Jeff and Barb Ewing

#2

May 15th, 2018 10:28 pm

Norbert was a big part of one of the most memorable summers of my life. It was the summer after high school graduation; the summer of my first girlfriend and my first 40-hour a week job. Norbert took me on as a totally unskilled kid. His expectations were low (that I show up) and his hopes were high (that one day I’d achieve some level of competence). In the coming years he would also employ a progression of my friends. Just as each of us would start to show progress, we would leave. And when some of us would be looking for work, Norbert would always hire us back. As John Housekeeper said, “That he employed all of us was a credit to him :-) a gift to us”. I think part of the reason he hired us was for his own personal entertainment. Last year, five of us who had worked for and with Norbert, made a timely visit to the place he and Barbara were living attached to his grandson Jason’s house. Norbert was in fine form with no talking required on our part as he told his favorite stories about all of us. He truly delighted in people, and stories of the boys he had known in those days filled him with a mischievous glee. I recollected in my phone call with Ann that for the first two weeks on the job I thought Norbert was one of the worst people I had ever met. I heard how unhappy he could get when I cut the saw cord on my second day (“Little futzpah cut my saw cord!”). Was this the reason he told me to start taking the 65-pound bundle of shingles up the ladder to the two-story house roof? (Winnie came around the corner and said, “What are you doing?” I told him and he said, “Yeah, but not all of them!”) But it wouldn’t take long for a feeling of mutual respect to develop. Norbert always treated me as someone capable that he could rely on and I recognized the same in him. I didn’t know how much a building site would get into my blood, the smells of a dew-covered bundle of hem-fir dropped at the site, the new plywood deck I had nailed off the day before, shingles, Norbert’s Tiparillo. We worked on houses, barns and bars in our area or “by Winnie’s”. Norbert was always busy and once he established a referral relationship with the architect William Earl, maybe too busy. We worked an 8-hour day with a half hour lunch. Any variation in the schedule was rare. Sometimes lunches would get extended. The two most common reasons: very hot days in the basement with “one more Schaefer (or a Miller)” or working with a sub who had more stories than Norbert. I have many pictures of Norbert in my mind. I see him looking at me with pursed lips, a stifled laugh coming at me through his eyes when he feels you just realized how dumb you are (“You nut”). Often times as I packed up at the end of the day, I’d see him just staring at the day’s work. Measuring progress? Maybe. But now that I’ve been there myself, I think it more likely he was just planning the next day’s happening. We mostly ate lunch sitting on the deck or on the lumber pile. When we worked in or near a tavern, we’d sit at the bar, order beer and eat our lunch there. It would be before they opened, dark and cool in the late morning. There was usually a jar of pickled eggs or hot peppers on the bar that Norbert would challenge me to eat. If Norbert got in a conversation with the bartender/owner, then maybe we’d stay for a second beer. Norbert had many catch phrases, and I know you are smiling when you think of the ones you remember. Many are lost in time to me. But one I do remember is Norbert saying, “Ah, Jeffrey, don’t ever get to be my age sitting up here on a rafter like this.” I think he would have been all of 38 at the time. He probably was feeling older than his age given what the flooring business had taken out of him. I had an MGA that like most old British cars needed “occasional” work. One time I had it sitting on four concrete blocks, and when Norbert dropped me off after work, he asked “Did the car come with the blocks?” I think I was well into my learning how to take a joke by then. Years passed and Norbert was able to take a long break from the rigors of his profession. We kept in sporadic touch, with my stopping in on my return visits to the East. One time when I was living in Wrangell, he called to say he was down at the ferry and for me to come pick him up. I actually thought he might be. From a distance in time and miles, it seemed odd that he would leave NJ for some place so far south and with a name like “Hoopersville”. He and Barbara would stay 15 years and I would not make it down until the last year they were there. Life moved on at a rapid pace and of course I always thought there’d be time for me to join Norbert on his boat on the Chesapeake. Now I just consider it lucky that Barb and I got to see him in a place that was perfect for them. As soon as we got there we walked down the road to the cannery to get a flat box full of blue crab. They grabbed a tin can and scooped some red powder out of a 55-gallon drum containing their version of Old Bay seasoning (“ours is the real thing”). We walked back to sit on the deck, eat crab, drink Schafer and watch the sun set over the water. I could see that Norbert was where he always wanted to be, whether looking out on the ocean or in his boat fishing on it, he had arrived after years of hard work. Norbert was very proud of the work he’d done on a local church damaged during Hurricane Isabel. We walked down to the church across from the marina, sat in a pew at the back to hear the story. The church had been forced off its foundation during the storm. As a retired contractor and man who loves to help, Norbert was an easy “mark” for a congregation in serious need of a professional. They found that and honest dealings with Norbert. He donated his time to the immense task of restoration, coordinating all the various efforts to raise the building four feet while maintaining its integrity and historical character. We will go back to Hoopersville someday if not for the sheer beauty of the location then for the muskrat dinner Norbert said the local restaurant served seasonally. I will always look back on the summer I started working for Norbert as an idyllic time – hot summer days filled with work and fun. I wish I could have joined Norbert on his boat during the many years he was there, but I’m happy to know that he ended up where he had always planned to be; in his boat, dragging a fishing line with no schedule and no demands.

Wilhelm Wiesing

#1

April 30th, 2018 8:41 am

With deepest sympathy for the passing of Norbert, prayers to your family. Herzliches Beileit Sincerely, Willy, Gertrude, Caroline and Debbie Wiesing