art party

saturday night we had an art party at our house, our guests were two beautiful women from city of angels, heidi and ilene, staying at "the inn of the five graces" and, our chef was the great johnny vee with his helper katie. johny vee looks like a big blond viking and has the personality of an impressario. vee has a fantastic new cook book out called "cooking with johnny vee," resplendent with his smiling face on the cover. the theme of the evening was cooking dinner with two new mexcio artists, that's me and julie. i wore my black high top converse and ilene showed up in white ones so our feet were getting along famously. hieidi and ilene love to eat and explore restuarants both here and in LA, ironically they live in the farmers markets area of LA where juile and i just stayed for our infamous downtown art show. here's our menu, homemade corn tortillas, chile con queso, chunky guacamole, grilled salsa roja, pico de gallo, mexican lime chicken scallopine, calabacitas, and chocolate peanut tacos for the finale. we started off with wine from new mexico and johnny regaled us with stories of our local chiles and then we all set to cooking dinner together. i was on the hand made tortillas, corn masas mixed with mexican oregano, water and mixed up like a thick mud, rolled into a large ball and then put in a press and flattened into a thick tortilla and then roasted over a hot plate on the flame. i also sauteed the chicken in a pan with oil, first dipped in flour and then egg batter, and then put back in the pan in a lime juice and vermouth sauce. the girls made the rest and and then we had dinner and more wine and told stories of La and new mexico until the desert taxi came and got the guests. the food was great, the new friends had fun,the art sparkeled on the walls and the evening was altogether wonderful fun. just another santa fe tale.

first day of the season

it's an old ritual that i've repeated literally hundreds of times. loading up the truck with tools and gear and getting ready for the work to come. i have to sort out what i've got and make a mental list of what i need to get, sheetrock blades, drill bits, tips for the screwguns, extension cords, throw out stuff, locate my tools bags, knock off the dust, retape the hammers, some things are missing in action, drills bit are broken, chisels need the edge put back on them, my leather saw case is awol, but most of the stuff is there. it's hard to believe but i've done this for almost thirty years, that's a long time even for a passion and i am marveling today that i can still get up for the work, but it's been the constant in my life for a long time. i know i can't do it as well as i used to or as fast and quick, but i can still work hard and i guess when you scratch me, i bleed contstruction red. jgk

stones for wendy

it was late afternoon, twenty miles off the coast of maine, I was on the far windward side of peaks island, the sea was the deepest blue. the atlantic ocean lay in front of me, and i could see one solitary island off the horizon and then nothing but that blue sea meeting sky and clouds. i was taking stones off the beach to rebuild the foundation of a farm house i was working on and each stone had to be hand picked and sized to meet the criteria my patron wendy had determined. wendy stood on the road above me, a short stout woman balancing on her cane and as i held a stone over my head, she would remark "that's a good one," and i'd throw it into the growing good pile, or " not that one", and back into the sea. the stones had to be longish, somewhat flat and well formed at the ends so they could be not only lay flat but butted up to each other in a friendly and firm fashion. technically we weren't supposed to be taking stones from the beach but wendy was a native islander and it had been a common traditon and long practice to build walls and foundations out of stone. knowing this i was making some haste, yet i was enjoying the whole process greatly, reveling in the selection process and the variety of seemingly endless colored stones, tumbled to perfection by the sea. i stood there letting the sun warm my face, maine was cool even in the summer, the sea breezes blowing away flys and knats, making the island a paradise. i spent the summer in the middle of the island, out in a forest of tall pines in a large clearing, tearing apart shipping pallets, giant timbers nailed together with spikes that i pulled out using a hammer and bar until i'd freed them from each other and they lay there in the clearing, long black thick chunks of wood i would later manufacture into new beams and support members for the house. i could take a steel spike out at the rate of one an hour or so, very rough sledding. the spikes were roughly 3/4 of an inch wide and driven a good six inches or more into the beam, and all i had was a hammer and a steel bar, the trick was to get another piece of wood next to the spike as leverage and then pry and bend using all my strength, pulling the spike out bit by bit, until it came loose, the forest surrounding me, the day cool and wonderful, seemed to cheer me on. when i finally had all the wood i wanted, i used a old oil drum and rolled the beams onto the back of my little yellow toyota truck and lashed them on and drove them back to the house, down twisting dirt roads and quaint farm houses through the middle of the island until i arrived in the back yard with my catch.jgk

