Old Memories and Nekkid Tuckpointing

We visited relatives in Madison last week. My niece lives in Nottingham Cooperative, which is a really cheap and comfortable place to live if you don’t mind the living like a filthy hippie. In 1981, I lived in a similar cooperative house in called Trafalmador. I became involved in the Madison Community Cooperative Board and Finance Committee, so I was aware of some activities in other cooperative houses.

When I first saw my Niece, I mentioned I remembered her house for an incident involving a building inspector’s small fine for naked tuckpointing (i. e., tuckpointing applied by naked coop members). As I was told at the time, the inspector arrived to look at the roof, saw a couple of naked guys working on the roof, and decided to write a citation since he didn’t want to deal with naked men. That seemed fair to me at the time.

The 23 year old niece lighted up like a searchlight. “You were around for the naked tuckpointing!?”, she said. “Everyone talks about that, but no one knows if it really happened.” I was a celebrity for the moment.

The next day, we walked to Nottingham to pick up the Niece for lunch (calm down, we didn’t eat her, we took her to a restaurant). She gave us a tour of the house. A few members were around at midday. Word had already gotten around that I was around at the time of the legendary naked tuckpointing incident. A few members asked, “is he the guy?”. I handled my new found fame with the most grace I could come up with.

The house was pretty dark, dank and dirty. Pretty much similar to what I remember from Tralfalmador, except by now about 25 years more dirt has accumulated.

Now that we are back in Sacramento, I’ll need to leave my local fame behind me, and settle back into my modest, mild-mannered self.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.