COWBOY COPPERSMITH. FINAL CHAPTER.

DAY OF THE PISS BOTTLE STEEPLE SAVIOR.

Selfie ( Before they were a thing ). Taken on the last day. Note I had started wearing “Bum Gloves” as we call them in NZ and my thumb is 97 % callus. A true sign of the HC.

At this point, I had worked 97 straight days up the top of that steeple from on average 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. I was channeling those girder-walking New Yorkers from the 20s … the ones that built the skyscrapers… I would sometimes smell pizza on the wind… 250 feet up there… blown from some pizza shop in the town below… the birds and the clouds were my friends…

The guys had started to worry about me, but of course, this only expressed itself in sideways glances… this was not a world where you ask if someone’s doing ok.

I had started skipping showers, sleeping on top of the bed in all my clothes some nights, and one night I now dimly remember eating my entire dinner at the pub restaurant with my hands, like a monkey…

I was the son of the steeple now.

The steeple doesn’t care about cutlery.

I was completely mentally and physically mashed. My diet was donuts, burgers, coffee, Gatorade, unfiltered clove cigarettes, and one pub meal at about 10:45 at night.

All my bulked-up pretty boy home gym muscles were gone. I had dropped from 195 lbs of hard-won roofing work and mega mass 5000 fueled gains to 168.

I realized later that I had eaten away all my muscles working up on the steeple, as I made yet another hole in my belt.

Around day 50 while bending a bit of copper with pliers over my head I felt a sharp electric pain down my arm.

It went numb… I pushed on… In the morning my whole right side was pins and needles and I had so little strength in my right hand I literally couldn’t crush a paper cup. I was over a decade later ( 2016 ) to discover it was a partial dislocation of an upper vertebrae.

What I did was just switch the tools over to do everything left-handed! It only took twice the time!

Below is the final email I sent out into the Void back in 2003. I can’t even remember writing it… but I seem to have lapsed fully into a dissociative third-person state, which we all know is fucking madness personified.

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Dear Friends,

It was the end of another grueling amber metal-filled 15-hour day for the Coppersmith Cowboy.

He stood on the landing of the scaffold, lowering the boxes of tools and equipment down 200 feet to the ground below, using a little wheel and pulley system.

This was his self-appointed job, always wanting to be the first one up and the last one down from the steeple. The feeling of the rope zizzing over his twisted leathery hands gave him a sense of pride in the day’s work that no coin could purchase.

The other guys readied themselves for departure to the bar, where they would while away what was left of the night, and they leaned on the truck, waiting.

All of the boxes were down and packed away, and the men impatiently waited in the truck for the Coppersmith Cowboy to begin his mad scramble down the towering stairwell.

He started down the final section of stairs … but then some inner power told him something was wrong.

He looked back at the steeple towering above him and saw SMOKE AND A FEW BRIGHT PAPERY EMBERS FLOATING IN THE WIND ABOUT HALFWAY UP THE STEEPLE!!!

He spun and was up the stairs and ladders before he realized what he was doing. Within seconds he was at the site of the fire!

The sight greeted him with a nice cold shock.

Much black dry tar paper and wood chips from the refurbishment of the steeple had caught between the green plastic safety netting and the wooden decking of the scaffold and WAS FULLY ON FIRE!

A carelessly biffed cigarette butt had nicely smoldered in this pile of tinder until the wind picked up and fanned it into foot-high flames as were greeting him now.

It had started to ignite the wooden scaffold planking and had already melted a hole a meter square in the green netting. It was beyond the blowing or stamping out stage and getting ready to kick into the “Burn down the hundred and seventy-year-old church, millions of dollars of damage, destruction of a heritage building” stage.

The Coppersmith Cowboy looked on in terror, yet with insight born of desperation he made an instant plan!

He leaped down to the landing, snatched a big plastic bag up, and flew back to the conflagration.

An impatient horn sounded far below, yet he paid it no heed as he tore into the Santa sack swiftly and carefully opening multiple PowerAde piss bottles and fan spraying three days’ worth of yellow liquid onto the fire.
Hissing and sputtering the fire gave up and was quelched leaving only a horrid molten plastic and ammonia smell.

The horn and revving was heard again far below and rage rose up in the Cowboy.
Wishing righteous vengeance on the others.

The others …who had laughed at the pains he took to immerse his cigarette buts in pools of saliva and stash them in his pocket…

The others… who had ignored the boss’s orders to piss in a bottle when working up high on the scaffold instead of wasting half an hour climbing down from the steeple to the church toilet every time they needed a piss.

The others… who were now jokingly driving away as the Cowboy raced down the stairwell.

His fury was uncharacteristic, a pent-up frothing of all the rage the fire ignited within him.

The others looked at him in surprise… He was always so calm and happy…who was this strange, skinny, yellow hard-hatted form ranting at them and proclaiming himself as the savior of the company and all of their jobs?

They finally realized what had happened!

The Steeple King was their Piss Bottle Savior!

A deep thanks was given and an oath of silence extracted then some tentative gazes up at the steeple before they all piled off to the bar.

No mention was made of the horrendous pissy smell down one side of the scaffold and all ciggie butts were destroyed and checked for fire from then on.

. . .

The Coppersmith Cowboy.

Guardian of the dome, Savior of the steeple.

A superhero-like protector of priceless heritage buildings since June 2002.

His powers were forged in the scorching heat of Australia’s burning summers and tempered in the frozen arctic blizzards of Northern Ontario.

He’s growing his Danzig sideburns back and he cannot be stopped.

Look for him wherever a priceless heritage building is being restored to its former glory.

. . .

The job was done a day later.

I wrapped up with the company, gave the handshakes, and rolled out, never to return.

I was now just a story called: “Remember that Crazy NZ guy called Wez that worked with us on that steeple?”

I withdrew five grand in sweet hundys from the bank.

I rolled up the bucks into a big gangsta roll and it lived in the inside pocket of my leather jacket.

I made over 30 grand. I got some sleep and transformed myself into a new persona I wanted to try out. Gangsta roll Big Daddy.

I flew the Overnight Red Eye to Vancouver. Which I called THE COOVE.

Calling it THE COOVE never caught on but I loved how it made the Canadians cringe.

Yet always too polite to say something.

Put someone like me in a country where people are too polite to say things.. and it’s just not fair on anyone.

My arm was fucked so I decided to take six months off.

I was waiting for my Fiance Visa to Get to the USA to marry by 90210 Barbie, who was waiting for me, while also not believing that I was actually going to come back.

Now what sort of twisted adventures shall I get into over in THE COOVE.

Buckle up… It’s going full shaman wilderness tribal now.

Below is the first day in THE COOVE at a Cafe in my new role as Big Daddy with the dolla dolla bilz.

HOOK UP A POST GRUNGE DRIFTER with a Kombucha

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