great white hunter

I was up on kansas street, portreo hill district, the sunniest side of san francisco, although the dense fog hung over the street until noon and then the winds came, blowing sheet rock and plywood off the house i was building. i had a debris chute build out over the side walk to a dumpster and mark and i were shoveling bricks and old lumber down the chute when the winds come up in a gust and blew the chute and mark who was standing on it into a telephone pole and scared the hell out of me, thinking mark was going to get fried but he jumped out and pissed m e off running to his truck to see if it was ok, and left me holding onto the end of the chute. we got everything righted after some pulling and moaning. i used to eat lunch down the street at a place called the jackdaw which had a little outside attriam, lattice with plants growing overhead, it was warm there and no infernal wind. birds lived in the attriam and i noticed there were a lot of parrots and exotic looking types and they would drop down out of the thicket and peck away at bread crumbs on the tables when people left. this one forelorn looking parrot guy would end up on the table next to me and i eventually suckered him over my table with some choice crumbs and ate my lunch while he ate his, always with one eye on me. we had lunch together for a couple of weeks when it came to me, how was the little guy going to make it through the winter? he'd gotten out of his warm nice cage and wasn't going back. i took my laborer Angel with me one day, armed with a paper bag and my flat tin construction box, just the right size i'd determined to cover the bread basket. here was the plan, i'd coax my feathered friend down with the usual crumb entre, angel remains still, birdy climbs in the basket, eye on me, i give the nod to angel and he slides, this is important, slides the flat can over the basket trapping birdy boy. we praticed this a number of times on the job site in preparation, me holding my hand out making angel slide the metal box over and over until he got it right. the biggest problem wasn't going to be the bird but angel, he just didn't believe in it, i know he thought i was crazy, but i was going to catch my man. we went to lunch, had some pasta, i bought angel a beer, relax i said it's going to work fine, and sure enough birdy boy saw the proverbial bread basket, lighted on the table, crawled in and ate his crumbs, a quick nod from me to angel, the shiny metal can slid into place and i had my capture, quickly transfering mr. bird into the paper bag which i punched some holes in with my fork and then i sat back and drank my beer. this all created a big fuss in the cafe, the waiters went and got the owner who came back with a long line of waiters and demanded i let the bird go, citing animal cruelty, freedom for the bird, etc, etc. i said the bird was mine and i'd caught him, he was going to a pet store and if anyone touched my paper bag there would be serious, i mean serious consequences. i loaded my bird up in my jeep and we sped into the city where i found an exotic bird emporium and when i showed the owner my catch he said, yep and austrailian so and so, never make it though the winter and i'll find it a good home. the jackdaw never would let me eat lunch again. right to refuse service, to a ruffian trapper the likes of me. jgk

the holy wars part two

they weren't all bad. there were plenty of good times with the desperados. a lot of easy going back and forth fun on the job site, it's just that the contradictions in their characters was so great, but that was part of the interesting and compelling side of the whole business. a good number of these guys were smart and talented and some were brave, as well as greedy, and crooked. not out and out thieves, just changing the contract a little here and there so the client would never know, overcharging whenever possible. they had a certain cruel, ignorant streak to them. how can ignorance and intelligence and bravery live side by side? they can and do. once in SF while working on a three story victorian i slipped off the roof and got tangled up in the gutter and Dax shimmied down and held on to the edge of the roof and grapped me and said "let go" and i did and for a moment I was in his hands totally, swinging over the cement side walk and then he literally pressed me over his head and back onto the roof. "Don't do that again," he said. we built that whole victorian house together, and he made all the hard decisions, and I had to respect that. you could find up a bond pretty quickly with someone after they saved your life, but you could never forget you were working with a caged tiger. maybe it was just his nature, and i really believed Dax wanted to be good but it was not his nature, he'd told so many lies he didn't know what to believe anymore. anyway the lies were a whole lot safer, it's what he knew. Dax was one of those guys who had his bible in his truck and would spend time reading it while i was working, he worked at that bible pretty hard and i think it was probably the only thing that kept him from being worse than he was. one of those contradictions again, he'd be reading his bible, i'd get in the truck, and he'd say something about the nxxxxxs all being ugly and then the next morning our black cement finisher big earl and he would be in Dax's truck talking up a storm like old friends. Dax loved big earl, they'd worked together for twenty years by then if not longer. earl told me in the old days Dax used to come to work everyday with a case of brown derby beer under his arm and work and drink all day, Dax calling it his fuel. Dax was also cheap, he wore those wino sneakers to work until his toes stuck out and he had the same worn red flannel shirt to match his hair for years, and he never bought anyone donuts or coffee, a coke, nada. big earl used to say he was having an elvis attack and Dax would let him slip out and get himself a dozen jelly donuts while waiting for the next cement truck. " eyes goota elvis attaaack coming on." big earl was witty,lazy, smart and a genious with the finishing trowel, he could make cement look like glass. Dax had a little book where he wrote down everyone's hours and time, if you were fifteen minutes late he docked you half an hour, if you worked a half an hour over it was on you. this was a fairly common practice in consruction. it was called the cost of doing business, Dax's way or the highway. no complaining, period about anything. even i wasn' immmune to his method. i had to watch my hours like a hawk, a couple of hours here and there from ten guys each day is twenty hours say at 20 dollars per hour thats 200 hundred dollars a day times four, is eight hundred a week savings, compound that over a year that's ten grand or so, and on and on. once we were building a coffee and tea house in SF and Dax came upon the idea to pay everyone twice a month to keep the payroll down he said, payment schedule and all. he missed a week to me and owed me 900 hundred dollars and swore he'd paid me, but the little black book didn't lie, there it was, but he drove off and thought i'd forget about it. come friday i drove to his house in the country, he had this big stucco wall around his place, and i breached it with an extension ladder and saw him in his kitchen having diner so i put the ladder right up to the window and climbed in just as he was shoving some mashed potatoes in his mouth and announced "you owe me 900 hundred dollars," and he says" you're breaking and entering, i'm going to have to shoot you and went off to a room and came back out with a cowboy hat on and a holster and a pistol and took it out and pointed it at me. He looked ridiculous standing there in his socks with the inevitable hole in his toe and i started to laugh, "ok " i said, " what are you going to do shoot me in front of your family? go write me a check you idiot," and he did and then just as i was climbing out the window, he says, " see you on monday, don't be late." contradictions, you learn to live with them. jgk.

