Some of the roofs I worked on in Leadville were old. Well, not this old, but still pretty old!
In the summer of 2005 I left CU Boulder and went back to Leadville to work as an assistant in a local construction business.
My job was to gather up old, discarded roof tiles and put them in my truck, a red 1980s-era Toyota with golf-themed upholstery that my grandpa had gifted to our family.
On my first job I went up on a roof and caulked roof tiles. On the second job I cleaned up a bunch of debris that other roofers were stripping and throwing off of the house. Old roof off, new roof on.
I would picking up slats of rotted roof wood and centipedes would scatter from underneath. Sometimes there were dead animals, creatures that had lived in or on the old roof wood and had been thrown to the literal wayside of each home. Other things would happen - like I would almost accidentally step on upturned nails, or I would scrape myself on dry, unsanded wood, or get a sunburn.
The idea of a desk job seemed nice. Yet at the same time, I loved my roofing job. I liked it a lot.
It felt good to get exercise and to see the tangible effects of my work. I would often talk to the homeowners and they would bring me snacks or water. I’m sure it looked pretty weird - a construction crew of mostly grown men and then a teenage girl lifting and throwing debris into a vehicle. As a roof-tile-gatherer, that summer I learned that there was always high demand for work that nobody else wanted to do.
I would return to my parent’s house each evening fairly exhausted and would play the Playstation 2 in my brother’s room. I spent hours and hours playing Kingdom Hearts, the first Kingdom Hearts. Alice in Wonderland, Tarzan, Hercules, Pinnochio … I can still hear most of the levels in the game. It was simple and familiar enough for me to latch onto after busting my ass on rooftops.
In Kingdom Hearts, the two main characters seemed to be about 15 years old. I was 19 at the time and remembered thinking “Am I too old for this? Should I be more mature by now?”
It was sort of the same with roofing - I wondered if I should be doing some other kind of job, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
It was a good summer to realize that it was fine to just love what I loved, even if it seemed off the beaten path of my age or gender.
Who wrote this?
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell