A Roof Over Our Heads, Part 1

For the past month, our humble building society has been faced with the problem of how to roof this house. The typical Hawaiian house is covered with corrugated metal roofing panels, usually painted red or green, and Dan wanted to go this route, as they are relatively inexpensive and stand up to the near-daily rain. He is also planning to include several clear polycarbonate or fiberglass panels within the roof, to act as skylights. The problem is that metal roofing is quite expensive, at least for our tastes. Covering the 26’ x 23’ roof would be as as much as all the other material costs combined, and quite simply, the paycheck-to-paycheck financing plan we’re operating on just won’t cover it. I priced out all of the new metal roofing options on the island, and the best I could find was around $4.75 per linear foot.

The linear foot is a strange measurement. It means that no matter how wide an object is, it refers simply to a foot of length. The panels I found ranged from 24 to 37 inches in width, which is quite a difference, and made it challenging to figure out what exactly you would get for your money, and depending on the length of the panels, hard to calculate how many linear feet we needed. If a panel is 26’ long, we’d need 26 lf per strip, but because a foot of overlap is needed on each panel, if you have two panels, you suddenly need 30 lf, and if you have three, 32 lf. Either way, it appeared we needed about 300 lf, give or take, and it was clear that we couldn’t afford new roofing. So I embarked on an all-points search of this island, looking for used or secondhand roofing. Theoretically when people replace their roof, they often keep the old one in their backyard, so there should be a lot of metal roofing panels sitting around the island.

The first roofing I arranged to buy, after a couple weeks of looking, was from a guy named Ernest, who’d posted on craigslist that he had some 470 linear feet of metal roofing panels in various colors and lengths. He was asking $3 a lf, or best offer. After some questions and answers, and checking with Dan, I made him an offer of $2 for all of his Sand Green roofing (222 lf). He was very friendly, and after a moment of pondering, he accepted my offer, and even offered to deliver it for an extra $30 (no small feat given 15 miles, a heavy load, and four miles of dirt and gravel). Suffice it to say I was feeling pretty good about my wheeling and dealing. We left it that I would talk to my brother and find out if we wanted it delivered, or whether we’d come pick it up, and call him the next morning. In hindsight, I should have recognized the beauty and simplicity of this offer, and closed the deal right there. If Dan didn’t want to pay the thirty bucks delivery, I would have covered it. But I didn’t.

That night, Dan talked to a friend named Red who also needed metal roofing panels (the heavy rains necessitate replacing your roofing every so often, it seems like half the people I meet out here are building some kind of structure, and everyone is struggling with the economy, so used roofing is in high demand). They came up with the idea to offer $1.50 per lf for the whole batch (470 lf) and split it up. I didn’t like this idea, having already agreed on a deal with Ernest, so I told Dan that if he had to he should make this offer himself. The second of many mistakes in this whole mixed-up episode.

In the morning, when we were supposed to arrange for delivery or pickup, Dan calls Ernest and makes the new offer. Ernest needs to think about it, and says he will get back to us. This is the weekend (see previous blog entry Progress is Slow and Rafters Go Up) that both of Dan’s trucks were broke down, so we attended to truck repair with the help of Keko. Meanwhile, Ernest doesn’t call us back. After a couple hours, we eventually get him on the line. He says that “everything changed” when Dan made his new offer and that he’s sold the whole batch of roofing to someone else. “But we’d agreed on a deal,” I protested, but he only repeated that everything had changed. I was crushed. After two weeks of looking, we were back to the drawing board. I wrote Ernest a scathing email (highlights include: I just want you to know that I could hear in your voice on the phone that you know you didn't treat us right”) concerning the ethics of his business practices, and sulked for half a day.

