I get his message - "I'm up to my ears in alligators at the moment and unless you're the IRS then you aren't important enough for me to talk to right now. Beeeepppp." A super clear image then flashes on the movie screen in my mind - Dave walks over, plucks the phone from a cluttered make-shift workbench sitting on sawhorses and looks at the incoming call's number.

"Awww, crud, it's Joe!" He screams and throws the phone down like it was crawling with botulism. "I don't have time for this!" He yells, shaking his fists at the ceiling and stomping his feet like he just lost a game of dodge ball. "How does he do it!? He's not even here yet and already he's got me slaving!"

"Hey, Dork!" I smiled after listening to his lame message, "We're on the way, see you 'bout 1230 hrs and you best have all your ducks in your poop." I love clever little analogies like that.

Little did I know (or care) that he had got off work at 0630 hrs Friday morning and immediately flung himself into a headlong frenzy to finish hanging the remaining sheets of drywall to be ready for me. When he was at my shop-building, I told him flat out, "I don't hang drywall - I'd rather live in a room full of cats than hang drywall - I can finish it, but I don't hang it, do you understand?" When I arrived I walked around and noticed all but the mechanical room was ready; I was appalled. "Why isn't there..." I theatrically waved my arm, "...any drywall in this room, Dave?"

"Uggghhh, welllll...ahem, I...ummm..."

"Yeeessss, Daaavvvee?"

"Well..." He stammered while I plainly saw the wheels turning in his head, "We...ahhh, we haven't finished the wiring in there! Yeah, that's it...the wiring!"

I looked at him with antipathy washing down my entire being. "Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Dave."

"Okay, I...ugghhh...I didn't really expect you until tomorrow. I just got off a 12-hour work shift, Joe! Don't...hey, just look at my eyes, can't you see they're all bloodshot 'n everything!?"

"I'm sorry,"  I said feeling a wee bit guilty, "I did notice them, I thought it was a result of your binge drinking."

He chuckled then turned and walked into the bathroom space where I distinctly heard the sound of a Tic-Tac jar being shook.

I got down to business and instantly ascertained from the enormous beads of sweat cascading down his forlorn face that he didn't have a ghost of a clue what to do next.

"Calm down, Dave, I've got everything well-in-hand," I said reaching into my pocket and drew forth a capped bottle. "Here, I brought ya some Diazepam for you. Chase five or six of these with a coupla beers and you'll be good for the rest of the day."

"What's Di...Diaze...?"

I waved my hands and interrupted him, "It's a drug, Dave, and it's a four-syllable word, so that places you in an extreme disadvantage. You know my wife is a psychologist, right? Well, I had her prescribe these for you and those innocent looking little pills will make you feel all gushy and good with the World. Now, there's a good chap, go fetch me a clean 5-gallon bucket."

There's one other thing you should be privy about. In a previous Email to another Dave - we call him 2Dave - our Dave said to him, "I should be pretty much done hangin' drywall by the time Joe gets here. Parts of it are pretty damned ugly, but that's what the mud & tape is for, right?"

What our Dave wasn't aware of was the fact that 2Dave forwarded me what our Dave said. So, during the 173-mile drive from Ronan to Post Falls, Idaho, the statement "parts of it are pretty damned ugly" hovered over my head like a very dark and ominous cloud. I got there and after looking around for just a little bit, I determined his 'pretty damned ugly' more closely resembled my description of repugnant and repulsive.

"Jeepers, Dave," I said, pointing to the enormous cracks between the ceiling and the walls, "Ya know, they have these things called tape measures? You stretch them out and they have numbers on them? Maybe you oughta look into getting one of them, huh?"

He chuckled.

There were places where chunks of drywall were blown out because the cut was too tight and since there wasn't a tape measure to be had anywhere on the entire planet, he simply used a hammer to bang it into submission and into place.

"Good job, Dave," I said while thinning and mixing the mud with some water, "Hey, I got an idea, why doncha quit standing around watching me and find something to do?" With that, he turned on his heels and, quite literally, walked out of the building The next thing I hear is his truck starting and he drives away. A couple hours later he's back and I have quite a bit of the vertical drywall taped and mudded. He walks back in and claims he went to get the machine for blowing the insulation in.

"Ohhh, really?" I said, while washing the mud off my hands and fingers, "Where a'bouts in Iowa did you have to go get it?"

He's an excellent chuckler, Dave is.

We knocked off about 1700 hrs Friday evening. The insulation machine was now on site in preparation of Saturday's arrival of 2Dave and our stand-up comedian, Tim, whom together, would make up the tour de force of the insulation crew. My forecasted plan up to that point was working brilliantly, that is up until Saturday morning's breakfast.

