When I think of my friend Jay Bridge, I think of the day when the radiator pipe burst in my study in the middle of that awful winter of 2015. We heard the sound of water gushing – we were eating lunch – and ran to my office. We struggled to figure out where the water turnoff in the basement was, we tried to mop up the gushing water as best we could. We could barely keep up. I crawled around the basement turning knobs, and finally turned the water off.

I ran to the phone and called Jay. Jay is what I call a big man in a truck, but he is not like most of the big men in  trucks. He is shy, very quiet. He is former engineer who left that life behind to come to the country, be with his family, raise sheep, run a farm, and be a carpenter and craftsperson.

Jay does not stand around talking much, like some of the big men in trucks, who love to grunt and grumble. He does not gossip, nor make much small talk.

When I called him that day, he said he would be over as soon as he finished lunch with his wife Judy. He comes home to lunch with July every day. no matter what.

Jay has tea most days, and I’m not sure he would skip tea if the farmhouse was on fire. Jay doesn’t take every job he’s offered, they have to interest him. He’ll just say “that’s not really for me.”

What he does, he does perfectly and thoroughly. And reasonably.  He almost always has a wry smile, as if he has seen a lot of the world, and is surprised by nothing much. He hops up and down ladders, crawls over roofs.

He tiled our bathroom and kitchen floor. He rebuilt our rotting porch.

Like me, Jay had open heart surgery some years ago, he is fully recovered active and strong.

When Jay came the day the pipes broke, he went into my office, cut the broken pipe, went to the hardware store and replaced it, and tinkered with the water lines in the basement. He was gone in an hour-and-a-half, charged about $120 dollars. We were nearly breathless with gratitude, it could so easily have been a much more expensive disaster.

Jay is always calm and steady.

He usually works on class stuff, work that requires some craftmanship.

He is coming back to the farm to replace broken slate on the roof, take off the green shutters (they were not used when the farmhouse were built, they are simply ornamental, put on during the period when old farmhouses were trying to look like Colonial homes in the 1950’s our farmhouse is returning to its natural state), and see if the space between the dining room and the living room can be rebuilt and opened up.

Two of our shutters are the wrong size – the painters put them up that way – and the sight of them drives Maria crazy. We dont’ really need them, they have no natural function.

Jay and I go to lunch once in a while, he is thoughtful, intelligent, his eyes curious. He is a good listener. He does not say too much, but he has a wonderful dry sense of humor, and a deep love of culture and the arts. I find him very easy to talk do, I do much of the talking.

He is one of those men who doesn’t talk too much, but what he says is worth listening to.

I’m including him in my portrait show, “Cambridge People.” I think his face has enormous character, always a good subject for a portrait.