Notes from the Roof

Every blog accumulates a few posts that defy filing, and this page is their home: the short observations, the odd photos, and the small moments from twenty years of Minnesota rooftops that never quite fit a category.

A foreman's notebook, October: replaced a roof in Bloomington while a turkey vulture supervised from the neighboring oak for six hours. The crew named him Inspector. He approved the ridge cap. A spring photo: a customer's cat who insists on supervising every ladder move, and who has now been present for three roofs and considers herself staff.

The found-object department: letters blown onto a job site, a 1978 baseball card under old shingles, a marriage proposal scratched into a deck board by some previous crew, visible only during tear-off, photographed and left for the current owners to discover.

And the thank-you shelf: a jar of homemade pickles from a North Oaks client, a hand-drawn thank-you card from a seven-year-old who watched the crane all afternoon, and the coffee mug a church council presented to our foreman, inscribed with the words that summarize our whole trade: Well done, thou dry and faithful roof.

The uncategorized drawer stays open. Roofs keep producing stories.