The second roofing I arranged to buy came about two and a half weeks later. I had posted a wanted ad on craigslist, and a woman named Mina responded to my second posting. I called her and she said she had a lot of used metal roofing panels in her yard, and she would sell them for $1 a linear foot. I put Keawe the dog (spelling corrected from earlier entries: Kiave) in the truck and drove over to her place in the late morning. She was sitting in a golf cart at the end of her driveway waiting for me, a hapa (Hawaiian for mixed race, usually asian/caucasian, literally: half) woman in her early thirties, lively and salty, full of restless energy and unrelated comments. She noticed my cigarette, and said, “Oh, you smoke! Can I have one? I haven’t been to the store today, and I’m just sittin’ here scratching my fingers wishing for a cigarette. “ I gave her one and liked her immediately. Maybe in spite of her oddness, maybe because of it.

She showed me her corrugated roofing panels. They were at the bottom of a stack of about fifty of a different kind of panels, the squarish industrial kind. From what I could see, they were definitely quite used, and had a little bit of rust here and there. But at this point I wasn’t going to be a chooser. I took out a measuring tape, and found that the panels were split between 16 and 18 feet lengths. It looked to be about forty of them. Mina kept pointing out there wasn’t much rust on them, not many pukas (holes), even though we couldn’t really see the panels much at all under half the stack.

An older man, John, came up to us wearing a leather hat and galoshes. I figured this was Mina’s boss, as there seemed to be some kind of business operation going on. He had the leathery skin of someone who has worked most of their life outside, and the resigned manner of someone who’s been disappointed more times than he could remember. I noticed then that there were four huge dilapidated fiberglass buildings on the back of the lot. He introduced himself, said that he had hauled these panels off a friend’s property, and that he was actually trying to raise money to re-roof his greenhouses. I asked if they were growing things in there (not wanting to ask what it was if it happened to be illegal). He said they were trying to.

I explained to them that I was very interested in their roofing panels, but I’d need to come back with my brother later that day to look at them. Possibly another mistake, but due to the wear and tear, I needed Dan to say they would work. John said that if I was definitely going to come back, he’d get his forklift and move the stack on top so we could get a good look at them. Very good. I said we’d definitely be back.

That night around six thirty Dan and I pulled back up to their house. I’d told Dan that I’d set him up as the decider and that I had a feeling they really just wanted to get something for these panels that had obviously been sitting out for a long time. Mina and John were both out in the yard, Mina watering her garden and John tinkering with some things in his shed. We got out and I introduced Dan and we inspected the panels. There was some rust at the edges, and they had seen some years, but for the most part they were solid. The fact that they were stacked roughly, with some edges not visible, made it really difficult to determine how much roofing was actually there. Mina tried a few times to count, but kept coming up with different numbers. “Sixteen at Eighteen Feet, Eighteen at Sixteen Feet, no Twenty at Eighteen Feet times Eighteen at Sixteen Feet…” She got out a pencil and did some rough math on the side of a cardboard box, all the while saying different numbers. Dan just kept staring at the panels and not saying anything. “I think that means we have, roughly, very roughly, 450 feet. No, that’s not right.”

A little girl, obviously Mina’s daughter, about eight years old and as cute as can be, came out into the yard, carrying a little gray and brown tabby kitten. She came up to me and said “my name’s Mika. This is my cat. He’s Japanese.” I thought this was funny and asked if he spoke the language. She smiled after saying very matter of fact that he didn’t. I decided to leave this whole roofing matter to Dan and hang out with the little girl. “Do you want to see me throw a rock?” “Sure,” I said. She put the cat down, wound up and threw a laser into the woods. “Wow. You got a good arm. You should play baseball or softball.” “I do,” she said, and threw another rock way off into the dusk, “baseball and softball and football and soccer, but my favorite is golf.” This girl was amazing. “I play golf on Monday and Thursday. Monday at 3:30 and Thursday at 5. Right mom?” Her mom was ignoring her and tending to her tomato plants. “Mom? Mom!”

Mina told Mika to leave us alone, and when she did I told Dan that we shouldn’t bother counting up and measuring all the panels, he should just make them an offer for the whole stack and that they’d probably take it. And if they didn’t, then we could go through all the measuring and pick the best panels. Dan nodded and thought this over. We stood there with our arms crossed, looking at the pile of roofing, covered in faded red paint.

