A Builder's Tale Prologue Chapter - Start here. I once designed and built unique residences. I have used this experience as the basis of my 2nd novel, 'A Builder's Tale'
Audio is Female Hal.
Finally placed here July 17, 2022.
I once designed and built unique residences. I have used this experience as the basis of my 2nd novel, 'A Builder's Tale' set in 1998 - the story of a resort town and the people in it and a builder- architect and his clients, and the characters who make up a construction project, hung on the design and fabrication of a large home...what this entails, with the creative design process included, as well as the economy and the nature of man, set in the USA, before the twin towers disaster. Skiing and sailing are also mentioned as well as the history of Northern Michigan. And, of course, it is a love story, love of creativity, love of design and building, and the love of a woman.
The book begins in the Colorado mountains. I'm serializing the chapters before I publish it next year. The sub stack serialized version will be free.
Prologue
“ It all starts somewhere.”
Imagine you are aboard a satellite, or an eagle on the wing. Had you gazed downward toward Colorado’s central mountains on this Spring March morning in 1998, you might have seen a man—Wilson Abernathy, lying on his back, arms extended, settled into a pile of snow. Zooming in for a closer look, you would observe that he was thin, angular, fortyish and fit with a tan face nascent in progression towards a portrait of a life. Joy and woe are beginning to form fissures in his face. A slight hollow concaves the edges of his cheeks. Small furrows crease his forehead. All of these, anticipate a countenance that will someday hold bagged eyes and deep grooves from life’s passage.
But not yet, for in early middle age Abernathy looks at life from deep blue eyes, the skin about them slightly wrinkled and creased from smiles. His skin is weathered, a testament to a life lived as much outdoors as in. It is an acceptable face, sometimes handsome, sometimes not, depending on his mood or the angle of his head, or whether he is in repose or alert with thought.
At this moment he wears no hat, and the flipped curls at the ends of his hair have gone dirty blond from a winter in the sun. Abernathy rests supine, observing a sky impossibly blue, squinting from the light of a sun brighter than at sea level— Leonardo’s image of man, on his back at 11,000 feet, clothed, with cross-country skis splayed acute at the ends of long stretched legs and feet.
With the slightest movement of arms or legs, Wilson might have made a snow angel. Instead he rests quiet, staring skyward, surrounded by one of those Colorado mountain spring days when you can see and sense the glitter in the air, flashes from the corner of the eye and gone as if tiny particles of the oxygen itself were expanding into thousands of small explosions.
However, it was not the light's complexity that held his thoughts, rather it was the clouds drifting slow above him, their puffed white shapes transforming into rolling hills and houses.
Wilson Abernathy was a builder and an architect. At various times in his life, he has worked almost every construction trade, from the filthy to the clean, worker and management. On this day he is also a backcountry skier, alone in the mountains near Aspen, Colorado, remaining where he fell, not because he was tired or hurt but because of a musing's excuse for tracing houses in the sky.
Wilson had needed the winter off. He had thought he needed years, and perhaps he would have taken them if he could. Left Michigan forever and never returned if his sculptured flowing residence of glass and stone and massive beams and high soaring space had sold. It and his boat, the mooring, and the water. Sell it all. That had been the plan. Sell out... quit...escape for a time...reexamine...live modestly. But now he wondered, staring at these clouds: even if it all went tomorrow, even if he found himself financially secure, was that what he wanted?
It had already been five months, and he was thinking again of houses. Waking up in the middle of the night from dreams of spaces he had never seen or walked or lived in. Dreams of stairs just so and beams just right and windows the proper height, ridge beams not too high or low but perfect in proportion. Dreaming of residences where the spaces soared enough to be grand, but not so much to diminish. That fine balance which was almost never right, but easy for him if he had the dreams. And he was dreaming again of houses.
Departing Michigan, moving back to the mountains, he had planned to start over. And, with this in mind, he had formed a Colorado company, bought insurance, taken tests, and paid for licenses. There was now a project waiting if he wanted—A remodel he had designed for a musician friend. He had felt this would be enough. It would give him time to ride his bike again...to hike and think of other things, but lying here in the snow, he was not so sure. The recent dreams and these houses in the sky made him wonder.
Was it enough and would it provide enough money if the coming spring and summer passed and he remained living in Colorado while still paying a whopping mortgage on a piece of empty ‘architectural brilliance’ in Michigan?
