Up On The Roof

The house my parents live in is over a hundred years old.
Well, parts of it are, anyway. Other parts are newer. Half of the kitchen is about forty years, the family room is thirty-two, the indoor porch is about twenty-five, and the in-law apartment is fifteen.
Some of those additions were added on to the outside of two-story brick parts of the house, leaving internal brick walls. The family room has a flat, tar roof which is attached to the brick wall by a wide, curved, rising seam which seals it.
Just over a decade ago, severe weather badly damaged that seal.
Early in October of 1998, I was living with my parents. Sitting in the living room on a rainy day, watching television, I noticed movement along the wall. When I looked, I saw water running down the entire length of the interior brick wall! I yelled for Dad, shoved myself up off the couch (I was pregnant) and rushed to get towels. We moved everything away from the wall and placed towels on the floor to catch the dripping. Dad called a local roofing company and was told that they couldn't do anything in the rain, but they would be there within the next two weeks.
During that next two weeks, Dad called them again, and so did Mom, and each received assurance that our house would receive a visit. Apparently, October is a busy month for companies which do repairs on roofs.
I pondered the problem, and came up with my usual solution, but that would involve going out on the roof. I didn't want to do that if I didn't have to, so I decided to take a wait and see attitude.
The last Saturday of the month, friends of mine had a Halloween party. I was dressed in my gypsy costume and ready to go, when it began to sprinkle. It had looked and smelled like rain for hours, and the weatherman had been calling for heavy rain, so I knew more was coming. The roofing company hadn't been to our house. If something wasn't done, the water coming in was going to be much worse this time. This was a seam that was over 20 feet long, and the entire thing had unsealed. We could have a scale model of Niagara Falls inside our house.
It was time to implement my solution.
Grabbing a huge roll of duct tape from Dad's tool box, I headed up the stairs, through my parents' bedroom, and out the window onto the roof. Yup... I went out there with my over-sized belly, hanging sleeves, three skirts, and high-heeled boots. I wonder what the neighbors thought!
This idea did not sit well with my parents, who pointed out to their daughter the Weeble-in-training, "You can't go out there! You're pregnant!"
I refrained from mouthing off ("Oh-mih-GAWD, really? I thought I was just getting fat.") Instead, I reminded them that I was on a flat roof, wasn't doing acrobatics, and would be just as safe as if I were inside the room instead of on top of it. Ordinarily, I'm a pretty good salesman. Unfortunately, my parents weren't buying it.
During the argument that followed, I plastered the twenty foot long split in the roof with duct tape, adding about an extra foot at each end to completely cover the crack. I used the entire roll, creating an eight-inch-wide strip, which extended a couple of inches on the roof side of the crack, and a couple of inches up the wall. Finally, when my parents were beginning to sound really panicked about my location, I ripped off the last bit of tape, patted it down, and went back in through the window. The kid who used to run back and forth on the hand-over-hand part of the jungle gym at the park with no concern for gravity or balance... had survived walking around on a flat surface, twelve feet above ground. Yay!
I hoped the duct tape would give us a few weeks of protection until the roofing company showed up.
It lasted way longer than that.
Fall was a busy season at the Andrews household. As photojournalists, we were covering seven varsity sports at the local high school and surrounding schools. In addition, we had senior portraits and weddings to shoot. There was something going on six days a week, and often on Sundays, too. My parents didn't have time to keep calling the roofing company. Eventually, they forgot about the roof. The duct tape held through an entire year of Ohio weather; freezing rain, snow, thunderstorms, hail, searing heat and bright sun. Then, it held through another year, and part of a third, until two bad springtime storms in a row did further damage to the house; one with a lightning strike that hit the corner of that roof, and the other with a tornado which dropped a big piece of a tree on it, and twisted our UHF tower down onto it. This time, my parents called a different company to repair the roof.
When the guys showed up to do the repairs the first thing they asked about was the duct tape.
"Did you come out here in the middle of the storm?" one guy wanted to know.
When I told them how long ago I'd put the tape on the roof and lamented how bad it must look, he informed me that barely any of it had come loose - only the edges - and it probably would have held for quite a while longer. He seemed really impressed.
The repairs, of course, have held much, much longer than that. They re-tarred the roof over the whole room, re-sealed the seam, and re-shingled part of the eaves where the bolt had hit... and gave me kudos for my work.
I love duct tape!