"Just a tad bit of Friendly handiwork" by Andrew B

It was November 8, 2015 10:00 am 3433 Florence Avenue Bullhead City, AZ, as the sun blinds me as I pull my phone down from taking my first of many pictures to come. As I stood looking down upon the then dirt outline of what became the foundation, my father looks up at me and weakly, with a false sense of confidence vainly trying to fool the rest of us that he is not in any way nervous, inquires “Are you ready?”. All I get out is a worried head nod, as I feel the wind on my legs and the quietness of the desert, my body grips with nervousness. We are getting ready to do a job that will require many a long day and hours upon hours of work, I am insane for saying yes to this. That weekend we go home worried about what we got ourselves into. Two weeks pass by and Thanksgiving Break cuts out a small amount of time to start the massive project of building a house. We get to the site around 9 p.m. Friday the 20^th of November and as we are pulling up we see our brand-new, bought for the reason of shelter while building a new shelter, 30-foot trailer that we would call home for the weekends for sixth months. We take those first steps out of our toasty warm car into the icy cold air with winds of speeds up to 40 mph and immediately my heart sinks seeing the massive amount of lumber in our dirt driveway, however, I , the optimist, pray out loud to my little brother Adam, 11 at the time, “Hopefully it is only like this at night”. The next day, an early morning, starting at the butt crack of dawn: 6 a.m. We began our journey with 4 men (Brandon Lawler, Oliver Chi, Steve Burger and my father: Dan Brown), Adam and I with the magical number of 16, the number of inches from one stud (a 2x4) to the next, marking where each stud was to be placed. By the end of that first day we completed the exterior frame of the house. The next day we continued framing, however, things took a turn for the worse that night. We needed to move a 16-foot-long beam that was 18” by 6” at a whopping 500 lbs. to our back porch from the driveway. We began with all 5 of the older guys carrying the behemoth, but, we only made it to the side of the house before having to set it down. We began the next length by discussing where we were going to set it down. Mind you it was already about 9 p.m., the wind picked up chilling us to our very bones. Through the cold and fatigue we marched a total of 100 feet carrying what felt like a boulder and when we reached destination, my father started a countdown to set the beast down yelling to be heard over the wind, “THREE… TWO… ONE… DOWN!”. “GET IT OFF” I hear as Brandon yells at all of us as he and I realize his foot is still under the beam. I shout to everyone, “PICK IT BACK UP IT IS ON HIS FOOT! ONE, TWO, THREE, LIFT!!”. He removed his foot with no pain as he says that the beam only caught the tip of his shoe. I see his foot is clear and I give the order “DROP!”. This time he screams, “MY FINGER IS UNDER IT NOW!”. I instantly dropped to my knees, placed my shoulder against the beam, and shoved the beam off of his crushed finger. He runs to the trailer where his wife, who is a nurse, tells us he needs to go to the emergency room. My father, Brandon and Oliver leave for the E.R. and do not return until midnight with Brandon’s middle finger stitched and bandaged. Despite this terribly revolting and painful event, Brandon returned every weekend starting Winter Break, always there when my father needed him doing his best during the time we worked. Brandon was there through everything, from framing to putting up sheer, to running wires, to putting in all the doors and windows, to lighting, to flooring and finally the furniture. The message I aim for my readers to understand comes in the form of a quote from my Dad. One time, as we ate breakfast in the trailer inside the partially finished garage (we were not allowed to sleep in the house because the occupation inspection done yet), my Dad looked over at me and started with, “I could not have done this without you. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.” From here he then goes into one of those, “I want to lecture you but not truly lecture you” kind of lectures “Son you have seen how Brandon comes here every weekend that he was available? Why do you think that is?”. After a few seconds of silence, my Dad answers himself, “He was here every weekend for one reason. I know this sounds cheesy, but, Andrew, he did it as a way to strengthen our friendship. I want you to understand that in life the only thing that matters are those that you surround yourself with because when you truly need help they come to help you.” Long story short that is the reason why we are currently helping Brandon build a pool house and an extension onto his main house.