You might ask, doesn’t brilliance sell? The answer is not always, and not this bit of Wilson’s “brilliance” ... not when you have built unique beauty and space while the market has switched to old and moldy. That was the problem; he was trapped by the past, his recent and the more distant of a hundred years before.
It had become apparent; most of the nouveau riche who wanted a second home in Northern Michigan wished to pretend that grandpa had been a Rockefeller or a Fisk and not a tradesman, small-time salesman, or a factory man. They could not, of course, dust the common from their clothes. They should not have wished to do so. They should have listened to more Aaron Copland. But they, like generations before them, longed for social cleansing and thus did not want what he was selling. And Wilson was not selling old and moldy and English prints. He had not been so callous, or unprincipled, to embrace this fraud as Ralph Lauren had done with clothes (and perhaps Ralph did like old, but he doubted it). Anyway, he did not know Ralph Lauren, but he knew Lauren was rich and he knew he was not.
It had not entered his imagination that demand might shrink. His first project had been a success, and it was different, unique. But as the saying goes, “the masses are asses”, and these new wealthy fit the saying. In Wilson’s mind, they were no different. No different from new money, anytime or anywhere, no different from the horribly rich Robber Barons of Twain’s Gilded age who had thieved and stolen and then attacked old money with their New Port Rhode Island. No different than Dickens' Golden Dustman.
Wilson built for people with the confidence of old money. But the only ones buying were those with new, and these folks wanted old. Oh, there had been a few with interest, enough to keep him busy. But these clients had sought his unique design and quality for their own special projects, and not his house. Otherwise, he was discovering that people confident in their own taste are rare in the world.
It was this same day, later, in the evening, after he had returned to his small apartment, when the phone rang with a possible serendipity. When he reluctantly rose and answered, it was a call from Michigan. A call from a man he did not know or had not heard of, knew nothing about at all. But the man knew of him.
“Wilson Abernathy”, the phone cracked and snapped with a poor connection, “Wilson Abernathy, I’m looking for Wilson Abernathy.”
“You have him,” he said.
“Where are you?” said the phone. “Is this Colorado?”
“Right again,” said Wilson. “Who is it?”
“Is this the builder?” said the phone.
“Architect Builder,” he replied.
“Well, sure, I knew that. This is Tim Stevens. I’ve heard of you...seen that house you did on Lake Arnaud. I may be interested in you”.
“Oh…K,” said Wilson. “Tell me, I don’t think I know you. Have we met?”
“No,” said the phone. “No, we haven’t. But I’ve seen the house you built on Lake Arnaud.”
“I’ve done a few,” said Wilson, grabbing a beer from the refrigerator and sitting down. “Which one was it?”
“Charlie Larsen’s,” said the phone. “Charlie’s a friend of a friend of mine, and we were over there last Christmas. I liked the house. Are you interested in building a house for me?”
“Perhaps,” said Wilson.
Could this be the answer? Was this the reason for his recent dreams, the day, the houses in the sky?
“Tell me. What are you looking for?” said Wilson, half listening as this unknown Tim rattled on about the location, his lot, and how beautiful, and “the view”, and that he wanted a builder to start building soon.
“How soon?” said Wilson?
“We’d like to start next month. I need a builder. I’ve talked to a few already, but I liked that house of Charlie’s...Looks like you know what you’re doing.”
Typical, he thought, typical. He looked at the house in December. It figures. He could have called months ago. But now it’s spring. So now it’s go-go-go. These guys are all the same. They are the demanding center of their world.
Tim continued to ramble on. Wilson was half paying attention; he had experienced the same conversation so many times before. Finally, he interrupted. “You know I designed it too. I only do them if I do the designs, and build, and supervise the entire project.”
“Sure, sure,” said this unknown Tim. “Sure, I understand, so how much do you charge? These other guys said they could build for one seventy five a foot.”
“It depends on what you build,” said Wilson, thinking why do they always ask that stupid question…as if houses were cans of soup or a pair of pants, all the same? “I may be interested,” he continued. “But I don’t bid. I’ll give you an estimate once we have the plans. Usually I am within ten percent, or so, if nothing changes.”
“That fellow McCray said maybe less than two. Do you know him?”
“No,” said Wilson, ignoring the two. “It would mean switching gears… I had planned to stay here, in Colorado. There’s a project I was about to start. I suppose I could set it up and keep track of it from there. I’ve a friend...” There was no need to tell the guy that it was a remodel and that he was not that excited about it. Houses in the sky?
