A mix of clouds and sun. High 41F. Winds light and variable..

Partly cloudy skies. Low 24F. Winds light and variable. Ql60 Dth Hammer

Wednesday before work, I heard a caterwauling in the backyard and the frantic cries of two women.

Both my dogs were out back, doing their business — I could hear Dolly growling and barking, and Birdie the beagle was yowling.

I popped my head out back and saw Birdie was stuck in the fence, between a two 2-by-6's. In the alleyway was a woman walking her dogs and a nurse from the senior living home next door.

So I pushed the board back and scooped Birdie back up, taking her inside.

I told my wife what happened — she shook her head, because what Birdie lacks in general intelligence, she has made up for her in skill as an escape artist.

She's broken out of crates, bathrooms, cars, you name it. I've been contemplating taking that dog down to the Boyd County Detention Center and challenging Bill Hensley to lock down the facility to see if she would find a way out.

I went out to the garage, grabbed some nails and hammered the boards in so that wouldn't happen again, at least for another week.

As I tapped the first nail into the board, I heard in my head, "tap, tap, drive! tap, tap, drive!"

My father did his best to teach me practical skills growing up. He was a pretty decent shade tree mechanic, so that's what I gravitated toward. I'm that dude in our friend's group who will do your brakes for 50 bucks and a pack of smokes.

But my dad wasn't much for carpentry — he could frame in an interior wall and throw up some sheetrock, cobble together some stairs, but he was by no means great at it and he certainly didn't seek out those types of projects if he could help it.

All this is to say, my father never really sat me down and showed me how to properly drive a nail.

The man who did was some unnamed drunk dude outside of Beckley, West Virginia.

In the summer of 2017, I was working as a temp for a restoration outfit in Hurricane, dealing mostly in the cleanup of water damage, sewer leaks and fires.

While plenty of words were said in that line of work, one that was rarely used was "no."

Any job, big or small, they'd jump right on it, even if it cost more in gas and labor that what it was worth. And they'd send you out all hours day or night — I've got stories upon stories of gunning a work van at 80 mph at 3 in the morning coming back from jobs in Athens and Pikeville.

My work partner Curtis and I got called out to tarp a roof on a house that burned up down some holler near Beckley.

Rather than using a blue tarp, that would sun bleach and rip relatively quickly, we used 6mm-thick reinforced poly sheets — Curtis, an old asbestos man, swore by the stuff.

The man worked in poly all his life, or at least since 1993 when he got hit on a DUI second offense and got into the asbestos removal union as a way to get on work release from the Putnam County jail.

So if Curtis said the poly was good, it was good.

When we get to the house, we set up the ladder and start getting our roll of poly and the nails and the hammers up on the roof.

That's when this shirtless, unshaven, sunburnt drunk guy came staggering up the driveway.

"Hey, I'm the keeper of this here property," he said.

"Are you the owner?" Curtis asked, looking none too pleased.

"No, I'm just keeping an eye on the place," he said.

We explained what we were doing and after a quick phone call to our boss to let him know we had a drunk guy on the job site, we proceed with the work.

I was pretty green in my restoration career, so Curtis, being a bit of a control freak, never really trusted me to hammer in the nails. But the roof was big, the day was hot, so he let me have a shot at it.

The first nail bent like a paper clip. Then the next one and the next one. I hit my finger and was about to throw the hammer, when the drunk guy on the ground yelled up to me:

"Tap, tap, drive!" he said. "Son, you got to tap, tap, drive! Didn't anyone teach you how to hammer a nail?"

In the moment, burning on top of this roof, I was about to tap, tap, drive my hammer into this man's skull. But Curtis started riding my hind-end, so I did what I was told.

And lo and behold, it worked!

Then the next nail — tap, tap, drive.

We went right along — I bent a few more nails, but for the most part, I got my end of the tarp done.

The hole in the roof was quite large, so we were about to get off it to take a break, when suddenly I saw the ladder moving.

"What the hell are you doing?" we shouted to the drunk.

"Oh, I'm just moving it over to your side over here," he said, staggering with it.

After I had visions of having to jump off this roof and breaking my ankle, the old drunk set the ladder on the other side of the house. Curtis gave him a pretty good cussing and the drunk wandered home.

I don't know if that guy's even alive, but if you are ... random drunk guy outside of Beckley, West-By-God, thank you for teaching me how to hammer a nail.

Reach HENRY CULVYHOUSE at henry@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.

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