Grizzly Peak
In most of my adventures there was no mobster's fortress with alligators in the moat.
The last project I worked on with CLP was the only project I had that was in the swath of the 1991 Oakland hills firestorm. Grizzly Peak Blvd winds along the ridge above Berkeley and Oakland. The fire crews were able to hold the line there because the wind was blowing mainly downhill toward the densely populated hillsides, and Grizzly Peak Blvd was its northern boundary. The house was on the very easternmost parcel the fire had spred to, making it the top NE corner of the burn area.
The project to rebuild this luxurious house had been underway for many months, and I was being brought on to do details of the interior paneling. The owner was a big phone company executive and this was his custom-made dream house with a view that put the entire San Francisco Bay at your feet. He had the foresight to get an insurance policy that would replace everything, no matter the cost, in case of fire.
The foreman was Gary Crawford. Gary was the only guy to ever reach a construction site before me in the morning. He had quite a bit of girth, and it seemed to insulate him from the cold, as I would first see him standing out by his truck in short pants, smoking a cigarette in the morning darkness. He became a mentor of quality building practices to me, and a fun guy to work with.
On my first day at lunch, I was standing around with the crew, learning names, when I discovered that one of the carpenters, Andrew Gordon, was also from Petaluma, and lived one block away from Dick and I. It was quite natural for us to start driving together, so from then on, I would pick him up at 4:30. We'd take the long way round through Vallejo, Martinez, Walnut Creek and come to Grizzly Peak from the backside, avoiding all the potential traffic congestion in Marin and the East Bay freeways.
Andrew was more of deadhead than I was and at the time had attended more shows than I, starting when he was about 14. Dick always kept me stocked with Grateful Dead live tapes, and that's what we listened to exclusively and constantly on our commutes.
We had a lot of fun there, and I met new friends there. Besides Gary and Andrew, I met another finish carpenter on the crew, Bob Brennan, who like me, was a craftsman with a contractor's license. I would later for work on Brennan's project, a luxurious house on San Pedro Point near San Rafael on the west side of the bay.
The other character and good friend thereafter I met there was Irishman David Larkin, another craftsman with a contractor's license, at the time on the crew as a finish carpenter. Besides his contractor's license, David's creds included some University level training in Architecture in Ireland. In the years that followed I worked with or for these guys on projects all over the bay area. Brennan came up with the project at his ongoing San Pedro Point additions, which both Andrew and David Larkin had worked on previous phases. Andrew and I worked for David Larkin on a beautiful new house in a rural canyon near Hillsboro, which David had run from the ground up. Some combination of these cohorts worked for Gary in far-flung sites in San Rafael, San Francisco, San Jose, and in a few chapters, I'll talk about a house in Coarsegold.
Gary always kept up a comic banter about everything we were doing, and had nicknames for all of us. My major task was to surface the interior walls of the high light wells with thin tongue and groove cedar. They were about 7 feet square and popped up through the ceiling with a hip roof on top. On the four walls were windows facing each direction for light. Gary called them gun turrets. We had to set up scaffolding to be able to work up in there, and since there was only room for one person at a time to work in that awkward space, it became my specialty, and I would finish one and move on to another. Gary started calling me "Gun Turret John".
On one particular day, I had been doing some work out next to the road, and a truck pulled up with a kitchen cabinet in the back. Andrew was there to unload and asked me to take the other end and walk it through the street-level garage and in to the house. No problem; we picked it up and he took the front end and had to walk backward through the garage and out its side door. When his end got to the doorway I had to swing wide to get it through. Unbeknownst to me, was there was an open hole 2 foot square in the floor where a hatch had been removed and carrying the cabinet, I could not see my feet or the space in front of them.
Zip! Andrew would later say that was looking straight at me as he watched me suddenly disappear from sight, just like that cartoon coyote. I was laying on the steeply sloped ground underneath the garage. The back of my head hurt, it had hit the edge of the opening on my way down. It felt better to leave the bloody cut laying in the cool soft dirt.
Gary, Andrew and the others came running to the hole. I told them I was all right, that "the back of my head hurts a little, but if I just lay here and take a nap, I'll be all right." Well, they all knew, and I would have known if I was not dazed, from our first aid training and years of experience in the hazardous building trades, that wanting to sleep just happens to be a symptom of concussion, and something you don't let happen.
