Saturday, November 14, 2009

A Garage Cleaning

About 7 years ago I through the Union Hall volunteered for a job called Christmas in April. The job was to assist the elderly with construction work needed on their homes.
I pulled up to the job on a Saturday morning with 2 fellow carpenters. Out of 100's of volunteers we were the only ones on this job. 50 other people were on a painting job with our famous X Mayor/ Governor, James E McGreevey whom had set this program up. The painting job was a Photo shoot.

We got out of our trucks and the job we were given was to install a garage door. Hah, It was a 2 car garage so another door had to be picked up.
We introduced ourselves to the elderly lady we were to do the job for. We went to open the garage and a 30 something year old son living there told us that there may be a few things in our way. We would have to go through the house. The other to fellows went inside to access the garage and I started to look at the old doors. They had never been painted. The house hadn't been very well maintained either. The side jambs of the doors were water rotted right through.
The 2 fellows I was with came back out of the house telling me that there was a problem. There was so much crap and garbage inside the garage they couldn't get to either door...
OK, I go to my truck, grab an extension chord, Saw Zall, heavy duty blade and set myself up, cut door #1 right down the middle. The bottom panel basically disintegrated.We were in. What we were in was beyond belief. I think a thousand Vics had cleaned there garages and shipped the stuff to this one.
Nothing had ever been thrown out at this place. Including garbage. We made a call and through channels of at that time  Mayor, James E McGreevey, a garbage truck was sent out special just for this job.
My 2 fellow carpenters and myself started to haul the garbage out. The Mother and her 30 something year old son watched. Another son that lived there showed up to watch too. He said that they had a couple old cars in there too. We had a glimpse of 1 but had no idea that there was 2. At some point a mention of a missing cat that had upset the elderly mother had been mentioned too.
We filled one garbage truck and it had to leave to dump and return. Filling the second, a pile of news papers was being removed. The pile must have been stacked and fallen over at one time. Under the last few bundles being removed we found the missing cat. Mummified. One of the guys picked the stiff corpse up by the tail, shook it head first at the lady and said, "We found your cat".
We literally jammed the garbage into garbage truck load #2. Even with the compression compactor on the truck we thought we would need one more trip but we got it all in there.
Yes, there were 2 cars in the garage, By old I was say late 60-70 models. Of course they couldn't be moved and sat in the way of working on the doors.
The garage door replacement . To start, we ended up rebuilding the entire front of the garage. The old framing had rotted along the bottom of the entire wall. We installed 2 new doors and then were asked to install openers on them. Happy happy joy joy specially with the 2 cars sitting in the way.
We didn't finish the job until almost 9pm.
Now helping someone in need to me should be a feel good project. Should be. We did the job, asked for nothing in return. Not a one of the 3 of us that did the job lived in the area. I had an hours drive myself to get there. What ticked me off, This elderly lady had 3 sons living there. All 3 sons were of a younger age than myself, 2 of those sons watched us work almost the entire day and not a 1 lifted a finger to help. We even bought our own lunches while they watched us eat. they ordered out for themselves. The project was completed, the material used was donated through donations and the Home Depot, As we were leaving the residences of the home were asking  who would  tow the cars from the garage.

10 comments:

  1. LOL Great story!!! They DO say that no good deed goes unpunished! LOL ;-)

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  2. I've so heard of that type of question after a hard day's work.
    I've seen that kind of situation you describe Mac on Animal planet ..the Texas SPCA has a show. They got a call to go check out this suspected hoarder. Man Mac you couldn't see walls/floors/toilet/kitchen sink for junk/newspapers/garbage, full kitty litter boxes/scraps of rotting food...He was quite elderly and loved his cats but the SPCA workers said the stench was so strong it burnt the eyes....It took them many hours and a couple come backs to convince this man that giving up all but a couple cats was the right thing. SPCA also called in a couple of councillors to help him get others in to clean up his home......
    I commend you on being a good Samaritan.

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  3. Sounds like a carpenters nightmare. Some people are so used to having everything done for them that they totally forget how to take care of themselves.

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  4. Good grief! Somehow I have a feeling that garage is back to the state it was in or even worse.... I'm going to pout though because I don't have a garage door opener,lol

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  5. I'll come back to read this again..its 4 am and my eyeballs are getting to be on friendly terms with eachother right now.

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  6. Mac, you really need to install a garage door for Viccles...you KNOW her garage is clean...and she'd prolly feed ya...
    On the other hand...you know how bossy she can be...

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  7. Hey! I am not bossy.....well not that bossy....well..depending on who you ask,lol ....

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  8. LOL I bet they were Democrats......(as in handed everything or having someone do it for them) Last Sat. Mike and the rest of the men went out and fixed a local woman's porch as in tore the old one down built a new one and cleaned up her front and back yards, mowers rakes chain saws....The elderly woman had had a stroke and was unable to use her left side very well, She had asked her church to please do it, they refused said she did not go there often enough,(wonders if they took into account her condition? She had asked her family to do it, they would only if she paid their property taxes. So our church did it and she was thrilled, thanked the men (and boys) over and over, she even told them she was going to go to her church and let them know God does provide. Mike was there from 8am till after 6pm.....but at least there was someone grateful.

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  9. How sad Sue that her own family and church were unwilling to help her, that is terrible... Kudos to all of you for helping the woman out.

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  10. Waits for Mac to come with his men to my garage...my fathers first car is there..he was 4 when it was bought and he's 80 now ! Very nice of you to have helped this lady out..and how sad her sons had not bothered to clean up before.

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