After awhile, when Mina was tending to some plants in a raised, waist-high planter, and Mika had come back and was pointing out various things to me: the first Christmas tree from way before she’d been born, now a tall pine above the palms, her little stuffed animal puppy; Dan said “I’ll give you three hundred for the stack, that’s what I got, and if not, then we can look through…” he trailed off. Mina looked at him and thought for a second. “Hold on,” she said and went to go talk to John, who I’d figured out was her partner when she called him “baby” despite his being some thirty or so years older.

She came back with the hint of a smile. “It’s gonna cost you some cigarettes.” We gave her four. “Odd number’s better than even.” We offered one more, and she happily collected them and laid them out on a table nearby. “The stack is yours.” I gave her the money and we’d done it: about forty panels for $300 and five cigarettes. Now we just had to figure out how to get them out of there. Each panel wasn’t so heavy, but the whole pile would have some serious weight to it. “Think your truck can handle it?” Mina asked, looking at Dan’s beat-up 1981 Datsun that would have been perfect in "Beyond Thunderdome". We thought it could, put on some work gloves and started dragging panels over, and laying them so that part of each panel extended above the cab and off the tailgate. When we’d got about half of them up on the truck, John came over and was messing around at things in the shed next to us.

Feeling more comfortable with them, I asked what he was growing in the greenhouses. “Wedding flowers” he said, adding the latin species name. “Only commercial supplier on the island.” “For weddings on the island, or do you ship them?” “We do both, but most people on the island don’t really want to pay. We ship ‘em to California, Japan, lotsa places."

I asked how long flowers stay fresh, and he told us about packing flowers on ice, even freeze-drying them. We kept dragging and stacking panels on top of the truck while John told us about his business, which was struggling. He didn’t know how he was going to re-roof his greenhouses. The clear panels were so old that they weren’t letting enough sun in, so he was using artificial lights at night. Mina came over and put her hands on her hips and looked at the truck. “I hope you got lots of straps to tie that down” she said. “I got one,” Dan said, “but it’s a heavy strap and they shouldn’t go anywhere.” She looked skeptical and wandered off.

“But I think this is about the end for the gentlemen farmer,” John said, continuing his talk. “I don’t know. Seems like it’s all going the way of big box stores and corporate farms.” I agreed. “It’s like that all over the country.” “Yup. Everything automated, plant feed in the irrigation and cycles of light and special biotech seeds. I don’t know if I had the chance if I’d do all that. It’s the end of an era either way. ” He thought for a moment. “Shit, who am I kidding. Of course I’d do it.”

He kept talking while we loaded panels, in a worn down tone, about starting out in Texas forty years ago. It was a sad story out of Chekhov, an old man seeing his way of life disappear. We had the panels all on top, a giant stack, and the truck was sitting a little bit lower. Mina walked up again as Dan was tightening his cargo strap around the middle. “If you hit a bump, the whole thing’s just gonna slide off,” she warned. No one seemed to believe her, and she took her wisdom elsewhere. “Take back roads,” she said, and called Mika to come inside for dinner.

We tightened the load down as best we could, and we all took a turn trying to dislodge the panels. “They’re not going anywhere,” I said. We shook John’s hand, wishing him good luck, and drove off just as the dusk was turning to black. I wanted to say goodbye to Mina and Mika, but they’d gone inside to make dinner. I realized that I liked them a lot, that they were unusual, direct and funny people. I liked John, too, with his sad stories and aw shucks manners. I said that to Dan and he agreed. “He’s got a lively young wife.” “Yup, full of ideas,” I said.

