Chapter 46: TRADES TRICKS AND FOOLING AROUND

I’m self contracting one of the buildings incorporating six rental units. Hell, I’m ultimately responsible for everything anyway, sort of all the works in a single drawer. When I say everything, I’m referring to my DBAs. Richard Collins Doing Business As. Can’t escape responsibility, my name is right on the letterhead of every one.

Every one except for the ‘NOW’ truck-stop, and even that is a privately owned corporation. Marshall and I own all the stock except Mom owns one share. The way it’s set up, the State requires a minimum of three corporate officers each holding stock. Marshall is president, Mom vice president and I’m treasurer. I’m also CEO but that’s a salaried employee position, not an originating founder’s title.

Marshall is home again and I gladly tell her all about Mom’s and my night together. Milly explained she was no threat to Marshall, because my affair with Milly is not hidden. Sneaking around with my Mom isn’t the right thing to do, so I confess all. Not much to confess, because Mom and I don’t have a sexual relationship, but I prefer Marshall knows all there is to know. Trust is a fragile thing, and once shattered, irreparable. Marshall is the most important woman in my life, despite Milly thinking she’s number one. Let her think it. It means she won’t be angling, vying to become number one. Don’t want competition for me, between daughter and mother.

Each of the blueprinted structures has six bedrooms, each with a bath. Each also has a separate HVAC and water heater. Wasteful. Dedicating one room in each building as a utility room, means one large efficient HVAC for each building. The individual independant room thermostats only control dampers in the duct work. If one damper opens, the HVAC turns on. If all dampers are closed, it’s off.

Two fifty gallon hot water heaters also serve all the five baths in the building. In one building, the utility room is set up with a registration desk front office. There is a half bath in the utility area, containing only a toilet and a wash basin for the desk attendants use.

Sergey’s crew is the first to complete a building ready for occupancy, so I don’t need to fork over a three acre plot of land. I’m the contractor of record and won my own piece of property. Took only two weeks.

Promptly we moved the bunk beds from the semi-trailers into the five bedrooms completed. Six girls to a room, no TVs. Yolanda was informed to drag away her trailers or I would burn, crush, and scrap them. She demanded the bunkbeds be reloaded in the semis for use at a different location. I refuse. Sue me if she dares. She refuses to.

Construction continues on the rest of the motel. What shall we call it? Contacting a shipbreaker’s yard on the coast, basically a marine version of a junk yard, I offered on and bought a huge pile of ash oars from old lifeboats. Erecting a split rail type of fence around the parking area of the motel, using sixteen foot long oars, completes the nautical décor theme of the “OAR HOUSE AUTOCOURT”. Cute, I think. No one else agrees. Tough titty. Owner’s rules. I own it, and I named it. Now Sergey’s and Yolanda’s ‘Oars’ have decent shelter.

Anybody else want to stick their oar in, I have empty rooms to let. Don’t have an oar, they’re available to rent locally, too. Not by me.

One incident occurred during the construction, that’s worth the telling. All the block walls were up, the trusses erected and in process of being sheathed, and the ductwork for the HVAC was being installed.

A carpenter or sheet metal worker, I don’t recall, drove up, asking for work. Sorry, my crew is full, don’t need any other subs. He left.

Sergey pointed out, the fellow drove off forgetting his toolbox, leaving it behind on the ground. Sergey grabbed it and me and insisted we chase after the fellow. We caught up with him about three miles up the road and returned his tool box.

Sergey explained afterwards, if we hadn’t returned the tool box, the erstwhile subcontractor could have filed a mechanics lien against the project. Leaving his tools there as evidence he was contracted to work, because no tradesman is careless enough, or would leave his tools on a worksite, if he hadn’t been engaged to work there.

Unless, he was attempting pulling a fast one, like this miserable A-hole tried. Tricks of the trades, Sergey is apparently wise to them all. I’m only learning to be wise.

In gratitude for all his and Paul and Sam’s efforts, I give the three of them the three acre lot award to share. They’ll decide how they want it divided and who gets what. It will be surveyed into three separate one acre lots and I’ll deed each his chosen piece, They plan to cooperate together on constructing three homes, doing all the work themselves. My project gave them the confidence to attempt building their own houses.

Oh, Paul and Jeanette are engaged to be married. I would wish them luck, but they don’t need my wishes, as they create their own luck. Seems successful people always do.

The latest and eventually the ultimate King Midget car kit has arrived. This model even has brakes! Mom didn’t want my now completed original King Midget so I’m building a museum to house them. Not just the King cars, all my classics.

My latest acquisitions, not counting the mail order kit car, is His and Hers pair of 1956 T’Birds. One is white with a red fiberglass pop top, and the other red with a chrome FRP pop top.

Marshall, Karen and I were scouting for purchasable junkyards, and we saw these two T’Birds for sale, at a country gas station. Owner refuses to sell either separate. His wife and he bought them at the same time, the cars have only one owner, and he’ll only sell to a married couple. That was his recently deceased wife’s wish, the cars never be separated. We can buy if we sign a promise not to separate the cars. I explain I intend to museum the cars and they will never again be sold. With a humble attitude I ask to name the cars for him and his wife. Vernon hugged me for that suggestion. His wife’s name was Julianna. Karen drove my Bel Air back home. I drove the T’Bird named ‘Vernon’ while Marshall drove ‘ Julianna’.

Eventually, twenty years later, I added a third T’Bird to the collection. A one of a kind with forty-one miles on the odometer.

A retired aerospace avionics technician, started a handyman business because his wife refused to allow him to sit at home, drink beer, watch football, and die of a heart attack. Hired to clean out the garage of a recent widow, he discovered this car under a cloth in the garage, offered on it and bought it from the widow. Her deceased husband had been the Ford executive in charge of new developments during the late fifties. The car found is a never adopted prototype.

The mechanism was adopted on the larger 1957 Galaxie Skyliner sedan, a folding steel hardtop convertible model.