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The Joys of Roofing
It was a hot August afternoon, maybe 90 degrees, and humid. I was part of a roofing crew working on the Oberlin College Field House, which had what we called a whale backed roof. That means the roof was rounded rather than straight. The building was large and the roof made almost a half circle. Picture a dog house with a barrel cut in half lengthwise and used as a roof. Now take that doghouse and make it 1000 times bigger.
The roof was so steep on the sides that it was impossible to walk down to the edges. Flattened out I suppose it would have been 300 feet across and over 400 feet long, all in all, slighty bigger than two football fields.
My job that day was to seal the gutters and flash the edges of the roof. (Flash the edges means using a sticky black paste to cover a strip of fiber which is bent over the edge of the roof and pasted into place.)
Now, since it was impossible to walk to the edge of the roof to do this I had to rig a safety harness. I drove a big I-bolt into the center roof beam and looped a rope with a belt seat through the top of the spike I looped the rope through twice and then, by letting out the rope, I was able to back down the roof to the edge, which was about 60 feet above the ground. It was maybe another 60 feet to the top of the roof.
Actually it was kind of fun to do this since I could swing out and move along the roof and stand almost parallel to the ground. I had a five pound can of paste, a roll of fiber, a trowel, and a roofing knife. I’d taken my shirt off and, for a while at least, was not too unhappy.
Then, as I moved along the roof edge, my foot kicked a wasp’s nest in the gutter. A big wasp’s nest. With lots of wasps. A couple of them came out and tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. Now, a wasp tapping you on the shoulder does get your attention, very quickly. I found that, while I’d needed the rope to get down the roof, I didn’t need it at all to get back up the roof. I may still hold the record for the screaming roof climb. However, the wasps were not done with me. Several of them followed me up the roof, spurring me on with an occasional tap on my back.
When I got to the top of the roof at least five or six wasps were still with me. I took off running down the top of the roof, but they kept up. Now, did you ever see a dog run and forget he was leashed? I had quite forgotten that I was still tied to the roof. 60 feet of rope gave me time to reach full speed, and then I stopped, or rather my hips and stomach stopped. The rest of me kind of folded over the rope. My forehead almost broke my kneecap, I cut my ankle with my trowel, and my roofing knife cut my hip and left arm. I bounced and rolled back down the roof and ended up hanging right next to the wasp’s nest where I’d started. Fortunately the wasps were all up at the top of the roof saying things like “Where did he go?’ and “He just vanished into thin air.”
I became aware the other roofers were coming to get me, but they were also laughing so hard they could hardly get down to me. They did take me to the hospital, but for the next five years those guys would sometimes look at me and start to laugh. They told every other roofer in the union hall and I had to tell my story over and over again.
Final score, I had six wasp stings, I needed two stitches for my hip, two more for my arm, and a stitch clamp for my ankle. I also had a large bruise on my right hip and the right side of my stomach and a lot of cuts and scrapes from my roll back down the roof.
Even 20 years later, long after I’d stopped roofing, I’d meet a roofer and he would snicker and ask if I remembered that day in Oberlin. In fact, most of them later claimed to have been there, even though there were only four in my crew that day.
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Don't look back, something might be gaining.
Last edited by Prof : 03-29-2008 at 01:04 PM.
Reason: correcting typo
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