I’ve never been able to sit still and watch someone struggle with a problem I know how to fix. Call it a flaw, call it a gift; either way, it’s followed me my whole life, and looking back, some of my favorite stories aren’t about anything I built for myself. They’re about the things I fixed for other people.
The Police Car That Sat For Years
My neighbor here in Bristol, Indiana, owned the local coin shop. He had a 1996 Chevy police cruiser sitting in his garage, untouched, because everyone had told him the power steering repair was too much of a headache to bother with. I looked at it for about thirty seconds, climbed in, turned the wheel, and had the line off in five minutes. Ordered the part, and the next afternoon we were driving a car that had been parked since 1996.
His friends had told him it was a huge job. It wasn’t. Sometimes the biggest obstacle between a problem and a solution is just somebody willing to actually look at it.
The $12,000 Quote And A Bush Cutter
Later, that same neighbor had a backyard that had gone completely wild: fallen limbs, waist-high weeds, and an eight-foot log just sitting there like a monument to neglect. A
cleanup company quoted him $12,000 to clear it. I walked over, kicked the log to the curb for brush pickup day, grabbed a bush cutter, and had the whole thirty feet cleared myself. Then tilled it into a flower bed sixty feet long.
I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying it because too many people pay a fortune for things that just take a little time and a willingness to get your hands dirty.
Eighteen Weeks That Changed A House And A Friendship
That same friend’s upstairs was a wreck: drywall torn out, hundreds of storage boxes stacked five high, so much weight the ceiling below had actually started to sag. It took two months just to clear the junk out. Then I spent the next eighteen weeks tearing down plaster, moving walls, running electrical, doing the plumbing, tiling, turning two unusable rooms into a real bedroom and bathroom.
When I finished the last piece, an electric stair rail, he crawled up those stairs on his hands and knees, one at a time, just to see what I’d done. He’d had a leg removed not long before, from diabetes. He passed away not long after that. I think I was one of the last people who really saw him.
I still think about that moment. Not because it was sad, though it was, but because it reminded me that the things you build for people outlast the people themselves, sometimes. That house is still standing. That work is still there.
The Girl In The Back Seat
Not every story like this is about lumber and drywall. Years ago, I noticed a young woman meeting up with a drug dealer out in the woods near a house I was working on, with a two-year-old boy strapped into the back seat of her car. I sat down and talked with her about where that road was headed.
I offered to pay for her nursing school and help support her son through tenth grade if she got herself out of that situation. Two weeks later, she took me up on it. Sixteen years later, that boy graduated. She built a life. I never asked for anything back, and honestly, I never expected to hear from either of them again, and I haven’t. That’s fine. That was never the point.
Why I Keep Doing It
I don’t have some grand philosophy about why I help. I just can’t watch a problem sit there unsolved when I know how to solve it. Whether it’s a stalled police cruiser, an overgrown yard, or a person standing at a fork in the road they don’t know how to navigate, if I can do something about it, I generally will.
Retirement was supposed to slow me down. It hasn’t, not really. There’s always another flower bed, another broken fence, another neighbor who needs a hand. I’ll keep showing up for it as long as my shoulders let me.
This story and dozens more like it are part of my memoir, a life spent building, fixing, and showing up for the people around me. Read the full book to see where it all started.
