Lauren Gaertner

Ms. Thomson
AP Language & Composition
Friday, October 27, 2017
A Trailer in the Backwoods of Kentucky

I was standing on a roof twenty feet above the ground, on a scorching summer day in

rural Kentucky. My right thumb was throbbing, due to the fact I had just flattened it with my

hammer. This experience was part of a mission trip I went on this past summer, where I was

given the opportunity to rebuild a trailer in a small town in Kentucky that is not even on a map.

The experience was a very formative one, and through it I learned how to truly live out my faith.

I headed down to Kentucky the last Saturday in June with a group of 59 people

assembled of high schoolers, college students, and adults. It was my first year doing the trip, and

I had no prior experience power tools and construction it is safe to say that I was a little nervous.

After “power tool orientation” on Sunday, I was given my work group comprised of nine people

and we headed to our work site for the week. I woke up on Monday morning both excited and

nervous to see my work site and figure out what we would be doing. After loading all of our

tools and supplies into the van, my group and I set out to find our work site. After a fifteen

minute drive, we pulled up to a beaten-down trailer. The roof was covered in a raggedy blue tarp

and there was a huge pile of old couches, chairs, and moldy drywall sitting next to the gravel

driveway. We all walked on to the small front porch, which was crammed with all sorts of

household items like rakes, brooms, and even dog food. The owner of the trailer, Christa, and her

fiancé Sean greeted us by the front door as we scoped out the outside of the gray, rusted trailer.
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Christa is one of the nicest people I have ever met. When my work group was walking up

the wobbly porch steps she began to cry because she was just so overjoyed that someone had

finally come to fix her home. She hugged us all in a tight embrace as we entered the trailer. To

sum up what I saw, it was inhabitable. It had just rained the day before and there were huge

plastic storage containers filled with rainwater from the leaking roof. The drywall was falling

down, insects crawling everywhere, and the floor in one of the bedrooms was concaved. There

was no electricity or running water. As we were walking around the trailer scoping out what

needed work Christa immediately began offering us soda and water, begging with us to accept

because she wanted to have something to offer us. Monday at around noon I had to go up on the

roof to saw off branches from trees blocking the way. I have never been on a roof before and if

that was not scary enough, the “roof” was actually a tarp with minimal structural support. To

move around I had to drag a plywood board to wherever I wanted and stand on it. I was the only

member of the group that had no previous experience doing handy work, and my other group

members wanted to make sure I got the full experience.

My work group aka “Team 5” was made up of nine people. There were many different

personalities and age groups in my work team. The first and most important member was

Captain Ron, our 80 year old fearless leader who could crawl in between exposed floor boards

better than anyone I know. Second in command was Josh, a graduate architecture student at Penn

State. We also had Lauren, a recently engaged teacher who had been going on the trip for ten

years. Then came the teenagers: Madeline, Tia, David M. (who happens to be my neighbor),

David R., Vince, and myself. I was the youngest in the group and the only rookie, which meant I

got to do all the dirty work and was constantly learning new tips and techniques on construction.
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I guess you could say I had fun doing all the tasks nobody else wanted to, which started on the

roof and carried on the rest of the week.

After climbing all over the tarp on my plywood board, I began to help cut pieces to lay

the foundations for the roof. My knowledge of circular saws was limited, so for the beginning of

the day I took measurements and held down the end of the board when others were cutting. I had

sawdust in my hair for three days after. Tuesday was also pretty interesting because Madeline

and I spent the entire day taking out the floor, and pulling staples and nails out of the

floorboards. After we pulled a piece of the floor out we had to jump down into the hole where we

pulled out the board and check to make sure there was no debris left. The floor had not been

exposed for about seventy years and when we were pulling out the boards, I swear I have never

seen so many bugs in my life. All in all, it was pretty disgusting and Madeline and I were making

jokes about wanting to shower the entire day. My hero, Captain Ron, really showed his agility

and limberness as he joined us maneuvering around the torn up floor and pulling out nails. The

entire time we were crawling around in the floor Christa offered to join us and help in any way

she could, and when we turned her down she sat near the door and told us stories about her two

daughters and how once the trailer got fixed they could all live together as one, big, happy

family. I thought Tuesday was difficult, but my biggest challenge was yet to come.

