle and I were transfixed, and shared a long, suffering look.
When he came into the MBR I managed to cut a piece of tape, but had nowhere to put it, and stood on my ladder awkwardly, my face inches from this big duct, sticking and unsticking the tape absently until we all of a sudden heard him say to Dad,
"Do you have Hydro in? - Ok, well we'll just make a phone call and I can hook you up today." What? Did he just say that? The two of us were stunned. That meant we passed! Grinning hugely, I stumbled down from the ladder and waited while Isabelle came down after me. Then we walked through the house, past the Utility Room where he was looking at the panel, and out to where the Uncles and Heath and Jireh were cleaning up outside - burning a whole whack of garbage. We told our news, and the Uncles were very pleased that he was authorized to hook it up, but we must not act too celebratorily.
At last he drove away, and I, looking at the panel cautiously, turned around to see Uncle Joel nearly attack my Dad in an outburst of congratulations. Isabelle and I embraced, and said,
"We did it, Dad/Uncle Getty." Once we had talked the whole thing over, laughing over the I dunno Frank and plugging in a light and cheering again, Isabelle and I drove to the house to get some "champagne" and tell the news. We did it.
Dec. 13th, 2017
I feel like the annoying teenage blogger who, every time they post, apologizes for not posting. But this is really disgraceful. I never even wrote about the end of Goertzenville here [in my diary], and yet it's all up on my blog.
It was a heartsick affair. The last day in that old house was awful in one sense and wonderful in another. The whole three months we were too busy and distracted to remember that although we were wanting and working for the new house to be finished, when it was it meant saying goodbye to the old house. Then us and the Goertzen Girls returned on Monday for the last time, and were hit like a brick with the fact that this was the very last time we'd arrive at Oma and Opa's house and be greeted in the entrance by Oma and giddy cousins.
Most of us spent most of the short week back at the house, packing. On Tuesday evening Mom was sick and Dad was watching her; most of the Goertzen Girls were at Bible study and the little kids were in bed. I wrote at the dining room table, Sophie read a book, Oma crossstiched and Heath paced. Forged in Fire wouldn't be on until eight, but he turned on the TV anyway, and Just for Laughs was on, so I laid down my pen and called Avril from the computer and we snorked and giggled over that for twenty minutes. Then F in F was on, and I picked out a guy to win from the start, and he came from behind, making twin battleaxes in half the time allotted - with strips of inlaid copper! - to win the competition. We laughed at me for being so excited, and Avril went to bed as Oma took a phone call. By what she said we could tell Uncle Joel was on the other end of the line. We discussed the conversation in half whispers, eager to know if they were able to come on the morrow. They didn't seem so. I made some pretty good jokes, and we were in late night hysterics, Heath and Sophie and I. The G. Boys could not come the next day, and we said a laughing goodnight.
It was to be the last evening in that house - relaxing and with furniture. I often remember that evening with a smile. I want to think of the house with couches and plants and the table and china cabinet; not all empty and bare as it became the next day.
On Wednesday Mercer came and all was busy and chaotic. Boxes were loaded, taped, labelled and carried out to the flatdeck. Uncle Jon and a friend came and brought out all the big stuff - chairs, couches, table, china cabinet, mattresses, boxsprings, cupboards, side tables and washer and dryer. Trip after trip was taken with the flatdeck and unloaded in the new garage. Lunch was eaten on the floor, and immediately after it Mercer came out with his gimbal and filmed the group of us cousins walking the G'ville sign from the old driveway to the new. It was a long, cold walk. Mercer brought everyone back in the car, but I stayed and decorated the outhouse with Christmas lights.
When I got back to the house it was quiet. The girls were all at volleyball. The last load was about to leave, and Sophie and I rode over on it, sitting in two big easy chairs facing backwards. As we were unloading it, the phone rang. I think all of us jumped. It sounding so strange, ringing in the cold inhospitable garage. I climbed quickly over boxes and piles of trim to reach it.
"Hello, Goertzen Residence," I answered, not able to keep the excited quiver out of my voice. It was Diane Naylor, Oma's good friend. She was almost as excited as I when I told her she'd called the new house. Sophie went back with the trailer, but I stayed again and helped Uncle Duane with the last of the duct work in the attic, climbing up and down the ladder to fetch stuff like a bucket in a well. Uncle Jon helped at the end too, and when we arrived at the house Mercer had already come back with the pizza. "Diane Naylor called," I said to Oma. "She says hi. And oh! girls - you should have seen Jeremy; no, not quite, he'll finish the sanding by tonight, though; he was up on his stilts and had a mask on, his pants were white, his shirt was white, his headphones were white, his eyes were red, his hair was white - you know how black it is - it was white." Uncle Jon brought him some pizza, and Uncle Duane told Oma to pay whatever he charged for that taping job.
We ate our pizza on the floor, our backs wishing for chairs, and after supper Mercer reluctantly took his leave.
The next day we cleaned and cleaned. In the morning us older girls took Acacia's music player and a Boney M CD over to the new house and swept the whole thing three times over. When we got back for lunch, we were white too. We cleaned hard all afternoon, but found ourselves brimming up over doorknobs and knew it would be harder to leave than we thought. The work slowed down and all of us - the Aunties cleaning wearily, the cousins dancing in the big open living room, the teenagers reminiscing and the Uncles coming back from the new house on the pretense of hauling one last load of boxes but really to be at the old house - had time to go from room to room, shedding tears and saying good-bye.
I found a sort of heroic misery in the whole process, but was exhausted and just wanted finality, and so was guiltily relieved when Mom and Aunty Syl decided to send everyone over to the new garage so they could mop. I brought Sonnet upstairs so I could at least know she’d looked out of the pink room window. When I came down again the entrance was full of cousins putting on outdoor stuff. Did I see a few red eyes? I’d been crying for a while now.
I put Sonnet in her carseat and grabbed the keys for Oma’s car. When I went out of Oma and Opa’s house for the last time I was carrying a carseat and Uncle Duane opened the door for me.
It was cold outside. When I came to the car the backseat was full of girls. As I handed them Sonnet I heard snuffling and realized they were all sobbing.
We cried as we drove away. Opa was not there to wave.
********
Two carloads of kids bustled into the new garage, still sniffing a little but laughing at ourselves for it. Opa was sitting in his easy chair in a corner, surrounded by tools and leftover building supplies. We did our best to keep everyone out of the newly-painted house, and to make the garage a nice place to eat supper. It was, in the end. We cried again as we sang before we ate, and when we said the dreaded goodbyes. And then we walked out that door, calling goodbye and pleased to see the outhouse glowing in the dark - and glad that we would have many occasions to come back and enjoy the work of our hands.