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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Education And Manual Labor, Not An Educational Blog About Roofs

My Twelve year old son, who decided that education is only for adults, asked me tonight if you could still be married and have a bachelors degree. He proved my point. Education is consummate with your age. If you don't get one you might end up working for me on those hot, I mean, cold Texas roofs. If you have a fine education, you'll hire my services, no doubt, because you can detect a learned and continual self educating roofer versus the ex-con type who already knows it all.

That brings me to the twenty year old slate roof I climbed yesterday. The roof was falling apart, already had been patched numerous times, had only one layer of 30 lb. felt for underlayment, had galvanized valleys, galvanized step flashing, and galvanized nails. With the humidity and rain we have hear, the massive mineral content of the slate has washed out and started a war with the galvanized metals and is winning.

But, hey, he has a slate roof. And his beautiful crown molding is rotting, his deck is rotting, the sheet rock is damaged, and there are pieces of slate everythere.

No doubt the work of the convict roofer, who might have been able to elude capture up to this point. If I can pry the name I'll expose him, and if any of you doubt it, just stick around for part II, "Convict Roofers From Hell, The Destruction."

So, do you need an education? Boys and girls, it never stops, and if you think it does or you've had enough, one day they'll come pull you out from your desk and deliver you to me for re-education services. first we'll go to the conditioning camp, then heat/cold tolerance. We lose about 80% on the long march but the whistling is great while we build the bridge.

During my four year sentence to post high school, I served my time in the gulag learning to quote Aristotle, Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau, Marx (Groucho,of course) and Monty Python. Even a little Robert Marley, who many of you who only know him as a musician named Bob. I sweated, suffered, and laid the groundwork for future precancerous cells only to emerge from my cocoon to be a moth, damit, but a good one at that. Yet in the last chapters of my life I do not suffer, I do not toil, but I send others to our own purgatory to suffer for you.

One of the advantages I have is I'm one of the few native English speakers, and my Spanish is much better than all but about six gringos I've ever met, that has actually bleed repeatedly on a roof and understand what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how to get 'er done without running the horses into the ground.

If your having trouble explaining what an education means to your progeny, send them to me and they'll see that one summer can be an eternity. But be careful, they might like it like I did. The part they also need to remember is that our moving parts wear out and spares are not easy to come by. Roofing is grueling, hard labor, best done by young men under the supervision of physicists and mathematicians. Even an occasional philosopher or two might find their way in to the conversation also.

Roofs are up there, heavy, nailed down, dirty, moldy, stinky, hot or cold, and that is just the tear off part. The loading, nailing down, cleaning up, and the physical and mental challenges of never forgetting that a few feet away is a precipice or structurally insufficient part awaiting a foot or knee will always be part of the job.

Somebody buy the guy a coke. I bet there's not a dry eye in the house.
Go finish that bachelor's degree and get a wife... I mean life.

Happy Valentine's Day from you favorite roofer.
Felicidades en el día del Amor y la Amistad,
Avete un giorno felice San Valentino

And for our friends in Egypt who are struggling to have what we as Americans take for granted :

لديك الأحبة يوم سعيد
 Of course I used Google Translator.


Jon Alan Wright
Jon Wright Roofing, Siding, and Windows
1915 Peters Rd., Suite 310
Irving, TX 75061
972.251.1818 Office
214.718.3748 Cell
972.554.8090 Fax
Master Elite Roofer: (Scroll to the bottom)

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