If you ask any handyman what their hardest tool to use is, I highly doubt that they would

say hammer. However, my biggest challenge of the entire week was hitting the nail and not my

finger. Wednesday was scorching hot, and this happened to be the day I was up on the roof. The

roof had been making some serious progress and we were finally ready to put the tin sheets on

the top of the roof. Josh, David M., Tia, and I were on the roof laying out the sheets of tin so that

they would fit the roof perfectly. After we had found the right pattern we started nailing down
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the thick, metal gutter. I have no experience with hammers, I know how they are supposed to be

used but I had no idea that my accuracy would be so awful. To pound in the nails we had to

swing our hammers with a lot of force and unfortunately I hit my right thumb right on my

fingernail. Almost immediately after the bottom of my nail turned purple like a grape. I almost

screamed but I held it in because I did not want any of my group members to know. After a

couple more tries I hit the same spot on my finger and made a squealing noise. At that point, a

small amount of tears began to come out of my eyes, but I was not crying and disguised them as

sweat by wiping them away with my t-shirt. I was not going to hit the same spot three times so I

changed the way I held the nail, and then I slammed the hammer into my finger again. I got so

desperate that I eventually tried to use my right hand to hammer, which was even more

unsuccessful. This process was very frustrating because I thought hammers were one of the

easiest tools to use, and I just could not get it right. To be completely honest, the hammer was

kicking my butt. After an hour of hitting about five of my fingers with a hammer, eventually I

learned to be more accurate and gained control of the cursed hammer I had been using. Tears had

been shed in the process, but eventually the roof was finished.

Thursday rolled around and we were all exhausted. Getting up at six every morning was

beginning to take its toll. I was sore in places I had no idea could even get sore, I had blisters

from my work boots, and my finger was still throbbing. Thursday required a real team effort, as

we had to put drywall on the ceiling. First we had to deal with the insulation in the ceiling that

was loose and raining down from the wooden ceiling. We would nail in the insulation and then it

would fall again, this happened over and over. The insulation was bubblegum pink in some

spots, but in others orange mold had begun to grow. There was also a huge cockroach problem,

and bugs were present almost everywhere. The smell inside was rancid. It was a mix of wet dog,
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moldy insulation, sweat, and rotting wood. Overall, all nine of us crammed into one room in a

trailer was a very interesting team bonding experience. To put up the drywall some people held

up the drywall, while others used the screw gun to secure it. Some pieces were harder to install

than others, and we would have to stand on chairs with our arms stretched up holding the drywall

for about six minutes at a time, talk about a shoulder workout. By Friday, we had finished all of

the big projects like the roof, the floor, and the ceilings and we were left with small projects here

and there. This left us with more time to talk with Christa, who kept us very hydrated throughout

the week. She would not stop thanking us, and whenever we would finish a part of the trailer she

would just stare at it in awe. I will never forget what she told us on that last day. She was talking

about how she had gone through bad relationships, near homelessness, poverty, having her

daughters separated from her, her roof falling in and through it all she said, “God has always

provided for me, no matter what I know he loves me and is looking out for me.” How could a

woman who had gone through so much, believe so strongly that God is with her? Christa’s

positive outlook was so inspiring to me and I can honestly say that her strong faith helped to

push me to strengthen my relationship with God. When it was around three and we had finished

up. Christa gave us all huge hugs and told us that she would always remember what we had done

for her, and keep us in her prayers. At this point she began crying and said something that will

stick with me forever, “You all made my house a home.” I have never felt so proud of something

before. Looking at that trailer and seeing the improvements we had made just made me realize

how I could impact someone else’s life. Mission work is not for gratification, it is to show God’s

love through helping others, and I have never felt God’s love shining down on myself so

strongly. Knowing that I helped to change somebody’s life is a feeling I will never forget. I also

realized that I am just so fortunate to have a clean home, a loving family, and a wealth of great
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resources and people around me. As we said our final goodbyes and hugged the emotional

Christa one last time, I just felt something inside me change. I soon snapped out of my inner

reflection when Captain Ron said, “Let’s go to Dairy Queen."