garcia's

garcia's was a faux mexican restuarant down at four corner's in San Ramon where all the construction workers in the area used to go after work on fridays to eat from the free mexican buffett and drink. the action would get very animated as the night progressed and the drinking could get serious. lots of shouting, loud voices, postering, an air of unrepressed aggression would prevade. these guys would all be in their construction clothes and dirty but i would have changed and worn something like black jeans, boots, silk shirt. one hot summer night, I think something always happens on that turn of a phrase, a hot summer night, i was drinking to much with the koan brothers, matty and luke. matty had a degree in english and always had a novel in his back pocket, was an old eagle scout and a pretty damn good carpenter, with a hump back from some childhood disease that had curved him over just enough to make him pissed off at the rest of the world. he was clearly the leader and elder of the two brothers, luke the younger we called him, a big rawboned guy with tattoes and a false tooth that he took out and laid on the table when he was talking. he had the habit of waving the tooth around when he got mad shifting it from hand to hand, he was a big blond good looking kid, and mean as his brother. you can't blame drinking on anyone's bad behavior, these guys were mean before they started, nastiness just boiling just beneath the surface, they didn't need a reason to be mad, anything would do. we used to call them the riverboat gamblers, they had an old long buick lowrider they'd drive up to the job site and then unload their tools from the cavernous trunk, once i looked in there when they were getting their gear and saw a shotgun under a tarp. luke was also the boyfriend of Dax's daughter, so that's how we all knew each other. this particular night we were well into six beers and some whiskey chasers, when matty said they were part indian, maybe as an excuse why they weren't holding their liquor well or just pure postering, and luke regaling us about him being some great hunter up in oregon i think or northern california and how he lay in a blind all day waiting for just one shot, " just one shot that's all i need," and then the conversation switched over to god and religion and ole luke asks me, "do you believe in god?" "Sure" i said. he leans over with an absolutely gleefull look in his eyes, and lays right into it, the floodgates open, evil pouring out all over the drinks and the stale chips and watery salsa, right at me, proclaiming , " there is no god,i don't" and showing me a knife in his boot, " i can do anything i want and party as hard as i want like there's no tommorrow," and then matty seconds that and they were clearly trying to mess with me, intimidate, scare me for no other reason than pure meaness. It was the bitch theory, through and through. luke maybe pissed off because i was his foreman and a better carpenter than he was , petty rivalry theory, and matty pissed off about his hump which really didn't look all that bad, more like he had rounded shoulders. we'd all had to much to drink by then and mistakenly i went out in the parking lot with them. Matty asked me if i want to wrestle and said he'd been a high school wrestling champ, threatening me, maybe i'd back off and evil would win out tonite, but i said sure and took off my silk shirt and we went at it right there in the lot and after some fast action i got him upside down and pinned his head against the asphalt and he gave up. luke was snorting and spitting, couldn't wait to get at me, said he was a champion football player, and to avenge his brothers honor, how about getting down in a three point stance and going at it, a last man standing type deal and i said sure. I got down in my stance and i could see he was going to try run right threw me, and then i saw the knife sticking out of his boot, so when matty yelled "Go", i side steeped and luke went head first into a car door and the hard collision didn't knock him out, he just laid there for awhile, and then they wanted to fight but i said "i'm leaving," and got in my truck to go and I saw lukes tooth on the asphalt laying there white under the street lights and said, " hey Luke, you lost your tooth'" and drove off. another pet theory of mine in those days was the desperadoes who've lost faith in humanity, in life, seek out those who haven't and try to screw with them, to make themselves feel better, twisted I know, but I've seen it so many times out there. jgk

