Today is my father's 60th birthday.
Two days ago, after I had said goodbye to Jenn for her Christmastime visit, my dad put me to work. Over the past year he's been contracted by the Old Orchard Beach Police Dept. to install surveillance cameras on the beachfront, which link up via wireless to their main office. One of the radio transmitters was malfunctioning, so he asked me to help him replace it. This particular transmitter happens to be mounted on the roof of the recently completed Grand Victorian Hotel.
Lugging an aluminum ladder, a toolkit, and a $1500 replacement radio between the two of us, we took the elevator to the fifth floor (the easy part), then climbed up into the crawlspace leading to the roof. This is no flat roof of course (nuts to those who design buildings in New England with flat roofs), so what we were crawling around in was the roof's A-frame, a network of timbers and steel running every which way. Running warp and weft across the bottom were steel beams elevated about a foot above a cushion of fiberglass insulation. Meaning, we had to take two-foot steps from girder to girder so that we would not fall. Add to this a sprinkler main we had to avoid bumping...except we had to step over it at waist height, instead of benignly hanging in the corner. Then came the trickiest bit: climbing a 15' high four-rung (!) ladder to a loose plywood platform just below the crawlspace to the cupola. After you get up to said platform, you have to stand up on it, then prove your arms' strength as you hoist yourself up through the hole, with your legs dangling beneath until you got them up and over. Strength aside, people with short legs need not apply to my dad's line of work.
I feel like I'm failing to articulate the complexity of the whole structure; but in any case, believe me: it was tough going. And then once the radio was replaced, I had to do it all over again in reverse. My dad, though? He wanted to test the radio on the ground to make sure it was working, so he went through these monkey bars four times. So ask yourself: how many sixty-year-olds do I know who could pull off that feat?
And this is why I'm proud of my dad. Proud with a pride that was always latent but never explicit until this moment, as I experienced first hand how he earns his keep these days. Happy Birthday to him.
Lugging an aluminum ladder, a toolkit, and a $1500 replacement radio between the two of us, we took the elevator to the fifth floor (the easy part), then climbed up into the crawlspace leading to the roof. This is no flat roof of course (nuts to those who design buildings in New England with flat roofs), so what we were crawling around in was the roof's A-frame, a network of timbers and steel running every which way. Running warp and weft across the bottom were steel beams elevated about a foot above a cushion of fiberglass insulation. Meaning, we had to take two-foot steps from girder to girder so that we would not fall. Add to this a sprinkler main we had to avoid bumping...except we had to step over it at waist height, instead of benignly hanging in the corner. Then came the trickiest bit: climbing a 15' high four-rung (!) ladder to a loose plywood platform just below the crawlspace to the cupola. After you get up to said platform, you have to stand up on it, then prove your arms' strength as you hoist yourself up through the hole, with your legs dangling beneath until you got them up and over. Strength aside, people with short legs need not apply to my dad's line of work.
I feel like I'm failing to articulate the complexity of the whole structure; but in any case, believe me: it was tough going. And then once the radio was replaced, I had to do it all over again in reverse. My dad, though? He wanted to test the radio on the ground to make sure it was working, so he went through these monkey bars four times. So ask yourself: how many sixty-year-olds do I know who could pull off that feat?
And this is why I'm proud of my dad. Proud with a pride that was always latent but never explicit until this moment, as I experienced first hand how he earns his keep these days. Happy Birthday to him.