Raising the Fourth Roof

 A little background about the whole of the National YMCA Alumni Service Project. So it turns out that all the camp directors, managers, organizers, and even the cooks that work for the various YMCA camps all over the United States all get amazing pensions. They also organized as alumni, and the alumni organization wasn't all that active and was starting to die off.

Some of the folks in charge of the organization decided to try and do a national service project, and a bunch of folk got really excited about it. They solicited ideas from various Y's all over the country and ended up accepting the proposal by the YMCA of the Seven Council Fires in Dupree. It is the only Y on a Native American reservation, and the idea was to build four houses for single mothers that were looking to get out of generational poverty and multi-generational homes that had problems supporting them appropriately.

So these four homes are set around what is going to be a Medicine Wheel, with a common area in the center. Each home is about 320 square feet plus a loft which is a little less than half the square footage, so about 500 square feet plus a covered porch in front. After the idea was advertised to everyone, the support was so huge that they raised far more money than they'd thought they would, so the idea was originally for containers outfitted to be homes. They upgraded the plans through an architect to these structurally insulated panels (SIPs) to a home that could last many decades.

Part of the design included three framed murals all around the house, which were intended to be filled with art by local artists. We finally got to see artists working on the murals. Today there was a woman and a man working on a single painting, and it was beautiful.

It ended up being 42 SIPs for each house, and today, we got to put up the very last SIP on the fourth house.

Some folks went out to the Badlands to hike about a bit and visit Wall Drug, just to be able to see them. Normally, the organizers of the Project, where urging folks to do all the sightseeing, including Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and the Black Hills.

Ohani was very frank that she felt that no one should go see Mt. Rushmore, as the mountain was one of the sacred mountains for the local tribes. And the government basically slapped all the local tribe in the face by carving their leaders' faces on it. The Black Hills are the home of all the origin stories for the local tribes. It is where they all came from. So this particular crew decided to heed her advice and just go for the Badlands. 

75% of our crew had been here before, so when Friday dawned fairly calm, we all stayed to put the roof onto the last house. The other two days were gusty and would have been made the roof SIPs into sails. And we went fast.

Each SIP was laid out by the folks here, then they'd set up all the screws to set it in, and set all the glue into the channels and the sides. The telehandlers was driven by George and he lifted it up and they set it on the beam, and screwed it into place.

After it was set, they shoved a board into a channel at the top and bottom, that had all the glue set into it when it was all on the ground. And then folks at the bottom and the top would use nail guns to put nails holding each SIP to the glued boards.  It took six to eight people to move each of the SIPs so folks on various jobs all around the place would just drop what they were doing and come and lift when the cry came out to help.

We did all six on one side before lunch. That was very fun. The house base was so straight and square that there wasn't any problem with lining everything up. After lunch, though, it got pretty hot.

I was doing the running for all the guys on the roof. Finding batteries when they were needed, tossing up ropes. Getting nail guns, extra rails of nails, and finding the big plates to let the guy on the roof to have a good anchor to tie himself to so that he couldn't fall off the roof. Three of this particular crew were ergonomics and safety consultants. Walt, Winni, and Jenny were all good at telling folks when they weren't being particularly safe.

Not that we didn't have some fun.

Danny was the leader of the roofing crew because he'd been involved with all the roofs on all four houses. Josiah (Joe) was the prep guy and did the shoving of the connecting boards in. The guy who was willing to hang out all day on the roof was Rob, who's married to Jenni and they're both from Europe, where they'd moved from Colorado. But they were connected to Danny and Winni as friends. Winni and Jenni were doing a lot of the caulking, gluing, and coordinating of folks.

Lisa and Jeff were quietly finishing the plumbing, and John ran around organizing folks with Cathie and Walt and got a lot of other things done, including more steps for porches, the roofs over the porches, and more batten fitting and setting.

Of course the last SIP didn't quite fit and there was some fitting that had to be done. It took a while and people were dehydrated and tired, but we managed it. In the midst of all that, we realized that Frank had relied on the fact that Friday was Excursion day, and we normally never ate at the Y on Friday, so he wasn't set up to cook for us. 

We all ended up in Faith, which is where the hotel is for those that didn't want to stay at the Y. The restaurant was named Horns Up. And this was the entirety of their menu. The waitress said that they had all the beers, and when John asked for Budweiser, she started listing all the beers she actually had, which included a Gold Medello...

Jeff, Lysa, and I ended up having water. And everyone at our table shared the Ribeye between each couple. It was plenty of food, and the steak itself was delicious. They really do raise great beef here. 

The whole group ended up on four different tables. The excursion crew had their own table as they'd arrived half an hour later than the rest of us. But it was tasty, it was food, and we were supporting the local economy, for all that the waitress had a huge TRUMP plastered over her shirt, and some of the looks we got weren't particularly friendly.

We ended up back at the apartment, sharing ice cream and more of John's monster cookies. He makes enormous batches, with nine cups of oats, three jars of peanut butter, and half a dozen eggs. Each batch does eight dozen, and he did five batches, so did about forty dozen. We'd eaten three batches in just two days in the spring. It was a fun evening with everyone that was in the apartments.