lets' get it over with

let's just get it over with, i'll line up all the fighting, wrestling stories i can remember. ok . there was my final row with my old partner Dax. let's get another thing straight, just because you were partners with someone doesn't mean you liked them or they liked you. you had something in common, that much is given otherwise you wouldn't be working together, but friendship that was a different story. Dax and i both wanted to make money, as fast and quickly as possible. Dax, he was a piece of work as my friend C used to say. to start off his appearance was rough on the visage. lots of missing teeth, bad tattoes of dancing girls on his arms, now faded by the sun and a scraggy red beard, a constant cigarette hanging on his lip, balancing there like a circus acrobat, and a glass eye that ozzed some white substance. big earl used to say, " that damn eye, he going to lose it, going to fall out i know it, right into the cee ment," but it never did, it stayed firmly in place and earl used to get all mixed up, swearing that Dax was looking at him out of the glass one. " I sure can't tell sometimes which eye is the dead one, i truly cain't, i swear he can see out of it, he's looking at me out of the glass one, see right through me. damn". with that one eye Dax could see a wall across the room one quarter of an inch out of plumb, he was that good. when we got to the end of the road Dax had by now tried to sue me when my father died thinking i'd inherited some money, had left me holding the bag on a contract for a job of ours that went bad, him not signing his signature on the contract, very clever, lieing about having a contractors liscense to god knows who and the whole world, lied again about having insurance, a bond, and being an engineer and my insurance company having to pay for damages on the job and among other things, lied about visiting his son in San Quenton, never having gone, and getting busted by his current wife, our secretary, with his ex wife crawling out from under his desk, whilest working on a bid and eventually losing his house on some mysterious deal to build a casino in Vegas on sacred indian burial ground which i forewarned him not to do, but him saying " if i don't do it someone else will". a piece of work. also a very smart guy, really, and intelligent, witty, even brilliant out in the field, vast experience, a better craftsman with one eye than most with two. dax was also a great talker, our clients liked and trusted him. he had a favorite saying that i came to love and mistrust, "well pisano" shortend to just "pie san." still all and all he had a sort of low down, feral charsima to him, and he really wore his amorality well, never deviating from it. he used to say i was weak, that i didn't have the killer instinct in me. his wife said he was jealous of me, because i was a believer in people and Dax had long since given up on the world and himself. "we all use each other," he used to say, condoning his own usary. we did a lot of jobs together, rode hard and traveled fast. Daxie boy was an old street fighter from Richmond a nice town he said, before the blacks moved in. I'd heard his stories about the beatings he'd laid on half the town, and how he'd never lost a fight and could have turned pro and sometimes after work we'd spar around, friendly on my part and he used to tell me i was slow. slow meaning I was weak. You've probably guessed Dax was a desperado, he loved money more than anything. when he got rich he was going to do this and that, cars, bikes, horses, planes. i heard he'd lost more than one fortune. he drank and when he did he was a mean ass drunk. we'd been through the mill by the end, his son, fresh out of San Quentin for robbery, and younger than than me was going to be his new partner and i was getting out. Dax was having a party and asked me to stop by and now i can see it was plainly a set up. when i got there he had a heat on, he couldn't hold his liquor anymore and after i had a few beers in the kitchen, and said "goodbye Daxie and good luck" and started to leave, he stepped in front of me and said, "well ya cain't leave until we settle it." "settle what ?" I asked. "you and me," right out of a western. "we got to settle it finally, who's the best," him talking loud drawing a crowd. " forget it," i said. "No." he says "right now", getting into a formal karate position. and that cold dead glass eye staring at me, i knew i wasn't getting out without something going down. right then i remembered something he'd said to me a hundred times before, that never in a fight had anyone ever touched his face, so i just leaned over and slugged him on the jaw and he went down in a heap and then struggled to his feet. " damn you i wasn't ready," and i laughed and said "this business is over" and walked out and him yelling after me, "i'm going to kill you, i'll kill you." right after that he lost his home I heard to the Mafia, but i don't know, Dax always wanted to play with the big boys. jgk

well son

i was 36 years old and i was my own contractor now, renovating some apartments in Concord and it was summer and hot as hades, and we were cutting out old rotten studs in a building, and replacing them with new ones and then resheeting the sides and then adding felt and lath and stucco over all this and then painting. it was hard work, old wood is like iron, just hell to cut through, it takes technique and a powerful saw and good blade and a good arm, along with patience. it's really back breaking, especially in the heat, and on a hot day in the summer, Concord was sweltering, maybe 105 with a high humidty. i had these three football players from Chico State working for me for the summer, really big guys, with the names of Samson, he went about 6 feet, 250 pounds and Andre the giant, even bigger at 6'3 ,260 and Tweeter more modest at 6 feet, 200 pounds. they were all of twenty years old and their girlfriends used to bring them lunch everyday and sashay around them, just to make sure the old man, me, wasn't abusing their heroes. i'm a shade under six feet and weight about 165, less i'm sure in that heat and my wife never ever brought me lunch. well one morning i was one side of an apartment building and Samson, he was their alpha dog, being the strongest and self proclaimed the meanest, and toughest, was on the other side and the other two were on another building, and we started knocking the stucco off with mallets and then cutting and pulling off the wire and nails and felt and then got to the task of the dry rot and pretty soon, i mean within a few hours i've worked my way on down to the end of my building and was framing in new studs and i went around to see how my boys were doing and they all were still within the first couple of feet of where they had started, sweating, and snorting, i said damn, and went and showed them how to cut through the studs, but they couldn't quite get the hang of it, and i said do the best you can and went back to work and by the end of the first day Tweeter had enough and quit with the excuse i wasn't paying him enough. the other two came back the next day and we struggled through the week. at the end of that first week those big old boys were tired, frustrated and pissed off. i had worked circles around them and they knew it and i was old and fresh, and skinny to boot and on top of it I was the boss. Samson remarked that men where afraid of him on the football field and just sort of fell down when they saw him running at them and i said "well that's not how it is out here," and I think this just pushed him right over the edge, so they challenged me to fight them both right there. i said that was impossible but i'd arm wrestle both of them on the hood of my truck and they couldn't wait to get to it and the girl friends were there by now, rubbing their men's backs, their boys would set the world right again, order would be restored. Their arms were bigger than my thighs, gleaming with sweat, their eyes piggy with hate and blood lust and i beat them both right handed and then gave them a chance left handed and whipped them again and we tried it again, them figuring it must have been a fluke and it having been impossible. the results were the same only worse, I pumped their arms like a water pump, now that they were as weak as those broken studs I'd torn out. I paid them for the week's work and thanked them both and Andre never did come back but Samson stayed and did well, he being stronger minded, better character, and curious. " how could you have done that to us?" he used to ask. "Magic" i'd say, kidding him, pointing to my bicep, "magic baby." he went back to school and I heard he did steroids and lifted massive weights to come back and try me the next summer and when he showed up he looked like a whale with arm the size of a Nissan. i figured there was no way i was messing with that, and never went there again. jgk

