You got some work for me

 We were the first house people came to, walking between the shelter and downtown. So we'd get hit up a lot for sandwiches, water, cash, or work. People would come by offering to sell obviously stolen stuff. 

One time a guy offered us a fifth of Bacardi for fifteen bucks. I declined, but three homeless guys at the end of the street did not. By the time I realized it, one was slumped up against a pole and the other two looked like they weren't breathing.

Like most people, we quit giving the homeless cash pretty quickly, and tried to stick to giving out sandwiches and water. We dialed that back too, though, once we learned the diner attached to the shelter gave out three meals a day.

Work was another story. Most people who stopped to ask for work said they had some qualifications. True or not, it didn't make much difference to us at that point, because we were still using contractors who were extremely sketchy. A guy who we hired to work on the roof said he had to go to the store to get a beer before he could do anything. Looking back we were crazy to even entertain some of this. We let that guy go.

Our first electrician, for example, told us he was a Flat Earther before he just quit showing up. The next electrician said "Oh yeah, I've gotten a lot of work from that guy." 

He lasted a couple of weeks, before we realized he was too old to climb into the attic and was sending his nephew who apparently knew nothing up there to do the work. After I saw he had run seven wires into one overstuffed junction box, we let him go. 

The next guy was homeless, although we were too naive to realize it at first. He was very meticulous, although his methods appeared to be older. I figured that was okay, he was older. 

Then he started showing up later and later, or not at all. His excuses started getting more florid. Then one day he showed up with his whole arm in a bandage. 

"What happened," I asked.

"Well, I was buying crack, and this guy showed up with a gun..."

He's got to go, my wife said. But he's so close to being done, I answered.

He went.

Another contractor to remember was our AC guy. In the beginning, we were trying hard to save money, and learned the hard way that an apparent saving up front could lead to a bigger expense down the line. 

We had moved our house from a small town outside Lafayette, and it came with an elderly AC unit. This guy said all he had to do was drop a new coolant in it, braze the copper lines together, and we'd have cool air. I sat and watched him braze the lines. Brazing is an early form of welding, in which the welder melts a copper and zinc rod with a torch to join two pipes. 

I thought it would be prudent to watch the guy since he was mostly under my older wooden house.

While I watched him braze, he managed to set his hoses on fire. I jumped up and frantically turned off the gas, while yelling at him. The hoses were shot, and he set off to the store to get new ones while I was left to contemplate the wisdom of hiring the lowest bidder. Later, in the sweaty depths of August, we discovered he had used the wrong coolant when our AC burned out in the middle of the night.