Some serious downtime at RCS...

... so what happened... Vickie? Steve?....

Wish I could remember the thread I tried to start a few days ago. :(

Oh yeah, it was a thread about how everyone must be too busy to post, then I discovered you couldn't post.

:)

Glad it's fixed. RCS might have to go on that list of things I couldn't live without.

Since Egg mentioned pride and humility, please indulge me as I post a bit from my father's life story about my maternal grandfather. He was a courageous man that despite being struck with polio and having metal braces on his legs and needing a cane to limp around, had a beautiful farm in the sometimes brutal climate of Teton Valley, Idaho.

I title this "Humility".

Late one night in January or 1954, Pauline and I received a call from her aunt at the hospital. Pauline's cousin Donald had died in a car accident. Before he passed away, the family had been called together. Pauline's parents had come in from Bates to the hospital. They were instructed to call when they made it back home because of a terrible ground blizzard that evening. When they hadn't called in an hour's time, Pauline's aunt called to see if we would follow up on them.

I started out by car, but had to turn back at the railroad tracks because the road was impassable. I went back and saddled up a horse and rode out to Bates. I found them in their car, stuck in a drift. They were huddled in their car, not wanting to run the engine for fear of fumes. I teased them about stopping to "spark" on the way home and worrying everyone.

I told them I would go and hitch up their team of horses and come back for them. Lawrence told me I would have to go and just hook up two horses, as he didn't have a team. Being an old horseman, he felt a team had to be the same size, color, etc. He wanted me to know he didn't have a team, even in his frozen condition, he wouldn't allow anyone to assume he had more then he really did.

After I drove them to the front of the house, Lawrence did something that let me know he was truly frozen. He just walked into the house and didn't help put away the horses. That was so completely out of character for him to not finish a project that he deemed his own.

I like to call it moving with wisdom, lefty. Wait is that vanity? you r right on with your post egg. This is the best, life, work that comes in enormous demand and people that have faith in the ability of a total rebel, in my younger years, it just feels good, thank you GOD.

Egg,

The time will come from having made so many mistakes over the years, that we do not fall into the holes.

The time will also come from moving slower.

Very eloquent post there, EGG. Lots to think about for a roofers site. I think I followed most of it....when you said vanity, that had nothing to do with bathroom sinks, right?

You are too kind, Mike, but I thank you for that. I guess pride and humility are always joined somehow at the hip. Doing the best we can and not pretending to any more than that is probably both of them joined as whole. Don't know about anybody else, but right at the moment the best i can do is grit my teeth and try to get through it.

Be proud, thee Sage, you've earned it.

:)

This was going to be mine, just to stir the pot:

Vanity

From the pocket journal of my great, great grandfather, plasterer, wood-cutter, and farmer in 1870, North Vernon, Indiana, noted in the tiny margin after the death of his infant daughter "aged eight months and twelve dayes" ..."Ecle 9.9"

(Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun.)

144 years later...

Infamous too busy-ness after four decades of busy. All the carefully prepared jobs breaking loose from their moorings and trying to land on the same day, the same week, never-changing vicissitudes (ups and downs) of the roofing life. Making it happen. Keeping it all straight. Keeping all the balls in the air, keeping everything flowing. Pulling off miracles and trying to make it appear that everything lands securely where it ought to, floating light as a feather, pretty as a plume. It's show-time in the high season. Making it go. Hot, dirty, exhausting, but when you do it right, you succeed in making it look easy even when it isn't. It's the unspoken rule & what they expect of us all.

Same old summertime plunge, here we go again...one more time..."vanity sayeth the preacher, all is vanity" And where the time to service fresh calls is going to come from I have absolutely no idea.