I was not the only one who made mistakes.
“Chuck, I need to talk to you.” José whispered to me one day a few weeks later.
“I am all ears, José. What’s up?”
“I would not be coming to talk with you, unless I thought it was really important.”
“Sit down, man. What is on your mind?”
Unbeknownst to me, I was the one who needed to sit down.
“Two things have been happening that I think you should know about,” said José, while looking around and over his shoulder, “the three rehabs being done are all no good.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know they are doing my house. The workmanship is sloppy and very poor. I wish you would come and look at the nails in the outside deck. They are in the wrong place. Some are bent and left in place, and they didn’t even used galvanized nails for an outdoor job.”
That last comment got my attention. That was not an opinion.
“Have you mentioned it to Susy? What did she say?”
“She ignored me. She said they were doing fine.”
“I’ll go with you now to see the work. What about the others?”
“The other across the street is an adobe restoration. Those people do not know how to work with adobe. They are making a mess. And Susy tries to talk to them like she is one of the guys, but they laugh at her behind her back. She doesn’t know about construction.”
“But José, she just finished architectural school. She should know enough to tell when it is a good job and when it is not.”
We were now getting into more difficult territory. Listening to an old Mexican criticizing a young, educated, Anglo female was like walking into quicksand.
“You look at it and you tell me if they are treating the adobe right.”
“Yes, we’ll do that. What is the other thing you want to talk to me about?”
“I am sorry to say this, I don’t know how to say it, but yesterday I was sitting on the back porch after getting myself a cup of coffee, and I overheard Susy and Ellen talking…”
“Yes…?”
“… Susy was telling Ellen that maybe they should get rid of you. That between the two of them, they could run the show much better.”
Now we were getting into deep mud and manure here.
“And what did Ellen say?”
“She didn’t say anything. She just let Susy talk. But she didn’t stop her either. She kept the conversation going.”
“Are you sure you heard her right?”
“Yes. They talked for quite a while. They never saw me. I was on the other side of the screen door and could hear them well. At the end, Ellen seemed to agree with Susy.”
I needed some time to digest this information. Was it true? Could there be some misunderstanding? Could José be getting back at some perceived wrong done to him?
And if it was true, what should, could, I do?
“Let’s take first things first. Let’s go to your house and see what it is that you are talking about.”
We walked the five blocks to José’s house, and he took me directly to his back porch. The first thing I saw were nails that were bent and pounded into the wood as such, no attempt made to remove them. They were not galvanized, and they were initially pounded straight down, not at a cross angles to prevent a warping wood from popping them right back out. One of my recent jobs had been correcting other’s carpentry mistakes.
Workers were still doing odd jobs inside the house. José showed me a few other inconsistencies and not only poor workmanship, but outright faulty carpentry. By then, I knew enough to know that all the work was substandard. I took some pictures.
“I need you all to come out to the porch with me,” I said to the workers. They did.
“Your boss is not here right now. You need to ask him to call me as soon as he can. In the meantime, I want you all out. Stop working right now, pick up your tools, and go. Please do not come back.”
I held my temper and spoke with measured tones, but I was fuming. How could anyone let this go on for so long? Is this the kind of work the City’s selected contractors were permeating low-income neighborhoods with? Or was it the result of the poor supervision of Susy and thus the fault of a sub-recipient, us, the TBA?
At that time, I still didn’t know enough about adobes, so I called on an old timer who had done life work with adobes and asked him to come with me to look at the second house. He didn’t know anything about Susy. He said nothing as he looked at the work in progress for a few seconds, but as we stood out of earshot, he said, “They don’t know what they are doing. Their repair will not last two years.” He showed me a chunk of the mud mix he had taken from the site as if that explained everything. “Too much sand, bad clay.” He gave me more details, but I didn’t need them. I called the contractor and told him to leave the job.
Next morning, an angry me faced an angry Ellen and Susy.
“Hire two new contractors who know what they are doing to finish the work,” I told them maybe too harshly. “Don’t use the list from the City. I don’t want to repeat this again. When these three houses are finished, we need to have a talk before any other houses gets started.”
We never had to have that talk. A few days later, Susy was at the work site of the third house when a fuse blew up. To let the workers continue working and finish for the day, she put a coin into the fuse box replacing the blown fuse, a dangerous and illegal but effective way to temporarily resolve the problem and continue the work. However, she forgot to remove the coin, and part of the house burned down that night, mostly the roof portion and some inside walls. Fortunately, no one was hurt. She was gone the next day and I was back to being Rehab Specialist. But it was not what I wanted to do, and not the way I wanted to do it.
