Whoa! Didja get the numbers off that truck?!?

October 15, 2001 - 11:03 p.m.

Plastics

Plastics. They form the basis for the leaks in my roof which have taken new journeys in gravity.

I peeled off most of the old roof today. I have a new Wonder Bar, best five bucks I ever spent. My old Wonder Bar has served me well through ten years and several de-construction projects. There�s something satisfying and urgent about the sound of a well placed hammer blow against the sturdy Wonder Bar working against whatever is in it�s way. �Get the hell out of my way,� the Bar says. �If you�re not part off the solution you must be part of the problem.� Brute force personified. Many wrongs can be made right with the Wonder Bar and a big hammer. It�s like my other de-constructing friend the Reciprocating Saw. Less elegant perhaps but no less intimidating.

But the new and improved Wonder Bar that I bought yesterday has turned that brute force into a diving board of sorts. The old Wonder bar could cut a mean �get out of the way mother effer� path. The new Wonder bar is forged of the same no-nonsense stuff but with a built in fulcrum point. You drive this bar into whatever you want to remove and then push down, hard. It�s a hellish and purposeful heat treated Teeter Totter and it wedges whatever up pronto. I was getting underneath roofing nails and popping them out. They would fly up three or four feet in the air. If they were sentient beings they would be saying �what the fuck just happened? I�ve been embedded here for fifteen years and now I�m a projectile?�

I worked until noon, liberating the old roofing material from it�s bounds and making things fly until the sky looked the most threatening. I re-applied the plastic, bonding it with narrow strips of plywood this time, more wind resistant. I knew the rain would come.

It did at sunset. A gentle steady rain this time, none of the gully washing heavy rains we saw on Saturday. Those downpours were rare and intense, the kind that are so strong they wipe out TV signals beamed from distant Space Vehicles.

Plastic applied to semi-renovated roofs are less than perfect, alas. I think the water found its way through my duct taped seam. But I can put up with one more night of drips and buckets knowing that this winter�s snow load will stay outside, instead of melting in and saying hello in January.

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