30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Thirty Six: Karma Yoga

The Juice Bar project was nearing completion. Woodley had pretty much finished the solid walnut and redwood bar, Paul was putting the finishing touches on the cedar seating booths, and I had shifted over to installing a wainscoting in the bathroom to comply with sanitation requirements.

Jay called us all to a meeting, where he announced that due to the unexpectedly high cost of fixtures, appliances, furnishings and such, he had no money with which to pay us for the labor that we had put in on the project. While this wasn't really what we wanted to hear, we decided that we would complete the building of the business as an act of Karma Yoga, which was to say that in deference to payment with currency, we would trust that our efforts would be repaid in another manner. Besides, we weren't just going to bail out on Jay, and all of us wanted to see the Juice Bar open.

Not more than two or three days later, Paul and I were sitting in the nearly completed space having a lunch break when a hip-looking guy came in. We tried to shoo him out, telling him that we weren't open yet, but he said that he had noticed the Housetruck parked in front, and thought that this would be a good place to find some workers for a project that he needed help with. We told him that we were already busy with this job that didn't pay, and so didn't really have time for anything else. His response was to say that "This job pays $4.00 an hour". Paul and I simultaneously replied "We'll take it, what do we have to do?"

The job, it turned out, was to do finish-up work on a house that his mother had purchased and remodeled in the posh Hendricks Park area of town. The regular carpenters and tradesmen had finished the heavy work and moved along to the next project on their schedules, leaving small projects such as painting trim uncompleted. This fellow's mother wanted a couple of reliable and skilled workers to complete the jobs, help hang artwork on the walls, do minor carpentry, etc.

Paul and I got the directions to the house and met the guy there. We were introduced to JoAnne, his mother, and showed the first bit of work, which was to refinish the redwood framing in the floor of the sun room in the house. We scheduled a day and time to be there, and went back to the Juice Bar to complete our tasks and get it ready to open.

The day we showed up to begin the floor, we were introduced to Grandma Zim, JoAnne's mother, who also lived in the house. Paul and I worked part time for a few days sanding and preparing the floor for a finishing coat of varnish. The sun room adjoined the kitchen, and when we began varnishing, we worked from the far corner, painting the varnish on with brushes until we passed the sliding glass door to the kitchen. We put large masking tape "X"s on the glass of the door, to remind Grandma to not enter the sun room, then painted past the door and out another door that led into the storage room, which had an outside door. Just to be sure, we locked the door between the sun room and the shop behind us.

As we were cleaning up our brushes, we could hear Grandma in the kitchen walk over to the glass door and slide it open. We both held our breath, but we had instructed her to not enter the room due to the wet paint. Just as we began to relax, we heard Shana, the family's Keishound dog running through the kitchen, and Grandma Zim shouting NO! NO! Of course, the dog ran past her, though the open door and onto the freshly painted floor. All we could do was listen though the locked shop door. Shana realized that something was wrong, slammed on the brakes, slid to a fast stop with claws digging in, and ripped back into the kitchen with varnish-covered paws.

Paul and I got paid twice for doing that particular job.

Here's a photo of the sun room after the second application of varnish had dried and the furniture moved back in. The white flooring is painted concrete, with redwood 4x4 inset framing.

Projects on this house were many, and we continued to make ourselves useful several times every week. The Juice Bar was soon finished and opened for business. We had trusted that helping Jay open the Bar would lead us to some manner of reward, and the great Karmic wheel had turned in our favor, and more quickly that either of us had imagined possible.