Drywall

they make it out of gypsum now but back in the earlier part of the twentieth century at least two companies made the stuff out of paper pulp, anticipating Ikea.......it was the great depression at the time but a good idea because in upstate New York they had just cut down all the useful trees and had given up, resorting to making wall board out of compressed paper......people were drunk a great deal back then, like all the good characters in Nelson Algren's novels, such as Somebody in Boots, drunk, all the time.....only a small amount of the stuff, the most expensive, was "enhanced" with asbestos fibers, and I am hoping not do die of mesothelioma as a result of my house...but we all die of something and i have my suspicions that asbestos is not the killer we have made it out to be......not like mister cancer, he kills, in cigarette form........i could use a cigarette right now, though i do not smoke, i know if i were smoking i would feel calm and lucid and clear, not scattered in the wake of a weekend spent eating cannibinoid brownies and seeing concerts...... i do not get the impression that the Olsons used the most expensive fake wallboard, however, so i think i am save, and the stuff must have been pleasantly light....it is worth mentioning that the Olsons were Nordic heroes who occupied my house from its construction till 1979 when i was in grade school and bad things were happening everywhere, i remember seeing a Newsweek article on how our cities were dying and it seemed crazy, how could the cities be dying when it was well known that people were moving away from the country into urban areas...i knew that back then......now it is easy to see what the suburbs did to downtown, and all the junkies and boarded over shop windows that spread from the nuclei that had always lived in the centers of the metropolis....Chicago once had an impressive red light district spanning block after block....did i mention that there is something called a "queer ladder of social mobility?" and that the Irish were working their way out of criminality in my great grandfather's time, in St. Paul Minnesota, a city of rolling hills and narrow streets...... eight decades and a leaky roof, and the Beaverboard is eroded but I refuse to replace it in all but the most problem areas...drywall, the gypsum stuff, is heavy......hanging drywall is masculine....men are supposed to hand drywall, drink Coors, and fart......i cannot do it right unless metal is playing....I drank a Coors at a metal show on Sat........i do not know where they get the gypsum they mine for drywall, but it does indeed come out of the ground from somewhere.....like plastic...which comes out of the ground as petroleum......