"Caulk the Bastard, Doug:" A Remembrance of Larry Haun

The Great PD was taking the subway to work Friday and he opened up the New York Times and ran into this photo. He texted his dad right away -- it was a feature on Larry Haun, once a neighbor of the Plotnik family in Stiletto City, and a brief and world-class mentor of Plotnik himself.

Larry was what philosophers want to be when they tire of talking and want to go build something. He was the carpenter of carpenters and the curmudgeon of curmudgeons, plus he was the only artist Plotnik ever saw whose instrument was the sledgehammer. Read this and then you can read the story below about him, written by West Coast Housing Correspondent Douglas Qué.

Link to NYT feature on Larry Haun.

"Caulk the Bastard, Doug," by Douglas Qué

In the early nineties, my wife Barbara and I were developing a small sideline business where we would buy houses, renovate them and re-sell them. True, it was the wrong business for two people who love houses – you cannot survive in that world unless you buy low and renovate cheap and you cannot renovate cheap if you love houses.

But this was the nineties, and any house you bought today would supposedly appreciate tomorrow, as long as you made it look nice.

There was an old, tiny and decrepit cottage down Lakeshore hill. A very old lady lived in that house. You would occasionally see her in her housedress and slippers, puttering around the miniscule front lawn inside her falling-over white picket fence, where she grew enormous heirloom roses and camellias. The roses were taller than the house itself, which looked like a witch’s cute little storage shed.

One day, a sign went up on the front door that the house would be available for bids at probate court. We didn’t know what had happened to the old lady, but we had just finished one house and were looking for another, so we went downtown, started the bidding at $90,000, crept up by thousand dollar increments until we got to the last bid I was going to make: $107,000. I waited for the bidder standing behind me to make one more bid -- but he didn’t. The house, which you had to purchase before ever being allowed inside, now belonged to us.

When we finally got the key and walked inside we found decades of rot, piles of hoarded garbage, rooms too small to imagine living in and a foundation that seemed to be crumbling.

What to do? I knew that Larry Haun had moved a few years ago, and now lived right on top of this hill, so on a whim I drove up, knocked on Larry's door and asked if he’d like a job renovating a house within walking distance. To my amazement, Larry agreed. He asked if I would be working alongside him and I said yes.

“Do you have the slightest idea what you’re doing?” he asked.

“I’ve renovated houses before,” I said. “I can follow directions.”

Larry stared at me.

“So, no,” I said.

Larry was around sixty, tall, thin, wiry, with very long arms and huge hands. He was a vegetarian and hinted at being a Buddhist. But he didn't act like a Buddhist.

“Shee-it," he said. "But all right. Just stay out of my way. Here’s what you do. First, call John. Here’s his number. He’ll be our structural engineer. Get him to draw you up some plans and then you go down to the city and pull the permits. When you’re all done with that call me and we’ll get cracking.”

“I don’t need a more detailed design?” I asked.

“Shee-it," Larry said. "You’ve got me.”

For the next three months Larry did one kind of magic or another, but I remember the first day the best.

Larry and I stood outside the little house. I was wearing jeans and a work shirt and had a nice nail belt strapped to my waist, packed with tools -- a hammer, nails, screws, gloves, clamps, tape measure, spirit level. Larry wore old overalls and carried a sledgehammer. We (Larry) realized we (Larry) had to tear down a jerry-built porch on one side and put up a straight corner post for a new sitting room. That post would have to be perfect, straight, plumb and sturdy. The rest of the room would be built around it.

Larry grabbed his sledgehammer and started swinging at that old porch. He didn’t swing a sledgehammer like a Buddhist. The sledge pumped around and around, up and down. Boards splintered and fell. Rafters hit the ground. Support members were knocked ten feet away. Within twenty minutes the building was on the ground and I was cleaning it up. Now the hard part began.

Imagine, if you can: A six by six by ten post weighs 80 pounds. You’re holding it in one hand, which is a feat all by itself. In your other hand is your three foot sledgehammer, which probably weighs another fifteen pounds. You have to somehow use that sledgehammer, in your one hand, to drive that post, in your other hand, two feet into the ground and have it end up perfectly plumb: straight up and down. There is nothing to measure against, except what you are seeing in your own head.

Also, the place you have to start pounding is ten feet high and you're looking up at it.