I learned more about mud roofs from repairing that burnt house, because we got old experts on mud roofs to come and help us in this emergency. Most adobe homes built over a hundred years ago have a flat roof consisting of mesquite logs spanning as long a distance as the length of the logs that the owner was able to gather. Maybe 15 feet, plus or minus, and sloping slightly to allow water runoff. Then saguaro ribs were nailed across very closely together. Then burlap sacks were spread out over the saguaro ribs, and on top of that, up to ten different layers of different types of mud. The second from last was a mixture including a particular animal’s manure to help make it waterproof. The very last layer was intended to be replaced every few years, as the rainwater would wash it away. Some dust would continually percolate past the saguaro ribs over time and having to sweep that dust from your house now and then was normal.
Due to the fire, all that mud-dirt had come down inside the house and had to be taken out and replaced with a new roof. The historic nature of our approach required replacing the same mud materials, which we did. The other two jobs were temporarily on hold. All resources came to this house.
Then I made another of my life’s blunders. Sometimes we think everyone knows what we know or that others should value our opinions more highly. Either way, I did a stupid thing. Without proper explanation or giving background information, I told the Board of Directors of the TBA that due to unspoken reasons either Ellen had to go, or I would go. A group of people who had always done what I suggested, chose not to ask Ellen to go. Obviously. She had been with the project since almost the beginning. I never repeated what José had told me to anyone.
My job was really done, so I quit. The TBA had the funds, resources, staff, the organization, and the Barrio support, so I was no longer needed. I had received a salary for almost one year, enough in savings to carry me over for a month or two. It was time to do something else. I was also proud that the Board did not follow anyone blindly, even if it were me. But what about my own advice of never, never give up? We all learn by experience.
Time to move on? While waiting for funds to arrive, both Ellen and I had been accepted to and had received that summer training by the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (NRC). This was a national organization started with the approval of Congress, to rehabilitate declining neighborhoods. The implementing arm was the Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) specializing in granting loans through participating banks, to reverse and upgrade dilapidating neighborhoods in decline. Excellent six weeks training program, professional, and well run. As good as VISTA, but a deeper training program and with the prospect of a well-paying job.
Towards the end of 1981, I applied for NHS opening in Beaumont Texas, was interviewed, and hired. I left the TBA in capable hands and it was time for me to move on. My salary would be three times higher for much less demanding, stressful work.
Texas
I did not do as well in Texas as I had done in Tucson. Also, I was in a hurry to do in a few months what had taken us years to accomplish in the Barrio, and that didn’t happen. In Beaumont TX, the NRC had done the job of getting favorable City support for the program, and three bankers sat on the Board, all pledging to give low interest loans to deserving residents in the selected neighborhood. It was well thought out in making the private sector responsible for making success possible.
I had learned how to interview and qualify individuals and families, so a lending institution would approve the loan. I now knew some of the tricks involved in lending. According to the classic movie “Giant” with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean, Beaumont Texas is where oil was first discovered in the United States. The neighborhood was ethnically homogeneous and giving out loans was not a difficult challenge. The neighborhood was a memory of the high times of the oil industry, but now in economic decline, from the loss of jobs, with old houses in need of repairs, potholes in the street, and full of many vacant properties. Still, recovery was feasible. Beaumont program was different from Tucson in that there the leadership came from the top down, while in Tucson we did it from the bottom up.
One idea I was excited about was to do a jogging trail with exercise obstacles, along a wide path created by the towers of high-tension electric power lines. This trail connected the entire neighborhood with the university campus and beyond. However, two things killed it. Firstly, the concern for magnetic fields and cancer, and second, some of the neighbors along the way feared the exposure of homeless and vagrants and transients using the open trail late at night. After years in the desert, it made me want to put a grass path to some good use.
A few months after I had left Tucson, Ellen was dismissed by the TBA Board. I received calls from Board members asking me to return. I was not fair with the Beaumont NHS by not telling them I wanted to go back to Tucson, and when the opportunity to leave was provided, I took it. I was eager to return to Tucson despite a large cut in salary. I had mixed feelings about what I did not accomplish. Despite some negativity, I have very fond memories of Beaumont, its people, and it’s great Lamar University.