The house, 40-some years ago

We live in an old house in an old town that was never, by anyone’s estimation, rich. We don’t have fancy Victorians; we have functional homes — err, sort of.

Our house was originally a one-story L-shaped frame house. At some point not too long after the initial construction, the L was squared out. Then, shortly after WWI, a second story was added. The stairs to the second floor cross the downstairs bathroom window. Out back was a little mother-in-law house made of narrow-gauge railroad ties set one atop another. If you look closely in the picture, you can see a grape arbor and a fountain made (long before our time) entirely out of ancestral Puebloan artifacts.

The inside walls are lath and horsehair plaster over wallpaper over cheesecloth over 2x12 planks straight from the local sawmill, laid horizontally. Behind that are 2x4 studs, inexplicably set the flat way — although some of the interior walls seem to have small round trees instead of studs. Working outward, behind the studs are more rough-sawn 2x12s, and then lap siding. 

In the late 1930s, someone decided (and wisely so) that plastering the inside and stuccoing the outside would make the home more airtight and reduce the fire danger. Instead of painting, the stucco was repeatedly whitewashed. I have, in my recipe box, a recipe for whitewash in the handwriting of the 100-year-old woman from whom we bought the house.

The relevance of all that is that, in 2009, we needed some stucco patched.

Stucco is fashionable in the Southwest, but that's high-tech stucco. Nobody wants to do it the old-fashioned way (for good reason; it's hard work), and I needed an old-fashioned patch. Everybody wants to do new construction, which was fine until the economy slumped. There hasn’t been a building permit pulled in our county since last September, but no matter how many contractors I called, I couldn’t find one desperate enough to do a $500 patch job above my recently reshingled porch roofs.  My husband and I were reconciled to learning how to do it ourselves.

Then, in the way such things often happen in communities like this one, a guy named Dale Betsuie called me to ask if I still needed stucco work done. He’d received my phone number from a guy who owns the lath business in our town, who’d received it from a contractor friend, who’d received it from another contractor I’d called. At least I think that’s the way the story goes; it’s possible my cell number is scribbled on a bathroom wall at the lumber yard, but that’s ok. I really, really needed stucco. Dale has done a wonderful job, and after I saw how well the first patches were looking, I asked him to do some work around a few windows and near the foundation. He’s great; all he wants is cash (also the way of it here), an extension cord and a garden hose.  My dog loves him.

Which brings us to this week. Both my brothers have been visiting to “help” — wow, is that a euphemism! — make some hard decisions about our parents. One brother brought his wife and son. An uncle called to say he was passing through. An old high-school friend e-mailed to say her little sister was bringing her daughter and a friend to an archaeology field school in the area; could they stay with us?  

Yesterday evening, I was working in the kitchen, my husband was still at work, Dale was on the back-porch roof, and my brother was grilling in the back yard. He phoned me up, cell to cell, to ask, “Do you know your construction worker?”

I said, “Sure; his name’s Dale. Nice guy, and really talented. Why?”

“I’m afraid he’s going to jump me,” said my brother.

Dale is Navajo. He is not talkative when he’s working, although we’ve sat in the shade of the front porch drinking iced tea and laughing uproariously together during his breaks. He doesn’t wear a suit and tie to do stucco work. While the work itself is meticulous, so much so that I’m amazed at how he managed not to splatter even a drop of concrete anywhere on the house, by the end of the day his clothing and skin are not. Imagine that.

The brother in question is a career military officer who has spent many years in the South. He has opinions I do not share. (My parents do share them, which is one reason I am considered a really bad daughter.) They ignore the fact that some of my children are not white, because they've learned that regardless of how nasty they get about it, we're not giving the children away.

Dale isn’t dumb. Jumping 12 feet off a porch roof onto a guy armed with barbecue tools, both knife and fork, would be exceedingly dumb, and toward what end? He might get away with a steak, but he knew I was going to feed him one anyway. He’d have to leave several hundred dollars worth of power tools and a lot of scaffolding, and the odds of getting paid would be greatly reduced.

All that to take a whack at a skinny, middle-aged white guy? Doesn’t seem likely, even if Dale were so inclined, but he's Native, so I guess my brother didn't expect him to act logically.

I called my brother into the house and said, “Look, whatever your issue is, Dale’s not part of it. Behave or else.”

“But he can see in your windows,” my brother protested. Yeah, so can anyone who comes in the gate and up to the door. If anyone wanted in, it wouldn’t take much of an elbow to break one of those 100-year-old windows (or even the newer double-paned energy efficient windows on the south side) and come right on in. Nobody ever has, and before anyone tries, he or she should check the door first, because it’ll probably be open.

“He doesn’t have to see in the windows,” I said. “He comes in to use the bathroom.” 

My brother blanched. For the rest of the evening, he went across the street to use my parents’ bathroom.

The extra family departed this morning. Dale is still here. I’m happy with that arrangement. Good effing grief.