And I knew then that I was woefully unprepared for the challenge. When I started building my house I could barely drive a nail straight. By the time the first part of it was finished I could lay a square of asphalt shingles with the best of them…. if only until about 10 am or so.

I could now solve logistical problems of much larger scale. I learned that building a house wasn't one big task but a million little ones, some good and some, well, not so good.

My wife and I had a lot of help, to be sure. We leveraged the skills, labor and knowledge of family and friends.

My house became a kind of community project with some weekends having as many as eight or ten people milling about like semi-competent Amish men setting trusses, digging trenches and installing windows.

And I'm forever in the debt of those who gave up their Saturday to work in the singularly horrific heat of a north central Florida summer, a place I'm sure Dante had in mind when he wrote about the eighth circle of Hell.