They helped me up out of there and Gary drove me to the emergency room to get looked at. As foreman, he felt responsible for keeping such hazards as the open hatch protected or at least marked with caution tape. Andrew felt guilty too. He led me into it. I don't blame anybody for anything. I got stitched up and checked out for concussion, which was not too severe. So I took it easy with no nap back at Grizzly Peak until quitting time, and Andrew and I drove home.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
The last project I worked on with CLP was the only project I had that was in the swath of the 1991 Oakland hills firestorm. Grizzly Peak Blvd winds along the ridge above Berkeley and Oakland. The fire crews were able to hold the line there because the wind was blowing mainly downhill toward the densely populated hillsides, and Grizzly Peak Blvd was its northern boundary. The house was on the very easternmost parcel the fire had spred to, making it the top NE corner of the burn area.
The project to rebuild this luxurious house had been underway for many months, and I was being brought on to do details of the interior paneling. The owner was a big phone company executive and this was his custom-made dream house with a view that put the entire San Francisco Bay at your feet. He had the foresight to get an insurance policy that would replace everything, no matter the cost, in case of fire.
The foreman was Gary Crawford. Gary was the only guy to ever reach a construction site before me in the morning. He had quite a bit of girth, and it seemed to insulate him from the cold, as I would first see him standing out by his truck in short pants, smoking a cigarette in the morning darkness. He became a mentor of quality building practices to me, and a fun guy to work with.
On my first day at lunch, I was standing around with the crew, learning names, when I discovered that one of the carpenters, Andrew Gordon, was also from Petaluma, and lived one block away from Dick and I. It was quite natural for us to start driving together, so from then on, I would pick him up at 4:30. We'd take the long way round through Vallejo, Martinez, Walnut Creek and come to Grizzly Peak from the backside, avoiding all the potential traffic congestion in Marin and the East Bay freeways.
Andrew was more of deadhead than I was and at the time had attended more shows than I, starting when he was about 14. Dick always kept me stocked with Grateful Dead live tapes, and that's what we listened to exclusively and constantly on our commutes.
We had a lot of fun there, and I met new friends there. Besides Gary and Andrew, I met another finish carpenter on the crew, Bob Brennan, who like me, was a craftsman with a contractor's license. I would later for work on Brennan's project, a luxurious house on San Pedro Point near San Rafael on the west side of the bay.
The other character and good friend thereafter I met there was Irishman David Larkin, another craftsman with a contractor's license, at the time on the crew as a finish carpenter. Besides his contractor's license, David's creds included some University level training in Architecture in Ireland. In the years that followed I worked with or for these guys on projects all over the bay area. Brennan came up with the project at his ongoing San Pedro Point additions, which both Andrew and David Larkin had worked on previous phases. Andrew and I worked for David Larkin on a beautiful new house in a rural canyon near Hillsboro, which David had run from the ground up. Some combination of these cohorts worked for Gary in far-flung sites in San Rafael, San Francisco, San Jose, and in a few chapters, I'll talk about a house in Coarsegold.
Gary always kept up a comic banter about everything we were doing, and had nicknames for all of us. My major task was to surface the interior walls of the high light wells with thin tongue and groove cedar. They were about 7 feet square and popped up through the ceiling with a hip roof on top. On the four walls were windows facing each direction for light. Gary called them gun turrets. We had to set up scaffolding to be able to work up in there, and since there was only room for one person at a time to work in that awkward space, it became my specialty, and I would finish one and move on to another. Gary started calling me "Gun Turret John".
On one particular day, I had been doing some work out next to the road, and a truck pulled up with a kitchen cabinet in the back. Andrew was there to unload and asked me to take the other end and walk it through the street-level garage and in to the house. No problem; we picked it up and he took the front end and had to walk backward through the garage and out its side door. When his end got to the doorway I had to swing wide to get it through. Unbeknownst to me, was there was an open hole 2 foot square in the floor where a hatch had been removed and carrying the cabinet, I could not see my feet or the space in front of them.
Zip! Andrew would later say that was looking straight at me as he watched me suddenly disappear from sight, just like that cartoon coyote. I was laying on the steeply sloped ground underneath the garage. The back of my head hurt, it had hit the edge of the opening on my way down. It felt better to leave the bloody cut laying in the cool soft dirt.
Gary, Andrew and the others came running to the hole. I told them I was all right, that "the back of my head hurts a little, but if I just lay here and take a nap, I'll be all right." Well, they all knew, and I would have known if I was not dazed, from our first aid training and years of experience in the hazardous building trades, that wanting to sleep just happens to be a symptom of concussion, and something you don't let happen.
They helped me up out of there and Gary drove me to the emergency room to get looked at. As foreman, he felt responsible for keeping such hazards as the open hatch protected or at least marked with caution tape. Andrew felt guilty too. He led me into it. I don't blame anybody for anything. I got stitched up and checked out for concussion, which was not too severe. So I took it easy with no nap back at Grizzly Peak until quitting time, and Andrew and I drove home.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com