When Dave was helping with my shop, he'd amble downstairs, mind you still in his jammies and rubbing his eyes and he'd plop down at our table where I fed him a King's Breakfast every morning prepared by yours truly. Pancakes, sausage 'n eggs one morning, egg and cheese omelette with ham steak and toast the next. Lunches were gourmet hot-dogs and exquisite cold cut sammiches prepared by Her Nagness. Dinners were rib-eye steaks, baked potatoes, home-made pizza and I don't know what all. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Dave didn't gain 30 pounds during the three days he was with me here in Montana. When I left his place in Idaho I was skin 'n bones. In fact, I'll wager Nazi concentration camp internees were in better nutritional shape when they were liberated.

I left the house we're staying in at the buttcrack of dawn on Saturday morning and the only thing stirring at Dave's place is his dog, Oscar. I've told you before that I'm an excellent noticer and the first thing I noticed about Oscar is that he calmly announces the arrival of anyone stepping into the fenced-in yard with a mild 'woof' but if someone were to drive by on the street then he throws a shoe. I don't know how a person goes about confusing a dog, but Dave has it mastered.

Oscar's muffled noise must have been loud enough for Dave to hear so it was just a few moments when he parades into his shop like a world renowned chef with a tray being held over his head - only, instead of a tray, it's a box of measly two-day-old donuts. I stared unbelievably into the box and notice one of them was already half-eaten.

"You really shouldn't have gone to so much trouble, Dave."

"Awww, it's nothing." He said, waving his fingers whilst grabbin' another and ignoring the half-eaten one, "Dig in."

"A finer breakfast has never been had, I'm sure. Coffee?"

"Naaghhh..." He guttered while nibbling and gnawing on what looked to be an eclair, "...franks, I dun't dink the sssstuuuuff." He said, as he slurped up the creme that had oozed onto his thumb.

"I'm certainly glad for ya. Well, I'm stuffed" I said, pushing myself away from the donut destroying machine standing across from me, "Let's get to work."

"Ooofff k. Wafff yu wana doo firs?" I looked up and there was chocolate frosting all around his mouth.

"Well, the first thing I'd like to do is tie a bib around your neck."

He garbuchuckled and now I don't have to wonder what wearing a partially chewed eclair would be like.

I designated myself as Scaffolding Commander; I would stand on it and tape all the ceiling joints. Dave was my ground crew; upon my command he would roll the scaffolding in the direction I needed to go and, as an added test of his organizational skills, I put him in charge of filling the drywall banjo with fresh mud. I soon found out putting Dave in charge of filling the banjo was like putting a monkey in charge of a football. "No, Dave! Pull the tape back then fill it up!" or, "No, no no! See that lid there? You gotta take it off before putting on a new roll of tape! Say, how many of them Diazepams did you take?"

He was also designated to be my Tool Support Technician. From aloft, I would call down my requirement for a certain tool and his responsibility as TST, was to hand it up most promptly and gleefully. Turns out my TST doesn't know the difference between a jack hammer and a knitting needle. The blade in my utility knife was dull so I called down my first tool requirement, "I need a Phillips screwdriver." He runs around looking through the building like he's on an Easter Egg hunt. "Dave!" I said, pointing below me, "There's your makeshift workbench, you suppose it's on there?"

He hands up a screwdriver. "Ummm, this is a regular screwdriver, Dave, I distinctly ordered a Phillips." He scrambled down mumbling, "Yer'a picky bastard, ain't ya."

"That was hardly gleeful, Dave."

I wasn't more'n three minutes into the job before gaining advanced knowledge on the difficulty Dave had with the conception of setting the screws a tad bit below the surface of the drywall. The heads were sticking out all over the place, forcing me to hammer them in. "Hey," I called down to my monkey-minded ground crew, "I'm quite sure my memory isn't playing tricks on me, but...didn't I see a drywall screw gun languishing around here somewhere?"

"You know it!" He said as he picked it up and waved it the air like it was a battle flag, "It's a Crapsman...got it on sale 'n everything."

"Swell, by any chance did ya have a driving bit in it or did you just use the ass-end of it to beat them in? You see that little nozzle at the pointy end? It's there so you can adjust it to properly set the depth of the screws."

He made monkey faces while staring at it. "Really?"

"No, I'm lying. It's there to confuse people and to give them something to play with."

