Heller and Shannon: Pullin' Permits

 

Shannon stopped by the library on the way home.

There was no traffic for "Anita" so she spent some time searching for pictures and plans for "root cellars" that matched up to the structure Kim had described.

Kim had given Shannon her cell number and permission to ask Heller if he had any interest in building a simple root cellar.

Shannon printed out images of ones that looked cute and printed some of the shelving and some plans. Paper is cheap.

Then she pulled up the county plat-book and found the property and printed out an overhead of the area around the buildings. While she was dinking around, she found that the county site had the ability to project elevation lines. Thinking that might be handy, she also printed out one of those.

In spite of already spending over three hours on the road, Heller was more than happy to visit a neighbor, as long as Shannon drove the truck.

Shannon called. Kim was willing to have them over.

Heller snoozed on the way over.

Kim walked them around the farm-yard and then pointed out where she wanted the root cellar. It was clear that she had given ample thought to proximity to the house and drainage. You don't want to site a root cellar in a puddle, nor do you want to site it where water and ag chemical spills are likely to drain.

"How big ya thinkin'?" Heller asked Kim.

Kim said "I dunno. Maybe 8' by 24'."

"Prolly make sense to run it the long-way into the grade, dontchya think" Heller suggested.

"Yep. That was the picture in my head" Kim agreed.

"Lemme get my yoyo, stakes and a hammer and we will stake it out" Heller said.

Kim nodded in agreement. That was fine with her. Stakes don't mean anything.

Shannon was fascinated by how Heller first set one of the 24' long sides and and then used a 3-4-5 triangle and twine to create a right angle to set the 8' stakes. Then he measured diagonals to ensure it really was straight-and-square.

"You know somebody has to pull a permit for a building this size, right?" Heller said. "I can't do it because I am working in Livonia six days a week and the county offices aren't open on Sundays.

Kim mournfully shook her head. "I am tied up organizing the church festival this year. I swear, those women run around like chickens with their heads cut off when I am not there to keep things moving forward."

Kim and Heller turned and looked at Shannon.

"What does 'pull a permit' mean?" she asked.

The next morning, Shannon asked Fred, her boss, if she could either take a late lunch or an early lunch.

Naturally, Fred asked why.

"Kim Bockbeck was in yesterday and wants to put in a root cellar but cannot get to the county offices to pull a permit. I agreed to help her out" Shannon said. "I hope that is all right..."

"Is she going to borrow money from us to build it?" Fred asked.

"I imagine" Shannon said.

"Tell you what" Fred said. "Go to lunch at your usual time and then hit the county office afterward, on-the-clock. What you are doing is close enough to 'bank work' that I think the Credit Union can pay you for it."

Shortly after Shannon left for lunch, Fred went into his office and called the county permitting department.

"Mandy Piggot here. Whaddya need?"

The county office was running short. Piggot ran the permitting office.

"Morning Mandy. This is Fred Barker over at the Saranac Credit Union" Fred said.

"Morning Fred." Mandy and Fred knew each other causally. More importantly, they knew OF each other and neither had ever heard anything untoward of the other. "What can I do for you?"

"I have a new clerk here at the office and she is showing a lot of initiative. She will be showing up after lunch to pull a building permit for one of our clients and I am pretty sure she has never done it before."

"Hmm-mmm" Mandy vocalized on the other end of the connection.

"Can you or one of your people walk her through the process? Her name is Shannon and she is a naturally organized person. Some of our clients might like having somebody like her take care of the fussy work of pulling permits..if she was good at it" Fred said.

"Is her handwriting legible?" Mandy asked.

"Her handwriting is very readable" Fred said. 'Readable', heck it was downright beautiful.

"Well, then I can work with her. She's gotta be better than half of the folks who come in here to pull permits. Some of them can't even read their own writin'" Mandy said.