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As we celebrate this greatest of American holidays, we set aside our differences and rejoice in the things we all treasure: life, liberty and freedom from leaks.
When Lincoln warned of "a house divided against itself," he could have been describing my dome house, which was 15 years overdue for a new roof. It leaked around the chimney. It leaked around the skylights. It leaked around the whole-house fan we hadn't used for years.
It doesn't leak anymore. My roof is finished,
Heavy summer rains of the past few days have tested it, and it passed with flying colors.
Can it have been only seven months since I started working on it? The time has just flown by.
It was only last September that my wife Honey spoke those inspirational words to me: "If you don't get the roof fixed I'm leaving you."
It was no idle threat. She had already set a date for moving in with a sister.
Honey had been trying to get me to fix the roof for years. She wanted to get rid of the worn, stained carpet in our living room and the cracked tile in our kitchen. She wanted new flooring. She wanted not to have pieces of drywall fall from the ceiling, or for the kitchen counter not to flood every time it rained. She wanted the bedroom cabinets not to mold, and not to have to cover her dresser with towels when it rained. She wanted not to throw away more books in the basement library, her books, as it happened, when water in a front wall cascaded across the foundation sill plate and ruined them.
She didn't particularly object to the flying squirrels who had lived in the roof of the large dormer for many years, and who sometimes mistakenly came inside and glided around the house until our cats, who had grown accustomed to chasing "flying mice," caught and ate them, but they were a symptom of the leaky roof, too.
She wanted the house to be nice again, and it couldn't be, so long as the roof leaked.
"Hire a contractor. I don't care what it costs," she said.
"No roofing contractor in his right mind would take this job," I argued. "It's my roof. I put it on 40 years ago. I'll fix it."
At times, I can be just as stubborn as she is.
The family was united in its opinion that at age 72 I had no business working on a roof, especially one as difficult as on our geodesic dome home. But I felt good, I felt strong, I believed I could do it, and I did.
Son Seed was good to help when I needed a second hand. A friend, Rex the Magnificent, lent a nail gun and roof jacks. I borrowed back a portable compressor I had given to General Doc. But 99 percent of it, I did myself.
Working from scaffolding and my large assortment of ladders, accumulated over the years despite Honey's ban on buying any more ladders from yard sales and auctions, I tore off the old roof, replaced rotted plywood and framing, installed new underlayment and replaced shingles and rolled roofing incrementally. That meant I had to jerry-rig a patch each time rain was suspected. When rain came unexpectedly, I worked in the rain, sometimes in the dark with a headlamp. I worked with shingles that were melting in the hot sun, and shingles that I had to bring in and thaw out by the woodstove.
I put on 24 square of shingles, meaning 2400 square feet, which means I took off and threw down 24 square of old shingles and felt paper. This asphaltic debris accumulated in alluvial fans around the foundation, smothering and killing some of the ferns and perennial flowers Honey had carefully planted over the years. She complained, but not as much as she could have. Shark, Seed, Honey and the grandsons all worked hard on the monumental job of picking up and bagging the old roofing.
Two of the seven months were consumed by taking off, planing, treating with linseed oil and re-installing the cedar siding, which looks more beautiful than it did when I put it up 40 years ago.
I joke about it, but know I was very fortunate to get the job done without killing myself.
On this day, July 3, 2023, the Miller clan will gather in our 174-year-old barn to celebrate the new roof, along with the freedoms that our country's forebears and armed forces bought with their faith, their genius, their courage and their blood.
I almost forgot: Honey and I will also be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary. But today's mostly about the roof.
(Fred Miller's third book of stories, "A Dead Carp on Shadyside Ave." is $10 and available locally at Calcutta Giant Eagle, Pottery City Antique Mall, Museum of Ceramics, Frank's Pastries, Davis Bros. pharmacies, Connie's Kitchen restaurant, and the Old Ft. Steuben gift shop.)