Day 1 Post by Chris: Sometimes the Straightest Path involves a Gasoline-powered Water Gun

For most of my life, my mother's worked in post-construction cleanup. That is to say, she goes in and cleans houses after they've been built, but before they've been sold. My father helps her out when he can, mostly by taking a pressure washer to the sidewalks, driveways, and other flatwork of those same houses. When I started high school, I started helping him out and have continued to do so ever since. In other words, there are very few things I that I truly feel I can do without even thinking about it, but taking a pressure washer to something is on that list.

So, when I showed up this morning and the first question Jacob asked me was if I knew how to work a pressure washer, you can probably imagine the mixture of surprise and relief I felt.

Now, to explain this more properly--as it was explained to me--the brickwork up on Fort Conde needs to be resealed. But, that resealing requires the bricks to be relatively clean. For the most part, the cleaning process has been in someone else's hands; it just so happens that he couldn't make it today, and so the task fell to Jacob to get done if he wanted to stay on schedule, which meant that it fell into my hands as well.

As odd as it may sound, I had anticipated something like this and had a t-shirt in my bag. See, part of the reason I wanted to work on Fort Conde is that I figured it would be the part of the museum that was the most "real" as far as what I could expect from the field, and a large part of why I'm doing this is to help me work out if museum work is something I want to set as a long-term career goal. As such, I anticipated something would come up that would possibly require a change of clothes. In that, I was vindicated.

Regardless, it took us about 2 and a half hours to get the ramparts done to satisfaction. At that point, the phrase "soaked to the gills" is apt to describe my condition. Thus, I spent most of my lunch break in the shop bathroom, attempting to dry out my clothes sufficiently to not make damp noises the rest of the afternoon and also figure out what to do with the limp, wet rag that was a t-shirt when I arrived.*

After that, the rest of the day was a series of vignettes into other, non-exhibit elements of Jacob's day, including an excursion to the archives over at Christ Church Cathedral and a trip over to city hall to discuss budget matters. From there, we took a walk-through of the exhibit space I'll be working with for the month (which covers the colonial history of the fort up until its demolition in the 1820's) and a sit-down with the exhibit plan so that I have a better idea of what we're trying to accomplish.

Ultimately, it was a pretty solid introduction, and I'm already excited to come back on Thursday. And besides, any day where you can look back at the end and go, "At least I'm dry now," was probably an excellent day.

*For the record, the answer was what can best be described as "an overly elaborate system of paper towels, folding, and layering" that resulted in my carrying around what could be charitably described as "a bundle" all afternoon.