We took Mina’s advice as far as the back roads. The truck was struggling under the weight, and we could feel the suspension pushing up into the rusted out floorboards when we’d hit a bump. From their farm to Dan’s home site was about twenty miles, but an elevation gain of over a thousand feet. We were cutting through the countryside most of the way, to avoid backing up traffic on the main road, but we’d have to take it for the last part, up the mountain. The truck was roaring and coughing and sputtering and crawling it’s way up the little hills at twenty miles an hour, and I was wondering if we should have made two trips. Dan asked me if I could feel the struts coming through the floor, and seemed worried. I noticed we were almost on empty, too. He saw me looking at the dashboard. “Yeah, I hope we don’t run out of gas.”

Just before we got to the highway, where we’d have to drive straight up a mountain, I said sarcastically “now this is going to get really fun,” and not ten seconds later, as Dan gassed it up to get over the last rise to meet the highway, we heard a terrible lurching sound and the scraping of every single panel sliding off the truck behind us. Dan cursed and yelled. We jumped out. The whole forty panel stack had slid off, just like Mina had said. A couple cars were right behind us. One guy stopped and asked if we needed help, and we said we did but didn’t really know what to do. The stack was too heavy to lift altogether, and we had to place the bottom ones on first. “Reverse into it,” the guy told Dan. “We’ll stand on it so it doesn’t slide.”

I didn’t know about this idea but we tried it. Stood on the end of the panels on the ground while Dan reversed towards us, trying to surf the boards as they scraped on the asphalt and rose a little on the truck bed, but it wasn’t going to work. We were blocking the intersection. Cars were starting to line up in the dark. Some people were angry. I went out to the road and directed traffic in and out while Dan tried to figure out what to do. The main thing was to just get the pile out of the road. The first good Samaritan had left when his reversing plan failed, but another guy had stopped, a friendly young black guy named Khalil who runs a coffee wholesale business. He took over the traffic directing, while I conferred with Dan. There was no way to get the whole stack straight back up, so we pulled them all off and threw them in a rough pile on the roadside. A couple cars were tired of waiting, went for it, and met head on in the one free lane. A big Hawaiian guy was yelling at the other car, and got out looking for a fight. This was getting crazy. Luckily, Khalil calmed him down and the other car let them through.

After we pulled all the panels off, Dan was able to move the truck out of the road, which calmed things down a lot. We realized that there was no way we were gonna haul all of it in one load, and Khalil helped us stack half the panels on the truck again. We debated whether we could leave the rest of the roofing here. I was pretty sure we shouldn’t, and offered to stay there while Dan drove the truck the six or seven miles up to the home site and unloaded. It shouldn’t take much more than an hour. I grabbed my book out of the truck as there was an orange streetlight at the corner, and sat down on top of the stack by the side of the road.

And there I was alone, with the roofing I’d found. I didn’t mind sitting there- it was a nice night, clear sky with stars. I read a little bit of my book, A Separate Reality, and enjoyed imagining what the cars going by thought I must be doing. Nobody stopped, some time went by, and then my cell phone rang. It was Dan.

“I ran out of gas.” I started laughing. It was just hilarious how this night was going. He didn’t seem to think it was funny. “Are the panels still on there?” “Yeah.” I couldn’t help but keep laughing. He said Keko was going to drive down with some gas. I told him I’d just be sitting there, and that I hoped he could enjoy the humor of our futility. He didn’t sound like he could so much. I kept on reading my book. Every so often I’d notice a weird flash of light in the distance, just on the periphery of my vision. The air was still and thick, and had a little edge of sulphur. It was a bit of Vog, or smog blowing from the volcano. The east side of Hawai’i doesn’t normally get much volcanic fumes, but a big tropical storm had just blown by a few days before and the weather was different. The wind was blowing from the southwest, where the caldera is. I didn’t really mind it.

After an hour I got a little restless and uncomfortable sitting on the corrugated metal. I had to pee, but was in bright light on a fairly busy road. When there didn’t seem to be any cars coming, I ducked into some wild ginger bushes and was about to pee when a white car stopped. Shit. Two big guys with shaved heads walked up to the stack. They were like gangster teddy bears. I emerged from the bushes, and they were very surprised to see me. “You took off the roof from ya house?” One guy asked in a really strong pidgeon accent. I could barely understand him. “No, we bought this and were hauling it up to Mountain View when the load fell off. So I’m just waiting for the next run.” They looked at each other. “So you no have extra?” I told them we didn’t and they looked at each other again, looked at me, and then sorta shrugged and left. As soon as I had left the stack, someone had stopped to take it. I didn’t blame them. It looked like a free pile of metal someone had dumped on the side of the road.

