INDIANAPOLIS – This summer, Meg Green and her husband hired remodelers to add some architectural detail to their urban home. The exterior project should have been completed in 2-3 weeks, but eight weeks later, the Greens are frustrated by the lack of progress, as well as the incessant sounds of classic rock band The Eagles.
According to Mrs. Green, on the first day of the project, the leader of the group, a man with a dense beige mustache, inquired about the location of the external power outlets. She assumed he needed it for some type of power saw, but was surprised to see that the remodelers instantly plugged in an old boom box and began playing “Desperado.” Since then, she questions the work that actually has been completed.
“Mostly I just heard similar classic rock all the time,” Meg stated. “I started seeing a pattern after a couple of days…there were some obscure songs I had to Shazam, but sure enough, they were all by the Eagles.”
“I can see they’ve put up scaffolding today,” she observed, shouting over ‘Hotel California.’ “They’re up there doing something important, I think.”
Outside the Green home, work gloves have been lying around in the yard, like fallen birds, for weeks. Sawhorses are situated haphazardly on the property, some holding unpainted 2×4’s, some supporting what look to be makeshift hammocks. Paint and root beer cans sit scattered on the front porch steps, and flannel shirts are wadded in shrubs.
Meg said one day the pillows from her wicker porch furniture were rearranged. Mini Doritos bags were tossed in a corner. “Life in the Fast Lane” was blasting. She figured the workers must have taken a break on her porch after an industrious day, but after an extensive search, she couldn’t find anything different about the look of her house.
On another day, a utility-type truck arrived. Mrs. Green claims the driver exited the truck, folded down his tailgate, hopped onto it and began eating a sloppy meatball sub sandwich, swinging his legs to “Take It Easy.”
The truck seemed to have side doors that slid open. Meg peeked curiously from behind a curtain, saying, “I expected to see tools stored behind those truck doors, whatever they are. But I swear to you it looked like a collection of condiments.” She claimed the onsite workers walked up and grabbed sandwiches from the passenger seat, and lined up near the truck’s side compartments.
Meg and her husband have thought about confronting the remodelers on their progress, especially this week, when one of the men showed up with a large backhoe and seemed to just be tapping at dirt while nursing a cigarette dangling from his lips. “We shouldn’t need any heavy machinery at all…the problem is, I don’t even know who the leader is anymore,” she said. “They all have similar facial hair, they all drive white Ford pick-ups…I think more than one introduced himself as Dale? Or Dan. Maybe it’s Dan. But which Dan?”
At press time, Meg, watching as two workers constructed a pulley on the scaffolding to raise the loud boombox near the roofline, said she was “giving things one more week. Maybe there’s something to this process I just don’t understand.”
As the boombox began loudly playing “One Of These Nights,” Meg raised her voice to make it audible. “Like last year when we had our bathroom remodeled. The plumbers constantly played Bob Seger, but didn’t seem to be working. And then one day we walked into the bathroom and realized everything was done. It looked fabulous. It was worth the wait, and the soundtrack.”
