My father at my age

I don't know when this thought came to me but one day, recently, I started to think about what my father was doing at my age. He was born in 1922. I am 61 years old now. So, he would have been this age in 1983. At that point, he was still very active and, since he was in construction work, still very fit and strong. He operated heavy machines like cranes, bulldozers and that sort of thing. Due to the nature of construction work, though, he often went long periods where there was no work. During one of those periods, he took the time to come and help me work on the house I had bought.

I bought the house in 1982 and was very optimistic that it would take no time to fix up. The house had been built in 1928 and was in very bad shape. Plus, there had been a fire that I wasn't told about and neither of the house inspectors I'd hired had found out about. There was practically no insulation in the house and there were a lot of tiny rooms that I wanted to turn into fewer larger rooms. I was so naive! I had no idea what I was getting into. It didn't take long, though, for me to realize I was in way over my head. My parents both knew I was making a mistake and tried to dissuade me from buying the house. They hadn't even seen it (they lived in Pittsburgh and the house was on Cape Cod) but knew from my description that it was going to be trouble.

Anyway, at 61 years old, my father came up to help me. We shared my apartment while we worked on the house during the day. We tore down the interior walls in the three small rooms on the first floor to make it one big room and bought a huge wood beam and posts to hold up the second floor and installed them. We tore out all of the plaster walls (the inside walls), put in insulation and put up Sheetrock. Putting dormers in the roof to expand the second floor was beyond us so I hired a contractor to do that part. My dad worked with me for about 2 -3 months and I had a hard time keeping up with him. I had to go back to work after the first two weeks so he was working all alone during the day and we worked together at night. I don't know if I could do what he did at this age. I try to keep active but I don't have the strength and energy he still had at 61. The only thing I have on him is that I have more hair at 61 than he did.

About 15 years later, after my father had died at 71, I was working in the basement using my big ShopVac vacuum and was going to change the filter. As I opened up the housing that held the filter, I noticed a handwritten note. It was written by my father when he had been here helping me. It explained how the filter was mounted and how to replace it easily. After all those years, my dad was still helping me. I still miss him.