Unfinished Columns 2003

© 2004 R.C. Barajas

Hello again!
Back again for more. Below you'll find 3 columns I never quite managed to finish. I think honesty requires I disclose even the abandoned pieces - plus I'm kind of cleaning house, as it were. You'll probably see why I never finished them. However, it is your lot as my reader to have me send you stuff, polished or not. Distinctly not, below. I'm just getting my feet wet again. More writing to come, I hope. Next up, Column 38.
Love, Russell

Window Treatment
Column 34 (unfinished)
June-ish '03

he binder in front of me was as thick as a New York phone book. The compact, athletic young man who would not have been out of place at a noontime kegger, assured me with sparkling teeth that he was totally not going to require me to read the whole thing. He told me he usually did the big window presentations to home-owners associations and such, and was only handling a few of these single-home on-site estimates during this busy season. He was, he told me as he turned the plastic-encased pages of the tome in front of me, the company's marketing director.

As if I couldn't guess.

This second estimate guy was personable, knowledgeable, adorable... and told me about his own big friendly well-adjusted dogs while Mocha, hackles raised, grumbled and skulked distrustfully around the perimeter. He spent much of the first 15 minutes warning me about unscrupulous contractors - or worse, sub-contractors - who waited to kick my windows into place, slapdash, and who would then fall off a ladder, break a leg or back, and sue me, since I am responsible if they are injured on my property and did I know that? He hoped I was checking his competition's insurance paperwork VERY carefully. He showed me his insurance papers, as well as their letter of good standing with the Better Business Bureau. He showed me his product - a 100% vinyl window, double-glazed around argon gas, a low-E coating, with good U-factor and R-value, tilt-in sash, 3-part lock, and maintenance-free lifetime warrantee. All in all, this guy was working hard for his six thousand-odd bucks.

'Course, he didn't do what the first guy did - produce two seemingly identical panes of glass and then whip out a huge infrared bulb, plug it in, and shine it through the two, having me put my hand behind the glass to feel how the heat poured through the single pane and not at all through the double-glaze with all the trimmings. And this guy, skinny and soft-spoken in a William H. Macy kind of way, clearly had a bad back and yet had schlepped the cumbersome case all the way up the stairs to show me his cute infrared trick. Plus he'd apologized if he sounded spacey - said his doctor had just put him on some new meds that were making him feel kind of foggy. I imagined him crawling with dogged determination to his car that morning, pulling the heavy case in one trembling hand, clutching his key in clenched teeth. Must get to work - wife and kids counting on me - c'mon you bastard legs, move! His is a family-owned business and was given top marks by our area's consumer magazine.

Now, the third estimate guy had been a different sort all together. A busy contractor, he does a brisk side business in high-end window replacement, and warned me up front that his method was nothing like the wham-bam style of the vinyl system. He uses only Andersen wood windows. Not only that, he replaces all interior and exterior trim at the same time. He has two guys who do only this. He pointed to my neighbors across the street and said that he'd done at least three houses on that street alone. It's just an entirely different look, he explained, intimating that any other look was - oh come on, tacky, really. His method took more time to install - 4 or 5 days at least - as any quality workmanship should. I knew I was being prepared for sticker shock. He'd had a sample window in his truck, but it was raining and, well, he really hated to get wet...

Should the fact that his company was written up in the conservative - OK, loony - Washington Times help me to rule him out?

continued...