making those ole bones

you might get the wrong impression of me, thinking i was some sort of a thug beating up poor ole Mark, but it's just that for some reason some people just have a hard time with me, call it my presence i don't know, but especially in construction i just galvanized people. most people i got along with but there was always someone i pissed off to the point of them trying to do something about it. you could put it down to the bitch theory, that is the alpha dogs wanted everyone to line up behind them and be subordinate, to be their bitch, their follower, their yes man, yes mam. i just couldn't go for that. i am the cooperative type, i'll help you, you help me we'll get the work done, only that theory didn't always hold water, some guys, a lot of guys just couldn't deal with that, they wanted to control, dominate, for you to be less than them, to be their little man. I put it down to outright control through fear. the struggle for power always came up no matter how civil, how kind, how cooperative i was. one thing for sure, difference of any sort was not tolerated, it was considered a weakness and to be exploited. i swear more time was wasted on the sorting and ferreting out of power on the job site than actual work getting done. there was lots of arguing, everyone protecting themselves, the constant trying to get over on you. maybe it's a guy thing, i don't know, i thought it was stupid, god knows the work is hard enough, all i know is sooner or later some shit would come up, you could bow down and take it, run, or deal with it. you can say I was short sighted myself, i could have solved my problems with more sophistication, used powers of persuasion, explained myself clearly, tried getting along with peace and harmony, and i did all these, and more, but every once and a while, a desperado didn't give a shit about my sweet talking, kindly cooperative ways and just wanted to kick my ass. well son what are you going to do about that? jgk

making my bones

the hammer came crashing near my head a foot away, thudding against the wall, scaring the hell out of me and then this big ex marine came over and picked it up and swaggered back across the floor of the job site. this had been going on for a week and i was getting to the breaking point, and i was afraid of not only getting my ass kicked but losing my job. i went and saw the big boss and told him my problem and he told me " out here you settle your own, don't be bringing me your problems, " just after i told him that Mark didn't like me for some reason and that i hadn't done anything i could think of to piss him off. Mark just didn't like me and i was stuck with that and the flying hammer or i had to do something. i'd tried talking to Mark, a thick, muscular guy, shaved headed, a real jar head and none to b right, but the hammer just kept getting closer to my head on a regular basis. i was on a renovation crew at a VA hosptial as a common laborer but i was making more money than i ever had before , a whole 15 dollars an hour, benefits, sick leave, vacation pay and i wanted to keep my job. I had to keep my job, i had no where to go and i was working hard and doing well even though it was scut work tearing out black iron and plaster walls with a sawzall, and loading the debris in portable dumpsters and then off loading them in a big dumpster outside the hospital. a couple of days later the hammer bounced off a stud bay next to my head and before ole Mark could swagger over i ran over to him and grabbing him by the seat of his pants half dragging him, i launched him off the building, this from the second story. ole mark lay below in the dirt, crumpled on one side, and then I went and got his saw and his tools and threw them off too. the rest of the carpenters and laborers all had their mouths open, no one said a word. mark crawled off to hoots from the crew and told our boss some story and went to the hospital to have his arm put in a sling, but nothing ever happened except my stock on the crew went up, and i noticed everyone treated me differently. i thought i was done with Mark but he was hardheaded and after he came back to work, mopeing around trying to work with one good arm for weeks and then finally healing up, he kicked me from behind in the locker room and proceded to get yet another beating, this time driven into his locker. still not getting the message, he attacked me at the company picnic in the horseshoe pit and got pounded yet again, finally deciding he really liked me and we were the best of friends. strange, I never did learn why he disliked me so much. by this time i had unoffically pretty much taken over the whole engineering departments labor pool, now with ole Mark as a fast ally. you can never figure how things work out. i never ever went looking for trouble but i found out, if it came my way out there, i would be ready. I had problems later with Mark, and should have realized, people don't change. Mark could have been a good enough guy if someone could have kicked his butt everyday. jgk