“Look, I need more information. And I am only interested if I design your project, if it is something special, something I can be proud of. Then, yes, I think I could come back for a special project. Can you fax and E-mail me anything you have? And send me a survey. Do you have a survey?”
“The one that came with the lot.”
“That’s probably not good enough. Send me the information. As soon as I get it, I’ll get back to you. Look, send me everything you have. Is it a subdivision?”
“I think so,” said this Tim of the phone. “Yes, it must be. There are flags all over the place.”
“Ok, send me the rules, the envelopes, everything you’ve got. I’ll look, and we can talk. Send it Fed-Ex, and we can talk in a couple of days.”
“Got it,” said the phone, “looking forward to it.”
Wilson was about to say more, about to mention that he would send him one of his questionnaires, but the phone went dead. The fellow had hung up.
There you go, he thought. Here’s the opportunity. Do you want it? Oh, but you don’t know, do you? And no, now he was again not so sure. There had been a reason for his exit to Colorado. Remember how you felt when you left? A reason for it, you were sick of it. As if a few hours of thinking of designs are enough to switch again, God, are you indecisive. He was not sure. He always became so involved—If he went back, if he started again? The project would probably consume him for at least two years. True fulfillment was selfish with time. Do you want this? Again? It would leave him with only a few weeks of skiing and a little summer sailing for the next two years or three.
Is this what you want? It’s decision time, baby!
And, after a while, his demon shouting, advising, his searching for a decision, he decided that if he could have it as he wished, he would remain in Colorado. There had been a reason for retreating here, he thought. He had been sick of it, and he was tired of that gossipy little Michigan town, too. This little, smaller, project would be ‘Just alright’. He could look for more. But, there was the matter of his empty house.
He looked around the little apartment, thinking that living in that Lake Arnaud home was like living in light and sculpture. His sculpture. And Michigan would be warm in summer, not cold for a while.
He could go sailing again...couldn’t do that in the mountains and his boat was just sitting there in dry dock, waiting.
He imagined his little sloops surging rise and fall. Its movement up and down the waves, wings of sail full, mass and momentum, and he smelled the water, that morning crisp Lake Michigan water, and a north wind sending the haze from the sky...the wind on his face as he reached north, and then this circle of thought would hit him again. Rotating around his questions, fueled by four beers, two whiskeys, and the three CDs of Gounod’s Faust. He could not decide. Aware that it was a decision for tomorrow, or when he learned more, and as Margarita rose to heaven and Faust went down to hell, he fell asleep where the houses came again, and then dreams of sailing, and music he had never heard.
********************************************************
Events moved rapidly over the next week. Tim’s material arrived. Wilson spoke with the surveyor and arranged for a more detailed survey and its transmission by E-mail to his computer. His realtor called, saying “Your house is not selling,” wishing for Wilson to lower the price, and Wilson had fired him. Summer was the selling season. He would market it himself.
Tim Stevens examined Wilson’s portfolio and agreed to Wilson’s terms.
Not yet certain with his decision to leave Colorado, Wilson spoke with his former client Charlie Larson, who asked his friend, who asked his friend, about the nature and the character of Tim. Tim Stevens was rich from restaurant franchises, and of solid reputation. He was an honest man, they said.
With his mind almost made up, he inquired into wetlands on the Steven’s property. Were there any bogs, streams, spring damps, or tiny rivulets which NIMBY neighbors could maneuver with wetland law to keep new neighbors out? These were absent, or approved for building, by the Department of Natural Resources of Michigan and the Army Corp of Engineers.
He read the subdivision’s covenants, the height limits, the parameters of design, the stone, the wood, the required appearance, which seemed to be anything one wanted as long as there were no asphalt shingles, fake stone, or “bad” exterior colors to the house. A contract was signed.
And so, if you were traveling on the interstate in Early April, you might have seen Wilson Abernathy. A man of almost middle age, who had pulled up his real and metaphorical stakes yet once again. Rolling, trailer in tow, across the Great Plains of America...Listening to talk radio and imagining the Prairie’s past, its waving grasslands replaced by corn, its Buffalo extinct except as designer beef. It’s Native Americans departed, leaving only their names.
He sensed the possibility that he had made a Faustian bargain at this beginning. A bargain with himself. His life—the devil. His compromise—his soul. His Margarita—his achievement and gain. But there was nothing he could do about it now. The Dye was cast. He could only hope that he made it past part one, the Faust of Gounod, and into Goethe’s part two, where Faust and the Devil built magnificent worlds.