Some of you might recall that I said the last snowstorm was the nasties and most destructive I could remember experiencing up here in the frigid North. It looks like I was right.

Several days ago, water started coming through the roof and into the attic. When we went to look, leaks were coming from all over the place.

We could see from the outside that several slate tiles on the roof were broken, and we could see from the inside that water was coming in from all over the place.

The last storm left a ton of heavy snow and a thick coat of ice beneath the snow on the roof. The ice didn’t melt until Saturday.

When the snow came off the roof, it took a good chunk of our roof with it. We got buckets all over the floor and just hung on.

We contacted Jamie Alexander, the best and most respected slate and roof person around here. He got to work this morning. He’ll have to return to  finish – many broken slates, leaks, and rotted flashing.

He said it was a real mess up there.

We were not surprised.

We heard water thumping through holes all night on the attack floor. We used our buckets like sailors on a sinking ship. Jamie patched a lot of it up today.

If it rains, the leaks won’t be as bad. He’ll be back in a day or so.

Maria hopped up on the ladder to get a close look; Jamie realized there was no point in talking to me, he told Maria what was going on, and she interpreted it for me. I hate to hear about roof damage.

Repairing a slate roof is always time-consuming and expensive, yet there is nothing more important to fix on a house.

He was up to his neck in work, and it wasn’t until today that the w either cleared and he had time to get up on a ladder. We waited for those dread words, “do you have a minute?”

They came, and we got the bad news. A $1,000 estimate just jumped way up. At the point where the two roofs meet, the slate was broken, and the roof slashing had holes. The wood around it had rotten.

Jamie is a lovely man, as courteous as he is enormous.

At the end of the day, Jamie found a rotting hole at the top of the roof. He had a stricken look on his face. “I can’t leave it like this,” he said.”I’ll be back.'”

He will. It is a wonderful thing when we are good to each other.Perhaps one day our political leaders and media people will see that.

I wouldn’t want to mess with Jamie but we like and trust him. He’s going to come back in a day or so (more rain tomorrow) and try to repair the rotted section at the top of the roof. There were square-headed nails up there; the roof probably hadn’t been improved since the house was built in the early 1800s.

Jamie works with a helper who is just as lovely and thoughtful as he is; I didn’t get to catch his name. They are a great pair. They brought a boom box up there but turned it on so low we couldn’t hear it in the house.

I wouldn’t dare to climb that ladder; Jamie strolls around the roof like it is his backyard.

That snowstorm did a lot worse damage than this around town. We are fortunate Jamie got to this before the entire roof was wrecked. We are not out of the woods yet, but close. Those people in Mississippi got it a lot worse yesterday.