FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 90

With the congregation gathered around, Doocy was prepared to go on. A preacher isn’t going to quit preaching while he has every last soul’s full attention, so there would’ve been no end in sight for Doocy’s pontificating had his sermon mercifully not had an unexpected interruption, if any interruption from Red could be coined as merciful. That’s how far the world had rotated off its axis that summer.

“DOOCY, WHAT-IN-THE-WORLD IS THIS?”

Red had jumped out of Charlie’s truck, ambled up past all the McClain’s with a tip of his cap, and was standing at the headlights of Pee Wee’s truck bewildered by the scene.

“Oh, jus’ checkin’ the tire there, bossman, thought it had done gone low,” Doocy lied, jumping down real fast and looking at the tire.

The art of diversion was another gift of the Cool Breeze that was rare and unprecedented, giving him even more qualifications in the political arena. Red assured him and every living soul within a square mile that the tire was fine and that he was pretty sure that we weren’t going to be able to lay any brick down here at the bottom of this “red-dirt hill” and that everybody’s paycheck’s liable to have a picture of everybody standing in and around this truck on it and not have a number on it if he didn’t hear that mixer cranked up in less than a minute. As fast as everybody jumped into gear, including the McClains, I think that mixer was running within a minute. Pee Wee zoomed up that hill blowing smoke up to the top of the pine trees, and Doocy bailed out of the bed of the truck before it ever came to a stop, me right behind him, and he grabbed the rope with one hand and pointed out what I needed to be doing with the other, and the show began – a different show, but a show nonetheless.

The crew was split that morning. Pee Wee and Red continued working on the outside of the fireplace in the back, while Charlie worked on the face of the fireplace inside and, eventually, the hearth. Building the fireplace took both parts of the crew working together. Several days before, Charlie had built the firebox – where you use a fireproof brick called a “fire brick” and lay it with “fire clay” for the mortar. Once he finished the firebox, he built the hardest part of the fireplace – the throat – that works its way back to the outside of the house., That’s the part that makes the fireplace “draw,” otherwise smoke will go back into the house and drive every last soul out into the yard coughing and hacking. That has happened plenty of times when bricklayers weren’t skilled like Charlie.

After a certain point, the bricklayers would begin setting the flu’s up, then build around them. They would stack brick all around the flu, which would go all the way to the tip top, some thirty or so feet up from ground level and some six feet above the roof. One of the ways the bricklayers made money was by the brick inside the fireplace, because they got paid by the thousand, and there were a couple of thousand brick inside that fireplace all in all. As the chimney extends upward, you’d have the flu’s in the center, the brick stacked solid around the flu’s up to the outside brick veneer.

Watching that process, I saw why you see brick fireplaces standing alone all over the Southern countryside, long after a house has burned or been torn down. Some things are built so strong that they can withstand storm or rain. A house may fall while a chimney still stands tall and strong as a bulwark.

Part of my job that morning was working with Charlie on the inside. The floors were still unfinished, just concrete – the hardwood floors would not go in until after the brickwork was complete – and we would push the wheelbarrows and flatbeds up ramps from the front steps into the house.

Being on the inside that morning had its advantages, especially being out of the hot sun a good bit of the time, but there were disadvantages, too. It was easier to bring mud to Pee Wee and Red by the stairs just to the south of the fireplace on the west wall. Supplying Charlie with materials was easy, because his work still was slower.

But hauling bucket after bucket of mud up the stairs to the second floor, then handing it out of the window to Willum or Hook was one of the hardest jobs of the summer. A bucket of mud weighed as much as sixty or seventy pounds, and the bricklayers used the mud liberally. They would put set brick around the flu, then pour buckets of mud on top of the brick, then set more all around. They didn’t “lay” those brick, they just set them around that flu with brick tongs, then filled in any gaps. After they got the stack of the chimney up so far, they would continue to work on the veneer of the fireplace, the part everybody sees. The average person would not have any idea how much work and how strong the inside of a chimney is, they just see the beautiful veneer. The strength of the fireplace was on the inside.

I built a great deal of strength, too, hauling those buckets of mud up those stairs. When they were building around the flu’s, being liberal with the mud, I heard plenty of hollering for “MUD!” all that morning.

“Whar yuh at Pups, if you wuz backs now you’d be late?” And it got worse with Red, because once those trowels stopped moving he saw dollar signs going down the drain, and that thought was connected directly to his tongue, so you can imagine the words that came flowing out if he saw he dragging a little in getting the mud up those stairs. If anything could make a man out of you, Red’s tongue-lashings could.

Fortunately, whenever they got several feet of the inside built up, they would go back to laying the veneer, and that was when I would get a slight break because they used less mud; and Doocy could get that mud up to them from the outside. I could still hear him jabbering from my work on the inside, and it was funny hearing him bellyaching to Pee Wee and Red instead of to me. On any given morning, he could threaten to “quit ‘n walks all t’ways back to Gawgia” a dozen times.

When the morning of Doocy’s dissertation started, they had leveled off the outside and the inside, so the first thing they had to do was to set another clay flu. They would put mortar on top of the last one, just as if it was a brick, then, with two of them, they would lift that flu and set it. That process was a difficult one because those flus weighed a hundred or more pounds, were three feet tall, and had about a foot-square opening where, of course, the smoke would rise through when burning the fireplace. It took two strong bricklayers to pick up a flu and stretch it out away from their bodies out to the middle of the chimney and set it just right on top of the last flu. Bricklayers wasn’t a job for sissies, that much I learned quickly.

It was around ten that morning when Pee Wee and Red completed stacking brick up to the top of the last flu they had set; and they had completed the brick on the veneer to the same level. They then set a new flu up, which extended three feet above the outside brick. As they laid the outside brick, they would fill in the brick around the flu, doing it all at one time. Using all those brick on the inside of the chimney is the reason for the need for a massive amount of brick, but it would take a great deal of mud, too, because they were liberal with putting mud between each layer on the inside.

Charlie’s inside work was slower and more tedious, so, if ever I would have a break, it would be tending to him on the inside, although we know there are no true breaks by now, just maybe an occasion mirage. The McClains had been back and forth that morning. Mrs. McClain and the girls were upstairs a good bit of the time measuring the rooms to see how the furniture would fit. I could hear all that chatter as I went up and down the stairs. The carpenters had already built the walls, so I couldn’t see them, just hear their voices from the back room on the southwest side of the upstairs in the vicinity of Corrina’s room. Corrina had shown me that room in particular back when there were only studs and no walls.

Around the time the crew outside had gotten the inside of the fireplace up far enough to start back on the exterior, the ladies had to run back to town, but Corrina and Mr. McClain stayed back. He was mostly out by the brick piles reading the blueprints and talking to one of the carpenters. I heard Corrina tell her mom that she wanted to read some, for her mom and Alane to go on. She hadn’t told me, but she had gone to the dime store in downtown Roanoke and found a copy of “The Old Man and the Sea” and was reading it. I was pleased with that. As I walked up the stairs to grab the brick tongs I had left up by the outside window, she was standing by the door of her room with her book in her hand.

“What’cha readin’, Miss Belle,” I said, cheerfully. She held the cover of the book up, and that was the first time I knew she had bought the book. “Ah, man,” I said, “that’s pretty nice. Let me know how ya like it,” and I headed back down the wooden staircase.

“Pup,” she said, almost apologetically, “can I talk to you a minute?”

The rest of the story continues next week.

Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently spent two years teaching and coaching at Ferris. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) served many years with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, but now spend time evangelizing in several states in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the writing of the ongoing novel/memoir here in the Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, or email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, or see frontporchgospel.com.