easy money

the toothless wannabes were just a side show,contruction was all about the creativity to me, the chance to express myself three dimensionally. it's not really anymore than that. i got a chance to use a lot of my talents everyday and make money doing it. all that fresh air, working on my tan and getting paid for it. i looked like one of the gypsies, long hair kind of american dreads down to my shoulders, no shirt, cut off jeans and tennis shoes, socks by god, and some sort of talisman around my neck, beads, a tooth, a chunk of silver. call it the loin cloth years, i felt like a damn savage out there, a natural man in his natural environment. i've still got the assorted scars from not wearing shirts or pants, you can follow the trail of them from ankle to shoulder. my old partners used to ask me " don't you think you should put something on, we're going into a nice neighborhood." i never answered them and nothing more was said until the next time we went to a nice neighborhood, which was hardly ever. once we were in a wealthy upscale town in the East Bay and the partners were licking their lips thinking about all that money we were going to make, all those rich people just waiting to give us their work and their cash. I was tearing out dryrot at a newly married couple's home and i had cut a big hole in the bathroom floor and was cutting out some damaged beams below and it was summer and hot, the air wasn't moving down there and i was sweating like a pig so i decided to take my clothes off, you know to keep cool, so i'm working down below naked with only my shoes and tool bag on and i had to get some nails so i crawled to the hole i'd cut in the floor and stood up to refill when the new young bride walked in and saw me standing there naked and gave a scream, the doors slams and that was the end of the nice neighborhood and all that easy money. i sure did break my partners heart. but like i told them it was hotter than hell, what was i supposed to do, and anyway i had my shoes on. jgk

desperados

construction is filled with desperate men. desperate for money, running from personal problems, running away, and in my case running towards something. drunks, dopers, racists, wife beaters, psychos, liars, thiefs, born again christians, preachers, wetbacks, washouts who couldn't make it in the real world, pretenders, want a be's, the toothless. lots of these desperadoes are talented, intelligent as well as lazy, bullies, cheats and generally no one you would ever hang out with off the job. I never did. at the end of the day i'd climb in my truck and say "later", and drive off and shake my head, telling myself did you just see that, can you believe that? It was a rough and tumble world and an a easy one to navigate if you were big and strong and could take care of yourself or at least look like you could. it was never boring, you never knew what was going to happen, part of that being the nature of the work changed constantly, unforseen problems on the job site made it almost impossible to predict the days outcome. remarkably I found that the worst characters, the truly dispicable, the sleazy drunk, racist, wife beater, liar, cheat, was the best man for the job, the coolest head out there, the wise man. my ticket to respect in this world was my strong back and big heart. i could outwork three men, i made my bosses money and they knew it, i was a glimmer in their eye and maybe, just maybe I would end up being as bad as they were, although to hear them talk, they were virtous and god fearing men. A tell tale sign to watch out for was the inevitable bible in the truck. i'd seen it many times sitting on the front seat, a well worn book for effect, just after getting shorted twenty bucks for the week. if pressed why i was getting shorted they'd call it the cost of doing business. i'd call it thievery. that's how things went out there. on one hand it was thrilling, surrounded by all these pirates and wild men, at one point I named us the killer gypsys, yet beware, it could all turn on you in a moment over anything, politics, a bad hangover, someone coming down from a meth high and you'd have to fight or run. jgk

in the blood

the more i think about construction the more i realize how much it got into my blood, how it got way down inside of me so much it became my passion. and then it was something i had to do, and for the life of me i'd never ever have chosen this way of life. it must have chosen me, there's no other way to describe something that powerful, the all encompassing feeling that gradually took over me until i had to build, had to. needed to as much as i breathed. that's a funny thing to say, but it's true. construction was the one place where i knew who i was, where everything was absolute. you either did the work or you didn't. i loved everything about it, from my tools to my boots,flannel shirt, and my truck, work jacket, to my gloves, from my saw to my wrecking bars. i loved the fact that everything i saw, and could touch i'd paid for, working with my own hands. i loved being out there in the field, using my aggresion to raise walls and climbing and crawling and feeling tired but good because i'd worked hard all day and overcame so much. those feelings crept up on me, i always thought i'd do something else and then damn it was twenty years gone by and an ex wife and some scars and broken bones and i was still out there, where did time go? jgk