I went to help Larry pick up the post but he waved me away. He grabbed it and held it up, looked at the existing house six feet away, looked down at the ground, looked at the house again, then drew an x on the dirt with his foot. He pointed the post into the dirt, and with his other hand reached up as high as he could and started pounding the post into the dirt with his sledgehammer He managed to get enough force on that sledgehammer that the post disappeared a few inches with every stroke.

You may have no idea how impossible this is to do. You are holding an eighty pound post with one hand, and your other hand is extended straight up in the air, holding a sledgehammer that is also pointed straight up in the air. At the top of the sledgehammer is the top of the post. You have to somehow develop enough strength to pound the head of the hammer onto the top of the post. Most other humans cannot do things like this. Maybe Buddhists can.

I could have held the post for him: no. He could have climbed up on a ladder: no. He could have used plumb bobs and levels to make sure it was level: no.

Within half an hour he had pounded that post two feet into the ground. I could not have done it in a year. He then put down his sledgehammer, sweat dripping onto his t-shirt. I offered him a paper towel: no. He pulled a bandana out of the pocket of his overalls and wiped his forehead, then picked up an eight foot long two by four and a power saw.

He stared at me, then at the power saw, then back at me. Aha! I ran over and plugged it in. Finally! Useful!

He eyeballed the distance from the post to the side of the existing house, pursed his lips for a few seconds then brought the wood level with one hand and with a loud whirr of the power saw sawed two feet off with the other.

OSHA doesn’t even have a category for how dangerous this is. Anyone else would cut their dick off at the very least if not slice their entire body in two. Larry then held the two by four against the house, far over his head, and pounded it into the post he had just inserted in the earth, with several nails that he grabbed from a different overall pocket and held in his mouth until he needed them, then, still holding one end of the two by four walked over to the house and attached the beam to a cleat he then pounded into the rafter.

Don't worry if you don't understand the names for the lumber pieces. Here's all you have to know: you CAN’T pound a two by four into a free standing post with one hand. Every time you pound the nail into the cross piece, the post will move. If nobody is holding the post you will never get the nails into it because by the time you get done the post will have been uprooted and will be sitting on the ground.

...unless you can pound in that three inch long sixteen penny nail with ONE mammoth stroke of the hammer, two at most. By the time the post is ready to come loose it has been tricked: it is already attached.

I walked over to hold the post: no. Larry looked at me with sorrow in his eyes. BANG. Done.

Two more two by fours, all cut off in in midair without measuring, in exactly the right place, and attached in the same John Henry Swung a Mighty Hammer style, and the top of the new room was now outlined. It would had to be perfectly level because a new roof would be going on top of it, but, of course, Larry measured nothing.

What I had done, so far, was to stand in one spot with my mouth wide open, plug in the power saw and bring him a few two by fours. And learn.

Five more two-bys and three four-bys later, the framing of the outside of the new room was finished. It had taken Larry an hour and a half to do all that, using nothing but a power saw, a sledgehammer and a nail hammer.

“I’m done for the day,” he said, got in his old pickup truck and drove home. "Caulk the bastard, Doug," he called as he left.

I waved good-bye, immediately took my levels and plumb bobs and tapes and measured all the boards, which were of course cut straight and attached perfectly level.

When he came to work the next morning I asked him what he meant by "caulk the bastard," and he explained that the number one enemy of every piece of construction is water. If you allow water in it will eventually rot the wood.

"Ever been to the Grand Canyon?" he said.

At that point I hadn't. That would wait until the Trip with the Randy Teenagers when BZWZ was sixteen.

"Well, it's a giant canyon with a river at the bottom. How did that river get down there?"

"Erosion?" I said.

"Right. And water will erode this house a lot faster than the Grand Canyon. So every place one piece of wood is attached to another piece of wood you cover it with caulk. Spread it on thick. We'll sand it and paint over it later.

"You mean I should caulk the bastard."

He had a big smile and I saw it then.

Larry Haun, I have thought of you so many times. I have your book and your video where you build a whole house with your brother and show us how to do it. I remember how much you liked country music and hated politicians. I don't know if you'd be a Tea Party-er or an Occupy-er. Probably neither one.

Every time I have built something since then I caulk the bastard, Larry, and I always remember you when I do it.

When Larry was done with the foundation, Barb and I stayed and finished the place. A solid year of every-day labor later, we had a brand new, lovely little cottage, which we managed to sell, if I remember correctly, for $153,000. Not a lot of profit for all that work, but it was worth every hour.

The young woman who bought it is still there. I promise you no water is getting in.

__________

(Eric or Risa, if you read this: write me.)