Window Man

WindowManMobile

The last day of September 1998 we retired from parish ministry and came home to Panama City to stay. Anticipating this, the year before we had added two rooms, a half-bath and a back porch to our house so it would be more comfortable for four of us -- my mother, Linda's mother, Linda and me. Linda's stepfather Jim Graham had died the previous year at 92, and Linda's mother had moved in with us in the rectory in Apalachicola; and we had Jim's car, a silver 1988 Pontiac Bonneville, which we had brought from Mountain Brook to Apalachicola, then from Apalachicola to Panama City. Along with our own cars and my mother's car, and Linda's mother's car, our automobile collection resembled a used car lot and we didn't have places to park all the vehicles.

The Pontiac was soon adopted and adapted as my "work car" the trunk loaded with tools and stuff and driven back and forth between home and Cove School, soon to become Holy Nativity Episcopal School, where it was my joy to work everyday with Bill Lloyd and others on the building renovation. My task at first was "whatever," including helping rip up the incredibly filthy, grungy carpet throughout the building and roll it up so it could be boiled down into a nice, thick flavorful, green soupstock; take down the suspended ceilings and room dividers in the classrooms, library, and cafeteria; then scraping paint off the transom windows between the classrooms and the hall, and unnailing the transoms so they could swing open as they had in my years as a student at Cove School. There was no air conditioning in those schooldays of the 1940s, and we counted on the open windows and transoms to let air move in, across, through, and out the building. 

Before long on the renovation we started on the outside windows, removing loose caulking, replacing broken panes, and glazing every window in the building. That, Window Man, became my alter-ego month by month as we worked to get the building ready for our first students the next fall; and the trunk of the Pontiac always carried a gallon or two of glazing compound, putty knives, whiskbroom, and other tools of my new trade. My father had taught me as a boy, to glaze windows properly, neatly, crisply. And working outside high on a ladder day in and day out was quite pleasant -- do windows on the back west side of the building in the shade all morning, then after lunch move my ladder round to the east side and work in the shade in the front all afternoon. Most memorable were the swelteringly hot summer days when it would rain, all day or just an afternoon shower, and water would run off the roof eave, drip on my head and run down my back all afternoon. As we got into late fall and winter the rain down my back became somewhat other than refreshing and invigorating, and it would be necessary to find something to do inside the building. 

Bill, who was in charge, met with Charles Faircloth and the construction crew at McDonald's at early dawn every morning for coffee and to plan the day, my arrival time was by eight o'clock, and we worked until four p.m. five days a week. Sometimes Bill brought a ladder outside and joined me scraping and glazing windows. We got the old north end of the building ready for the first classes of students, then moved to the south end and started getting it ready for the next school year the following fall. Jim Graham's old Pontiac served me faithfully as WindowManMobile all through that. 

Sometime during that period, Linda had been driving her Ford Taurus on 23rd Street and had been hit by a driver on drugs. The Taurus spun around, hitting at least one other car, completely destroying both the front end and the rear end. We thought it would be "totaled," but USAA said to fix it, a job of many weeks. While that was being done, Linda bought a new Volkswagen beetle, light green, which we drove and enjoyed for ten years afterward. When the Taurus was ready, looking and acting brand new, it became my car and the Pontiac became even more superfluous to our car needs, and had to be parked in the front yard, where it sat seldom driven.

At some point then, having worked off and on at the school and church around Eddie Scharick, we realized that Mr. Eddie did not have a car. One reason apparently was that he couldn't keep a drivers license. Some folks helped him get his license out of suspension or revocation, though, and we gave him the Pontiac -- which he loved and drove for some months or a year or two, then totaled one weekend. Members of the school board took up a collection at board meeting one evening and we bought Mr. Eddie a replacement car, a used Chevrolet Lumina, which he drove until it also was totaled. 

What brings all this to mind is this morning's email from Miss Beverly, telling us that Mr. Eddie died yesterday. He was hit by a car while in a wheelchair the last day or so of May, and was taken to the ICU at Bay. I visited him there twice, but he was never conscious and had no prospect of regaining consciousness. Beverly is right: Mr. Eddie was an interesting character. He was usually loud and boisterous, he always loved the children at the school, and I think they loved him too.

Eddie Scharick, through the mercy of God, rest in peace; in the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

TW+