So I sat down again, didn’t feel like reading anymore. I picked up some rocks and played a little game trying to land them in between the yellow lines. It was challenging. The moon was rising off to the east, a crooked yellow wedge. I got up and threw some rocks at telephone poles and road signs, and watched the cars go by. No one else stopped.

After two hours, almost exactly from when he’d left me there, Dan pulled back up. He said that the stack had slid again on the bumpy dirt road up to his place, that they were dragging on the ground by the time he got there, but they’d stayed on, though a couple of them got bent up. We loaded up the panels I’d been sitting on, and strapped them down so tight that the edges curved in. “How’re you doing?” he asked as we crawled up the hill. “The first hour was fine but the second hour got kinda slow.” I was really hungry by this time, almost eleven at night, but we were way out in the country and nothing was still open. “I just barely made it to Mountain View for gas before they closed,” he said.

We passed the place he’d run out of gas, and kept on roaring up the hill. When we turned off the road there was a great view of the moon and the countryside. The flat bottom edge of the moon was at about a 45 degree angle to the horizon, and it was the color of a hard-boiled egg yolk. “It’s a bad one,” Dan said. “Bad moon rising.” “Really?” I asked. “Looks like it.” It did look rather eerie, askew as it was. We crawled our way up the four miles of dirt road, stopping several times to make sure the load wasn’t slipping, and got up to Dan’s land around midnight. Up here at this elevation, closer to the volcano, the Vog was much worse, and even more was blowing in. The air had a thickness you could see in the headlights, was palpably smoother, and smelled like smoke and hot springs. It was actually hard to breathe.

Now we had forty or so roofing panels to move in the dark. Dan had just dumped the first load off the truck, so it was blocking the driveway, which is really a smattering of rocks sitting in black mud. I was wearing flip-flops, or slippers as the Hawaiians call them. After a couple of loads, my feet were covered in mud, and I was sliding all around the sharp rocks, and my slippers felt like the straps were about to rip out. Dan told me to stop. “You’re just gonna break your slippers.” I wanted to help but after another couple trips sliding and oozing I gave up, stood by the truck, watched, and tried to offer moral support. At one point the wind died down, and a big pocket of volcanic air just sat over us. Dan was working hard, and short of breath, coughing. “You should take a breather,” I said, no pun intended. He panted for a second. “How often does this happen up here?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he said walking away. “The wind usually comes from the east, about 95% of the time.”

At around 1 am he’d finished stacking the panels, and we turned to head home. The truck was happy to drive without it’s burden, and we couldn’t feel the suspension coming through the floor anymore. The moon was still askew, but had changed from dull yellow to silvery white. “Well, you got you a lot of roofing,” I said. “Enough to do your house and shop and covered porch. That’s some crazy karma we got into. I don’t know what we did, but…” In trying to locate the source I thought through everything that had happened that day, all the people we’d met in random situations, all the weird omens, and knew right then that this night was going to have to be a blog entry of its own. I told Dan. “Make us look Gonzo,” he said. “Or completely incompetent,” I countered. “Both.”

I’ve never been so happy to eat dinner at 7-11 as I was that night when we got back down to Kurtistown. Granted the 7-11 fare in Hawai’i is quite different from the mainland. To demonstrate the difference, I got a breakfast bento, from under a heat lamp, which contained scrambled eggs, rice, green onions, spam, sausage and potatoes. I also got a Tuna roll. Sushi from 7-11? That’s Hawai’i. As I walked in the lady at the counter immediately commented on my filthy bare feet caked in dirt. “Been playing in mud?” she asked, shaking her head.