Chris Goodrich

We are swarming. There's no other way to put it: we are swarming like worker bees, or worker ants, beyond thought, driven by enthusiasm. Bud's cutting two-by-tens to length, for joists; Corey's slapping down particle-board decking, creating the subfloor; Gordon's securing the deck with a nail gun, Margo's installing metal bridging between joists, John's building headers for the stairwell, Pablito's handing out nails like candy, Rich is unloading lumber, Pieter's hammering in joist hangers -- and that's only half today's crew. We're a little village, and appear to be racing against time, but in fact we're just happy to be working. Between building codes and lack of money, a tax fight with the city of Danbury and a change in construction management, zoning regulations and false starts, it's taken a year to get this far -- but now, at long last, we're building again.

Margo's a first-timer on site, and far luckier than she knows. Putting in the deck at 16 Patch Street -- it's a quintessential Habitat experience, when the work is steady, the need for volunteers high, and progress quick and conspicuous. At this rate, you think, we can build an entire neighborhood! A town! Finish off dilapidated, dangerous housing in Connecticut, in the world, in no time: move on to hunger, to poverty itself! Deep down we know better, of course, but the optimism, the satisfaction, is palpable...even if it is the product of effort-born endorphins, of construction sweat, of working outside on a gorgeous fall day. How often, without doubt and without hesitation, do you find yourself wearing a white hat? Doing something not just because you want to, but because it is, without question, the right thing?

I've been volunteering with Habitat for five years now, have worked on sixty-odd houses, so I should be stepping back. Hang up my hammer, become a full-time go-fer and supervisor and cheerleader, let new people like Margo do the hands-on work; make sure they never experience a dull moment, constantly accomplish, always return. How else will the twice-a-years become every-month-ers, the every-month-ers every week-ers? How else will we get the job done, build a hundred million houses? We've only begun, really, only scratched the surface; we need more bodies, more sweat, more commitments....

I should kick myself upstairs, in short, but I can't. Who knew that building walls, laying block, nailing shingles, could be so much fun? That working for nothing, helping someone else, could be so rewarding? That acting altruistically could be...no, forget that idea, it's misleading to imply selflessness. Quite the opposite: this is, perhaps, the most selfish thing I've ever done, for what I do at this Habitat site actually matters. When I reported for magazines, wrote for a major newspaper, I felt so significant, a shaper of issues and maker of tastes...but those jobs seem hollow to me now, insubstantial. This is real work, significant work: here I feel in the thick of life's marathon, a 'player'; I'm no longer amusing people to death (to use Neil Postman's summation of our entertainment-driven culture); with a million other people, and more, I'm applying the Habitat brake, I'm trying to turn this ship around.

I love the smell of sawdust in the morning, the recoil of a pneumatic gun, the snap of a taut chalk line. Sinking a nail with three blows, sharpening a pencil with an open blade, reaching for a tape measure and having it fall to hand. I feel, today, a relapse into 'infectious Habititis,' a disease that compels victims to spend every spare moment on Habitat worksites, participating very personally in the building of an American dream. Because those long-forgotten, long-repressed, childhood-superhero fantasies are true: we can save the world. The only catch being that we have to do it ourselves, with our individual sweat and blood.