mad for tools

the first time i thought i wanted to be a builder was when i was at crown paint buying some painting supplies for a building i was working on and i looked in the back of this truck in the lot and saw all these tools neatly arranged in their cases and i said damn i've got to have those. i stood looking at them for so long the owner of the truck thought i was going to steal them, and i had to assure him i wasn't, i was only looking. i was getting sick of painting, god i hated cleaning brushes, sprayguns every day and getting paint all over my clothes and truck. i'm one of those guys who just can't keep the paint off myself. i am an always will b e an expressionist. anyway, one day i was that guy who had my truck filled with tools. i loved my tools so much i'd bring them in the house and put them in the dining room against the wall so i could eat my dinner and look at them, have a spoonful of carrots and then pick up my drill. my wife used to say i loved my tools more than i did her. i just loved them in a different way. some tools you have a special relationship with. the heart and soul of a carpenters rig is his saw. the worm drive skill saw, a big hefty hunk of steel that takes a strong arm and a keen eye to run along with some nerve. you're cutting wood all day and you and that saw became one, it's an extension of your arm. it's a damn fine thrill to use the saw, the blade whirring, chips and sawdust flying. the best saw i ever had was my first, a used skill saw i bought from some framers going out of business. i must have had that saw for ten years, replacing triggers and switches along the way. it just had this certain heft and feel to it, and it fit my hand like a big metal glove. i really loved that saw and should never have sold it, but i did when i went back to college, thinking i'd never do construction again. big mistake, never ever get rid of your tools, you'll use them in some way the rest of your life. i mean who are you going to hire to work on your house? yourself of course. jgk

the holy wars

i shouldn't ever overly glorify or romanticize contstruction, it was hard work. when i started i was clumsy with my saw, wasting a lot of good lumber, and my hammer and i were hardly friends and it took many poundings and bent nails, pulling them back out and starting over before i made any headway towards being a carpenter. whacking away at the nail, my buddy used to call me a girlie man, come on there girlie man you gonna let that nail get the best of you and he'd lean over from what he was doing and slam that 16 penny home like the pro he was. i was all fingers and fumble, slow and just getting my hammer out of my tool bag and back in was awkward, the handle getting stuck somewhere along the way hanging me up,and keeping the tools in the bag was a chore itself, pencils flew out and were lost, ground into the dirt, the tape measure was always trying to catch a ride in the wrong pouch, the damn framing square was always bouncing out and i'd have to crawl around in the dirt to find it, and then pretty soon i'd have too many tools in the bag and its hanging down my ass and what the hell, i've got a nail puller, dykes, three chisels, a screwdriver, a t- square, a bevel square, a 25 foot tape, a drywall knife and a pencil, and my hammer. damn, i needed an extra body just to carry my bags and then of course all the assorted nails and screws, which were all mixed up with the tools, flying out at the wrong time, oh shit i need a l6 penny not a finish nail and not a drywall screw either, and finally the hell with it and i'd dump the whole bag out in the dirt and start the sorting out process all over. the tools had to be the exact right one of course, they couldn't just be any brand. dig it, the nail puller had to a japanese niwatori, a long thin tool with a dragon's head, sharp, to really bite the wood and get at a nail and a long curved tail for hard to get at nail heads, a stanley tape measure that you could send out twenty feet and wouldnt' fold and so you could get a measurement alone instead of two men having to do it and waste time, a good heavy thick carpenters pencil, a retractable sheet rock knife and extra blades, and a buck brand chisel about 1 and a half inche wide and sharp, which it was only periodically, having hit too many nail heads and spent most of it's time asking me to sharpen it, and a hammer, your choice of weight, with a waffle head and the throat and butt taped with electrican's tape. the tape at the end gave your fingers something to hold onto and at the throat it kept nails from splitting the shaft of the wood. you had to climb ladders with this rig and through windows, kneel on floors and crawl under houses, constantly finding your spilled tools like they were lost children, swearing the whole time. jgk

where the bullet hits the bone

as soon as my hand slipped around the handle of that worm drive skill saw that was it. i was in love. all that power right at the end of my arm, it was my avenue for freedom, i could make money, express myself, i was a damn dancer climbing buildings i'd built, only i didn't know that then. not exactly. but later the saw and hammer became an extension of my whole self, my body an intstrument for self fullfilment, no it became more, the search for the grail, the best part of myself. half jokingly i called construction the holy wars. at first it was a practical thing, i needed to make money. but that thought never lasts in construction, it's to damn hard, it's back breaking, grueling, dirty, hot, sweaty and dangerous. make no bones about that, the saw will eat you, that high torque, all that horse power in about ten pounds, the saw will buck and wheeze and scream at you. i'd pin the guard of my saw back, an old framers trick, the idea being less drag on the guard, less time waiting for it to release, the more wood you can cut, the more money you can make. the only thing is it left the blade exposed, about four inches of solid razor sharp steel. it was a crazy macho thing to do, and i did it when i was young, you're standing there with that blade exposed, you're saying i'm bad, i'm not afraid, my sword is out, i'll run that saw within an eighth of an inch right next to my hand, i'm ready for anything, hell yes. one day on a remodel in Berkeley, i was cutting through a floor joist when my saw hit a nail and backed up the inside of my thigh, the spurt of blood hit my helper Mark and sent him screaming down the street, and after i tied off my leg i had to go and get him and damn he could'nt drive a stick and i had to drive and hold his hand, the blood pouring down into my boot, him sobbing i was going to die , and then i went and got myself sewed up to the tune of eighty stitches, and then back to the job. my saw lay where i'd thrown it, covered in my blood, one of those moments, and i picked it up and went back to work. hell there was two good hours left in the day. mark sat outside, sobbing and moaning like he was the one that had gotten cut. i took the nail out of the guard and let it down, you can't hold anything against the saw, it's only as good as the hand that guides it. i learned not to bully my saw, to listen to it, it's my friend, you've got to develope a relationship with it. i used to store my tools in my tool shop at night, laying in bed i could hear the saws talking to the screwguns, the chop saw talking to the table saw, they got lonely, i went out and talked to them, cleaned them, told them how great they were, admired the steel and plastic shapes, marveled that i could run them all, and for a long time, they were everything to me, with them i brought beauty into existance where there was none and running them some where along the line, i literally felt the harder i worked the better person it made me, the closer i got to myself. my tools took me there, and you can't tell me tools don't have a soul. my saw never bit me again. believe it. jgk

