"I got it...I don't got it...bzzzzzz"

The last Monday of March 2000 dawned clear and cold in Dungannon, VA.  We were ready to head out to our work sites and begin the work part of Work Tour 2000.  My youth group from Union Church in Hinsdale, IL, was divided into two groups that would be sent to different sites.  The students were excited and ready to go. 

The two primary leaders of our work effort were David Knecht, a veteran of many Work Tours, and Lindley Pittman.  Lindley was one of those Bob Villa/MacGyver combinations who could build, fix or invent most anything.  He was definitely the top dog when it came to our construction efforts.  I was clearly not only the new guy, but the guy who knew the least!  About every 30 seconds on the work site you would hear someone cry for help:  "David!  Lindley!"  Often it was me.  We arrived at our site and I was simply amazed at what we found.  It was a house trailer on a nice sized piece of land.  It had 2 bedrooms and a family of 5 living in it.  The plumbing was a mess.  There was an old utility building out back that was full of junk and seemed to be about to collapse.  There were several others structural issues that we would also be working on.  And finally, they wanted us to build a new wall in one of the bedrooms that was being shared by a brother and sister.  The bedroom was already small; we were to cut it in half. 

I was assigned with Chris and Mike Kinsella and their friend Nick to build the wall.  I had a little experience with dry wall from time spent volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, but that had been a number of years earlier.  David seemed to think that preparing the room would take a day and building the wall would take another- or 2 days at most.  He had no idea who he was dealing with...

I cannot remember exactly what we had to do to prepare the room for the wall, because it all went pretty well.  Then the construction started.  I would like to take this opportunity to defend the 4 of us against later allegations.  We were not stupid.  We knew to measure twice and cut once.  We knew to make sure everything was level.  We knew how to mark and cut dry wall and plywood.  We were not stupid.  We were inept.  Time after time we would measure, check each others work, and cut.  Each time the material would not fit the space it was cut for.  Each time we were so confident.  Mike would take the cut piece and go to place it, and every time we would hear the same thing:  "I got it...I don't got it..."  And it was back to the saw for more "bzzzzzz."  Frustrated does not even begin to describe how we felt.

We worked on that wall for 5 days, finally splitting that bedroom with a solid, painted divider.  By the end we had discovered that our biggest problem had been an assumption.  As we measured and cut and checked to make sure we were keeping the wall level, we assumed that the floor and the ceiling were level.  They weren't close.  We had been building a wall in a room where the ceiling was slanted, and the floor was too- at a different angle than the ceiling!  We rookies never had a chance.  By the end of the week the 4 of us had grown close (shared misery will do that sometimes) and had hatched a master plan for the trip home.  But that story will come a bit later.  Before that we have a few other stories to tell from the work site.  Come back Friday (tomorrow is another Moment With Mullins) to learn all about The Sawshack Redemption.  Indoor skeet shooting, anyone?

Because of Jesus,