It’s cold outside this morning. The twenty degree temperatures last night left a coat of frost on our rooftop that looks like a light snow.

Yet today is the day the men showed up to put on our new roof. It sounds like a herd of angry reindeer up there, and my dog, Spanky, is a tad bit edgy.

Brrrrrr. I feel for them.

This day reminds me of the winter of 1973 when I was young and working for Lockard Construction Company out of Meridian, Mississippi. I had gone through the meager savings I’d been using to pay for college, so I had to drop out and find work. Back then it was fairly easy to pick up a construction job. The only qualifications was having a young body and be willing to work. Luckily, I had both.

That winter old man Lockard decided to remodel his father’s house. He assigned me to work with an older guy named Ernest. Ernest was a tad bit rough around the edges, to say the least. He cussed like sailor and reeked of liquor and stale cigarettes. If there was any grunt work to be done Ernest would look at me and say, “Hey kid. I gotta job for ya’.”

I didn’t mind. Was making a whopping $2.25 an hour. The most anyone had ever paid me.

We’d decked out the roof of an attached garage the previous day. When we arrived on the job the next day it was as cold as it is here in Kentucky today. A layer of frost an eighth inch thick blanketed that plywood decking. Ernest beat me to the job-site that morning and had a fire blazing in a burn barrel beside the garage. With his hands outstretched over the barrel he began to bark orders. We were to put shingles on the new roof. A ladder was already leaning against the steepest section of the building when he said in his gravely voice, “Hey kid, start hauling up the felt and staging it around the roof.”

I knew better than to argue. I looked up at all that frost covering the decking, shook my head, and grabbed a heavy roll of felt. Up the ladder I went. The edge of the roof was a good twelve feet from the ground. When I made it to the edge I hesitated, calculating the best way to transfer the felt from my shoulder onto the roof without dropping it.

Ernest, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, barked, “Well kid, you gonna make love to that ladder or start working?”

I tossed the roll up and began shoving it ahead of me towards the peak. My body was sprawled out over the frost, and my fingernails were digging in trying to get some traction.

I could feel Ernest’s eyes boring a hole into me as I inched my way upward. I kept thinking that if I could just make it to the top I’d be okay. The felt was nearly at the peak when it began to slide backwards toward me. Somehow I managed to deflect it as it zipped passed me.

From the ground I heard an audible, “Damnit.”

Cigarette smoke wafted upwards by my nose. I sneezed. My fingernails could no longer maintain the weight of my body. One by one they began to fail me, and I began my descent. The further I slid the faster I traveled.

From the ground I could hear Ernest. “Aw shit, Kid!”

Instinctively I tucked into a ball as I flew over the edge of the roof.

They say that your life passes before your eyes just before you die.

That’s a lie.

All I could see was a blurr as Ernest was running from of my path of flight.

I bounced a couple times before sprawling out on the ground. After I finally caught my breath, I stood and brushed myself off.

Ernest looked over at me and said, “I thought it was probably a little too frosty to get up up there this morning, Kid. You’re a good guinea pig. And you bounce pretty good, too.”

We didn’t attempt to get back onto the roof that day until the frost was gone.

So far I haven’t seen anyone slide off my roof this morning.

But the day is young, and Spanky is hopeful.

_______________
Rick Algood
December 15, 2020