Dispatch 11
TEARDOWN TIME
Welcome to The Strata, a bi-weekly newsletter that tells a serialized story about the making of my first feature film and updates you on our Impact Campaign.
Flood launched nationwide on PBS Independent Lens on July 13. For a limited time, anyone in the US can watch here for free:
Dispatch 11: TEARDOWN TIME
It is late afternoon in October. The heat has lifted, the quail are out, and the mountains glow purple. After eight hours of filming fourth grade, I am bone tired.
Not so Mister Scoggin. My dad has entered the next phase of his day, in which he will go to battle with the yellow patches on the front lawn. He has a long history of waging war against our house troubles. He finally repaired the leaky roof and obstinate plumbing, but only by having the whole place demolished.
It happened when I was in college. I came home for winter break to find a thicket of 2x4s protruding from the concrete foundation where our house had stood. I had misunderstood my father’s use of the word “renovation.” We spent Christmas in a motel. My parents installed a camping trailer on our driveway and lived there for a year while they waited for the rebuild to complete. The trailer was so narrow that the family dog had to walk in and back out, tail first, since there wasn’t room for him to turn around.
The new house has the same footprint with a different face. Its pipes run smoothly. Its slanted roof doesn’t leak into the fireplace because there isn’t one. But there is central air, so nobody has to sweat under a swamp cooler like my sister and I did growing up. I’m staying in my old bedroom, which has lost its vaulted ceiling, but which is still oblong with a street-facing window. The old one was simpler to open, and I would climb out of it on angry nights. Sometimes I forgot my shoes, I was so mad, and I’d run till my feet were red. Nobody ever knew I was gone.
I peer through the window at my dad using a rototiller to whip the lawn up like frosting. He plans to cut out the yellow and reseed. I go out to help. I take the front door.
The manual labor feels good and refreshing. Dad gives me instructions, and I follow them as best I can. When it’s dark and cool out, we go on a run. We take the fire road, a dirt path that cuts into the foothills that flank our neighborhood and fold into the San Bernardino Mountains. He starts telling stories.
Back during the teardown time, I never asked him why he destroyed one house to build another. You couldn’t ask why; you could either step in line or get out of his way.
As we jog, he tells me about building the Lake House with his father. It was to become their family’s summer home in North Carolina. I know it well because my sister and our cousins and I spent joyous summers there with extended family. We slept piled on bunk beds, impaled worms on fishhooks, and wobbled atop waterskis, thanks to the boating skills of patient uncles. I ate bottomless bowls of sugar cereal that I refilled till the milk was gone.
My dad helped his father build the Lake House from the ground up. They hauled tools, mixed concrete, and slept on the foundation. It was hard labor, and my dad had to miss all the middle school dances, which he regretted terribly. But now, he says, he cherishes the time he spent working alongside his father. The one part he dreaded was the hourlong drive to and from the construction site because his father wouldn’t talk to him. My dad would agonize, trying to conjure something – anything – he could say that might emit more than a single-word answer from his dad. He never figured it out.
It’s dark and chilly when we get home, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt such warmth with my dad. As we head toward the house, a set of headlights pulls into the driveway: my mom, home from her nursing job. She and I greet each other with joy and mirth, as we always do. I give her a squeeze and turn to rejoin my dad.
But he’s disappeared into the house without a word. Whatever portal opened this evening has, for the time being, clapped shut.
To be continued.
FLOOD IMPACT UPDATES & ASKS
1. IT IS WATCH PARTY TIME!
Like these Brooklynites, you too can host a live or virtual Flood watch party! Invite your friends, club, team, neighbors, and/or chosen family to watch Flood together (or simultaneously online), have a bite and a bevvy, and talk about it afterward.
Use this link to book a Zoom Q&A with Katy!
Questions? Email impact@archelonfilms.com, and we’ll get you going.
2. YOUR FEEDBACK IS HELPING TO SHAPE OUR IMPACT CAMPAIGN
If you’ve watched Flood, please fill out this super brief feedback form. Early aggregated feedback is already helping us to frame our post-screening Q&As and conversations in ways that bridge divides in families and communities. Your feedback is vital to helping us build!
3. READ THE SARAH MCCAMMON INTERVIEW WITH KATY
Check out Katy’s recent conversation with Sarah McCammon, journalist and author of the NY Times bestseller The Exvangelicals. Read her book and check out her excellent new politics and policy podcast, What It Takes.
Thank you for reading THE STRATA. Please subscribe and share with your down the street neighbor who is always roping you into chats that you don’t know how to get out of but which somehow enrich your life.