The gig economy is a much-needed source of income for many who lost their jobs during the coronavirus-caused economic downturn. Gig work is no longer a side hustle; in the U.S., it's a trillion-dollar industry with millions of participants.
Many of these people are working as truck drivers, takeout food and grocery deliverers, Uber/Lyft drivers, accountants and business consultants, security testers, programmers, freelance writers and editors, virtual assistants, tutors, house cleaners, senior caretakers, temporary contract workers, AirBnB landlords, artists, seasonal workers, dog walkers and sitters, child minders, and combinations thereof.
Some of these lines of work come and go, driven by consumers' wants and needs. Yet there's one gig that never goes out of popularity, or usefulness: handyman.
My favorite handyman, Mike, can do anything. Even with a house that's 18 months old, there are things that need attention. Since I can't bear the idea of the house deteriorating into the patched-together blend of beauty and dysfunction our previous house displayed, I am determined to keep up with repairs.
And it's so easy. I text Mike and ask him if he can do (whatever). His return text inevitably says: I can. Within a few days he shows up, takes care of the problem efficiently while we have a lively conversation on the state of construction in our booming area residential landscape, and off he goes, leaving absolutely no mess in his wake.
How did you learn how to do all this stuff? I asked him once.
"My grandpa," he said. "He could fix anything. And he taught me. I loved my grandpa. And I miss him." Our conversations are usually rowdier than this, but not as touching.
Before Mike, there was Gary. We started collaborating almost immediately in the 1980s after I bought my first house, a yellow 1923 bungalow in Capitol View. From rewiring outlets (there's no telling when the electricity had been installed in that house, or what kind of system it used) to repairing appliances and removing the concrete I had energetically applied over vents that are supposed to stay open ("You did a good job," he told me once; "I had a lot of trouble knocking it out"), he never made me feel stupid for not being a do-it-yourselfer.
When I got married and we headed to west Little Rock to a bigger house, Gary was there when needed. Despite a lame AC system, that house, which was about 10 years old then, wasn't as demanding as the one in Capitol View. But we didn't like it all that much, and started searching for a place in Hillcrest.
We--Philip, Gary, and I--found several prospects. Their favorite was a 1957 ranch (unusual for the Craftsman-dominated neighborhood) on a steep cul-de-sac, next to a condo occupied at the time by Hillary Rodham Clinton's mother.
The beige brick ranch had plenty of problems--weird wiring, a totally unwanted fish pond in the front yard, worn carpeting that didn't extend under beds, walls and ceilings that an interior decorator advised the owners to paint black and illuminate with little twinkling lights (even the closets were black), a horrendously leaky system of skylights in a so-called sunroom ...
I could go on. And I balked at buying it. Gary saw things differently. As I stood on the front porch one day--I think I was crying--he said, "We can fix this." His reassurance convinced me.
Over the next four months we pulled up four layers of flooring in the kitchen (I learned to love pry bars), sledge-hammered murky green tile out of the bathroom and reconstructed the space with a new tub, toilet, sink, lighting, and Pergo flooring, rewired all sorts of electrical nonsense (including dismantling a kitchen outlet that shocked anyone who came near it), built bookcases in the living room, painted the black walls a neutral mushroom shade (it took two coats of Kilz, then two coats of paint; we got pretty chummy with Gary's designated painter Jim, along with his four children), installed a wall and closets to make two bedrooms out of one that seemed to be the size of a basketball court, and shored up those sorry skylights.
Gary probably couldn't do everything, though he was game to try. I'm sure he would have done just as fine a job, or better, than the name-brand kitchen designer who reworked that space, and he probably would have skillfully reconfigured the falling-down backyard deck that a deck specialist took on a few years later. It took an actual builder to tear out the decrepit sunroom and replace it with livable space, a job projected to take three weeks that went on for four months.
Our handyman was right about being able for fix it--we lived in that house for 20 years. Then sold it to a young family that fell in love with it, oddities and all.
We made sure to pass along the name of our handyman just before our moving van lumbered down the steep hill, heading for North Little Rock.
If we ever leave here, I'll tell the new occupants about Mike.
Karen Martin is senior editor of Perspective.
kmartin@arkansasonline.com