I had almost all the ceiling joints taped when 2Dave and Tim, who were the insulation crew, arrived. I only had a couple of strips to finish but my banjo was out of mud and my ground monkey was no where to be seen - he was outside visiting with the newly arriving help. So, I climbed down to fill it myself. We shook hands and the first thing Tim says is, "I need to get you a new hat." I look at his shirt and notice it's cluttered with a bunch of NASCAR crap then I remember I'm wearing a hat with a number 55 on the sides of it. So, I yank it off and waved it at him saying, "I don't even know who the Hell this guy is...I was handed this hat. I wear hats and don't give a flying care what advertisement is on them. In fact, if someone handed me a cheesehead hat, I'd wear it."

"No, it's the NAPA name, I work in an auto parts store and it ain't NAPA. We got stores all over the place, we do parts for all..."

"Snore..." I'm sorry, did I drift off? Were you saying something?"

I climbed back onto the scaffolding to finish the few remaining joints and to allow the insulation crew some time to set up their operation. From their vocalizations, it sounded to me like they were planning the D-Day Invasion. "Now, 2Dave," Tim said with all the seriousness of a doctor about to remove your heart, "When I come around here I expect you to be Johnny-on-the-spot with moving this hose to this location."

"Location noted, but what precautionary measures should we take in case Oscar gets in the way?"

"We'll let the ground-monkey take care of him, I also want you to be aware of how imperative it is that you keep that machine manned at all times, it could blow, ya know." I chuckled and yelled down, "Of course it blows you bonehead! That's how it gets the insulation up there!"

"Shut up, we're talking serious stuff here!"

They droned on for another 15-minutes or so, moving this over there and that over here. They whiled away a good 10-minutes adjusting their masks then took them off and stopped for a donut break.

I looked at them with despair and thought, "You guys would make great cops."

Then came my traumatic scaffolding injury. Dave left a Pony #50 pipe clamp between two of the scissor trusses. Since I was already up on the scaffolding, I reached up to turn the handle but the drywall was in the way. "No problem." I said, as I picked up what was left of the hammer I had worn out driving all the protruding heads of the drywall screws, "I'll just tap the release bar and be off this scaffold in a jiffy so that the insulation crew can get up here and continue their war planning."

A 'jiffy' was exactly that. The clamp sprung loose, I reached out to grab it, missed it and now I'm over-centered. As I was falling I did some quick ciphering..."Let's see, the scaffolding is 7' high and I'm 6' tall. If I factor in half the six and plus the seven, I'm about to hit this concrete floor from a combined height of 10 feet. Ohhhh, this is gonna leave a mark."

On the way down I hear 2Dave say, "Ohhh, no!" Tim says, "Get his hat!" Dave says, "I got the clamp!"

Dave steps over to me as I'm trying to pick myself up off the floor and puts his hands on my side. "You Ok, Joe?"

"I think so...it's a good thing this soft concrete was here to stop my fall. Now, why doncha get off me so I can stand up to see if anything's broken or jarred outta place." I'm an EMT and from the initial evaluation of myself, I determined my right hip and left inner heel took the brunt of the trauma and other than a nasty double limp, I was fine. Dave, on the other hand, was a basket case.

His pallor was bright white - whiter than a ghost even. "You sure you're alright?" He asked, slapping me on the shoulder. And, if his eyes were flashlights, his would serve majestically as lighthouses.

"Yes, I'm quite alright. Now, leave me alone because that shoulder you just slapped on is starting to hurt, too."

I no sooner hit the floor and the scaffolding was commandeered by the insulation war mongers, "Pull 'im back to safety..." Tim yelled, "We're going in!"

I watched as they wheeled the contraption to the other end and I'm hobbling around the shop; too damn sore to sit down and too damned obstinate to not do anything, so I work off of ladders to mud and tape the bathroom. I even gave one up for the Gipper and tried to do the lofted storage area but that space required me to grovel, which was something my hip and heel strongly objected to. Alas, I was forced to climb down and found myself feeling quite inadequate. But I managed to find solace in the cooler of beer Dave had standing by. Pretty soon I needed to empty some of it and hobbled to the back of Dave's shop.

Upon returning, there stood a woman whom 2Dave later described as being, "Very easy on the eyes" and I couldn't have agreed more. She was holding a pad of paper and asked for my sandwich order. Looking at her, I couldn't do anything more than blink. "Whut?" I stood there mesmerized. "I'm sorry, I just fell offa Dave's scaffolding...I don't rememver ordering any sammich on the way down."

Dave slapped my sore shoulder, "She's TAKING your sandwich order, you idiot. 'Rememver', I told you I had lunch taken care of?"

"I'll say you do!" Suddenly, my traumatic scaffolding injury transformed into a mere paper cut.

I chatted her up and discovered she's Dave's neighbor, she's a nurse who works in the same hospital my wife's friend works, and, she's in the same field of counseling psychology Her Nagness is in.