House raising

The dark clouds in the background didn't unleash their fury until the contractor and his crew of workers just about had the rafters on. Then they called it a day. An interesting, though seemingly waning custom here, is to give a gift of money ($100 for the contractor and $30 each for the other workers) on the day of raising the frame. We did it, even though the contractor said we didn't have to unless we really wanted to.