A. Blinken The other day my friend Louis got sent his grandkid from Bakersfield. The grandkid is about twenty, and he got his first bust for gang related drug activity. The kid served a couple of weeks in jail, making a name for himself, and then was released on parole provided he get and keep a source of legal income. The family sent him up to live with Louis and his wife, who isn’t the kid’s grandmother. Louis actually got the kid a job as a laborer with a local outfit and they were happy with him. There wasn’t really room in Louis’s shack for the kid and the non-grandmother wife, but there was a small wash porch off the back, and they decided they’d push it out four feet, making it about twelve feet by ten, not a bad bedroom for a lot of us. I went over to swing a hammer for Louis and the kid, who, frankly, still has kind of an attitude, but knows how to work. We set some cedar 6 by 6 posts in concrete down two feet, added some cross bracing, ran new 2 by 6 joists every 16 inches, and so on. We had the support structure and the rough framing done before evening, and even hammered up the siding to keep it rigid if the wind blew; it was a good long day. I promised to come back the next morning. On the way out I realized that new siding showed up pretty good, and in one place you had a good view of it through the trees from the main road. There wasn’t much we could do, so I didn’t call Louis to tell him about it. The next morning I reported in with my hammer in one hand and steaming coffee in the other, but there was a strange truck in the yard, and Louis and the kid were talking with some guy. He was from county building, of course, had been visiting the house construction of new, well-off folks down the road and saw Louis’s paneling. Here is pretty much how it went: "You can’t put an addition on without a permit." "O.K., give me a permit." "I can’t give you a permit without engineered plans." "All right, I’ll hire someone to draw some plans." "Well, you’ll have to bring the frame and foundation of the house up to code before you can add anything to them." "This house is sixty years old and doing fine." "The slope of the roof is illegal, because it will create a low ceiling" "I have to slope it like that because we get snow here." ‘Not my problem, you’ll have to submit new plans. Tear all this down or we’ll cite you and start fining you by the day." Louis: "#%@%@# $#@&*" "Under the Patriot Act, it’s terrorism to threaten me." Then the kid stepped forward and said, "Threaten you? I’ll $&@# your $&@#^^% @&& and #^&%$your #&^&&. I’ll bring my cousins up to this $#!% hole and we’ll…" So, anyway, the kid is again in a school for crime down below, and Louis has a tarp instead of a back wall on his wash room, but the county was saved from blight, and another blow was dealt to terrorism, so everything worked out best for you and me.