Back!

Come to think of it, three nights ago!

Perhaps once or five times a year, everyone should have a complete change of pace. Change of location, schedule, energy output, diet, company, access to technology, and overall lifestyle.

Wednesday through Friday, some of the church College & Career group (try not to feel intimidated) went up to Chicago as a "workteam". To work on what? Zach, a Grace grad who had attended our church, is starting an inner-city school and needs money. How do you get money? Fix up old apartments and rent them out.

We did work, mostly as planned. Accidentally arriving an hour early should have tipped us off. But you see, driving up to Chicago feels like driving up, not driving west, so that extra hour was left somewhere. For our Chicago friends, anyway!

That first morning we went to the apartment. It was a dump in relatively good condition, despite the termites. We tore out a lot of old stuff, such as the only toilet that worked, and plenty of cement, and well-aged fiberglass. If you think new fiberglass is fun to work with, try the old stuff. Fortunately, the guy in charge of the project (Loren - not my dad - from a different church but teaming up with Zach for this project) had stocked all the essentials: gloves, safety glasses, and face masks, which we used liberally. Someone even forgot the face mask which he had flipped up on his head and went looking for another, till we caught him and finally agreed not to lock him up for old age.

That night Loren showed us around his part of town. He lives right on the street separating two worlds: African-American to the north, Hispanic to the south. I got to use my first Spanish in weeks. His church is just across the street from his apartment, four-story, so we climbed up to the roof and took in the Chicago skyline at dusk and the far-off Navy Pier fireworks.

Thursday we all got up at 5:30 a.m. to have prayer with Loren's friends at 6:00 before heading off for breakfast with Zach. Some of the party had beans for breakfast for the first time ever. We didn't go back to the apartment, though, because an inspector had come by Loren's church the day before and informed them that those columns on either side of two doorways had to come down, since they were ready to fall at any moment and scared him just to look at them. Besides his feelings, there was the matter of the $4,000-per-day fine till they were down. Since Loren's pastor couldn't get workers in that fast, a few guys and ourselves took on the project Thursday. They went at the pillars with jackhammers and we went at them with sledgehammers. They had me take lots of photos of their superb prowess, which included spraying down hundreds of bees from that nest they accidentally found. Finally those eight solid columns that were on the verge of falling were pounded and smashed and torn down, mostly anyway, to reveal a delicate structure of brick cores with thick cement surrounding. The three of us who didn't have to go buy cement (for the apartment) spent an hour and a half tossing, pitching, finally heaving bricks and cement pieces into the dumpster. We filled it! Flushed with that success and having no more dumpsters at hand, we had no choice but to clean up and head off to Chicago early on the L (the train), to get in some sights before meeting up with the others for deep-dish pizza.

I really hadn't intended to drag on like this and here it is already 10:30, so you get to save some yawns for tomorrow night's exciting conclusion!