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Self-Reflection

I really enjoyed reminiscing on the mission trip I took this past summer. It provided an

easy topic for me to write in detail about, and hopefully made for a great memoir. My memoir is

similar to other memoirs in the fact that it has a purpose. The purpose of my memoir was to show

that mission work can be challenging, but it can be very rewarding. The narrative structure of my

memoir is a very short part of my life and focuses more on the details of how I felt about certain

tasks, rather than explaining what I did the whole week. My memoir, like many others uses

figurative language. Personification is evident in the phrase “the hammer is kicking my butt” and

imagery like “The roof was covered in a raggedy blue tarp and there was a huge pile of old

couches, chairs, and moldy drywall sitting next to the gravel driveway” and similes like “my nail

turned purple like a grape.” My memoir also adheres to the normal scope of a memoir, because it

only takes place over a week, not my entire life. My writing is a memoir compared to an

autobiography because: I focus more on detail, like describing my work group, my memoir

discusses my feelings toward daily tasks instead of just including facts, and it only covers a

miniscule portion of my life. My memoir is also written in first person point of view and

pronouns like “I” and “my” are used throughout the writing. The pace of a memoir is also

evident in my writing because it is more casual and focuses more on my feelings than plot

movement. I performed a lot of different tasks that I left out, in order to include moments that

stuck out to me. My memoir also features several anecdotes like Madeline and I crawling

underneath floorboards, the pain I was in after I flattened my fingers, and how Christa hugged us

as we left. My memoir also conveys meaning, because I want the reader to take away that the

hardest jobs yield the most gratifying results, as well as the trip was a learning experience for me
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faith-wise as I learned that sometimes people with the worst luck have the best faith. Like all

other memoirs, all the events featured are true stories and actually did occur.
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List of Memoir Characteristics

1. Purpose- The purpose of a memoir is to convey the author’s thoughts and feelings about a

specific point in their life to an audience who is looking for a firsthand account of a

particular event. The purpose of Michelle Obama’s convention speech was to make her

husband appear more personable and draw support for his campaign.

2. Narrative structure- Memoirs only focus on a shorter part of somebody’s life, instead of

their entire lives. Memoirs are also more focused on the author’s feelings. The narrative

structure of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass includes Douglass’s life

from birth until his escape from slavery and focuses on his feelings of hatred towards his

owners and slavery in general.

3. Style- Authors use various rhetorical devices, such as figurative language, to emphasize

certain elements of their story and get their point across. An author’s voice is also more

evident through the moments they choose to explain in more detail and more precisely. In

chapter one of “Running with Scissors” the author uses the simile “the blow-dryer

continues to tick like a clock” and personification “the orange light from the dehumidifier

that sits next to the wicker laundry hamper is looking at me” to add a more personal

touch and create a more vivid picture.

4. Scope- Scope is used effectively in memoirs due to the focus on a shorter amount of time

in an author’s life. One memoir can focus on a specific event, and if an author publishes a

collection of memoirs they can build off of one another and tell the story of individual

moments in the writer’s life. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass the scope

is from Douglass’s birth to his escape from slavery.

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5. Similarities/differences between a memoir and autobiography- Some similarities are that

the author writes about themselves, and that the author’s feelings about certain subjects.

Some differences are that autobiographies are more fact-based and memoirs are more

about thoughts, feelings, and emotions, memoirs are also much more casual, and

autobiographies discuss a person’s entire life, while a memoir only addresses one specific

portion of the author’s life.

6. Point of view- Memoirs are always written in first person point of view. In “Running

with Scissors” the author uses personal pronouns like “I” and “my.”

7. Pace- Memoirs are often times more casual, as well as very descriptive and detail-

oriented, instead of focusing on action and plot movement. In The Narrative of the Life of

Frederick Douglass, Douglass does not mention in detail every place he went, everything

he did daily and instead focused on how he was treated and the violence he encountered.

8. Anecdotes- Memoirs are often made up of small anecdotes that are important to the

author and add more personal details about the event being discussed. In Michelle

Obama’s convention speech she uses stories of when Barack and her were “young and

broke” to make them appear more personable.

9. Meaning- Memoirs are meaningful and show what the author learned and took away

from his/her experience. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass

wants the readers to know his feelings on the evils of slavery, and how he felt they

robbed him of a normal childhood.

10. Fact- Memoirs are nonfiction pieces of writing and are real events that have happened in

history. In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass all of the events Douglass

describes actually occurred and are non-debatable.

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Works Cited

Burroughs, Augusten. “Something Isn't Right.” Running with Scissors, Unieboek, 2004.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Signet, 1997.

Obama, Michelle. Democratic Convention, 4 Dec. 2012, Charlotte, North Carolina.