out of the subconscious

going back to the previous blog and my discussion with artist Z on my horse paintings and hers, i don't know how she got onto horses and i'm not exactly sure why i did, but here's a story. i must have been in my late twenties, post vietnam blues and everything that went with that, wanderings and the inability to see anything through, lots of wasted time, moving around like a gypsy. i ended up at my grandmothers place out in the desert near Phoenix with an old truck and not much else. grandma was special to me, later i'll tell you about our special relationship, but for now it was a place for me to go after so many bad starts and poor finishes, college lay like a mirage out in the desert and i had more units than the cactus i saw everyday, but no degree, and i'd tried every liberal arts major there was, art, dance, english, literature, creative writing, but nothing stuck, no direction. the desert was a homecoming for me, i'd grown up out here, near Scottsdale, and ran all across it's sands collecting horned toads and chasing rabbits, coyotes, and playing pirate in the canals, building my galleys out of old found lumber from the canals. and now i was back, a bit of a lost veteran syndrome, come home to grandma. she and i used to take drives out in the desert, she was so big and fat i used her old metal wash tub as a step to load her into the old blue ford, put my shoulder to her keister up we go and off, me, dark brown without a shirt and long black hair to my shoulders flying in the wind, a salute to my freedom, post service. grandma and i hardly ever spoke, but we had a deep and powerful connection, based on grandma's unconditional love that flowed from her to me and then back, in a rotating circle vibrating in the truck, we literally hummed along the desert floor, i wonder if even that old blue truck's wheels ever touched the road. grandma never dispensed advice, only love and food, homemade donuts brimming with powdered sugar, crepes stuffed with jam, chicken dumpling stew. lots of food, lots of love. the Black Canyon Freeway cut behind her little casita and one day buzzing along on it after a particulary fine day in the desert, we ran into some heavy traffic and loe, there ahead running wildly, rearing, bucking, snorting, was this huge white stallion in the fast lane, cars just missing running into it, there he was fifty yards in front of me. instinctively without thinking, i pulled onto the meridian and jammed the brakes, grandma you ok, and then ran out into the fast lane, cars now just missing me and calling to the horse, running towards him, calling Here come to me you'll be alright, you'll be alright. he stopped rearing and came right over to me and put his huge head on my shoulder and i put my arm around his neck and there we stood eye to eye for a full ten minutes, a centaur ,cars passing around us, but now i swear this is true, it was dead quiet where that horse and i stood, quiet and safe. i remember mostly his eye, big and white, like a whales eye, and there was something in it, something there, but there was no fear, there was recognition. after the cops came and the rancher took the stallion quietly away, after they barricaded off the road, grandma and i drove back to her casita. maybe something happened out there on the freeway, maybe grandma had something to do with it, maybe she set the whole event up, i'll never know, we never spoke of it and some time later i left and went north and got a job in construction and found something I could do and not run from. so maybe you could say that's why i paint horses. maybe you could say that.

show time

julie and i both had shows up this week, i was part of the daily painters of new mexcico show, a group that does small daily works. i helped install the show friday at our art space, address 1228 parkway, a combination loft gallery down in the industrial part of town. we bought a warehouse and revamped it, polished the concrete floors, installed walls, a kitchen, courtyard and overhead lighting and made ourselves a little jewel to host our own shows and shows for other artists. anyway, i worked all day hanging the show and that night there was an opening and a small crowd but some very interesting people as usual poppped up out of the woodworks. specifically one artist who said she painted horses just like i did only she did them in the eighties and that makes her before me because back then i was doing graffiti like street paintings, but we had a really fine talk about how our images worked themselves out of our subconscious and onto our canvas. i think she was astonished that we both worked in this way, letting the image announce itself instead of ordaining it. the more painters i talk to, the more common this idea becomes. you have to work with what shows up, i know i do. that and i have to keep the image fresh, and not try to over work it. Gaugin advised a friend, Don't polish too much, the subsequent hunting out of endless refinements only impairs the first draft; that is to let the incandescent lava grow old, to petrify your foaming blood. very poetic. saturday night we hung julie's colorful abstract works in Starbucks downtown on san francsico street, which may seem like an odd place for an art show but they have this beautiful 80 foot brick wall which shows julie's work off beautifully and the amount of people passing through there daily is much greater than any gallery in town. we're headed down there this week to celebrate her opening. jgk