We Have a Sidewalk

Under my personal category of "guilty pleasures" is the 80s movie The Money Pit.

Conceived as a star vehicle for Tom Hanks, it failed at the box office, and as far as movies go it's not ever going to win any awards. But it's one of those movies that I saw at that nebulous time of your adolescence when entertainment sticks with you, for good or bad. So naturally, if it's ever on TV when I'm channel surfing, I'll watch it - even if I'm at someone else's house (sorry, pals!).

One of the reasons why I love the movie is the universal vein of comedy it taps into with regards to home improvements. Hanks and his violin-playing girlfriend, played by Shelley Long, buy a mansion which immediately turns out to be the biggest lemon in the history of real estate. Low on cash, they hire the least-reputable construction crew in the world to first demolish, then painstakingly slowly rebuild their dream house. And, as they say, hilarity ensues.

There is a scene in The Money Pit when Tom Hanks wakes up one morning, four months after renovations began, to discover that the staircase to the second floor whose collapse had nearly killed him earlier in the film had suddenly - almost as if by magic - reappeared overnight thanks to the construction crew. He discovers this as he is walking out his bedroom door with a bucket to get water from an outside fountain for his girlfriend's morning ablutions, which heretofore he had to carry up and down a very unstable metal ladder bridging the two floors of the house.

Hanks' performance in this scene gets me laughing every single time I see it. His eyes grow to the size of dinner plates; he dashes to the staircase and goggles in disbelief; he steps tentatively on the first step, then jogs up and down the stairs in sheer joy. "Stairs," he wheezes incredulously. Then - "STAIRS! HONEY! WE HAVE... WE HAVE STAIRS!"

Then he breaks down in joyful, relieved weeping while his girlfriend says, "That's nice, dear."

I bring all this up because of the ongoing renovations to the Barrel Student Center II building outside my window. The other day, I cracked my blinds open to discover that not only had the new wall across the way been painted... it had also been decorated and touched up with brickwork. After weeks of staring at untreated walls with construction logos plastered all over them, it was as if the beautiful finished exterior had been conjured into existence by Harry Potter.

Then, a few days later, I found that a brand new sidewalk had materialized between Barrel II and Barrel III, almost as if it had erupted there from a secret underground concrete volcano that none of us knew about.

I had a very Money Pit moment then. After weeks of watching construction workers walking around piles of dirt, rubble, yellow tape, and various idle pieces of machinery, abruptly some significant progress had become apparent. I did not break down crying like Tom Hanks did, but I think I felt nearly as exultant as his fictional character at the sight.

The Money Pit has a happy ending when all the loose ends get tied up and everyone lives happily ever after in the gorgeous, pristinely-restored mansion. I can't wait for Midwestern University to come to the same denouement.