Gary's hands tell stories in grout and thin-set, in the careful placement of each tile, in the evening beer he wraps them around at the American Legion post after a long day's work. They're hands that learned early not to hold weapons, choosing the Navy over the Marines because, as he puts it simply, "I didn't want to kill people." They're hands that have built thousands of showers, buried two wives, and slowly, tile by tile, rebuilt a life that cracked open more than once.

At sixty-four, he moves through Idyllwild like water finding its level—steady, unhurried, always flowing toward the next job. Book him three months out. That's the waiting list for a man who's been setting tile since 1983, who's spent more of his life with his hands in thin-set than out of it, who still reads about new materials late into the night, who understands that the foundation matters more than the finish.

He spent nine years as a helper before going out on his own, longer than most, but that patience taught him everything. "I've seen people go out on their own after four or five years. Way too soon." Four decades later, he's still learning, still adapting, still showing up before dawn with a level and a plan.

The Education of Hands

The first real lesson came on a weekend in the early eighties; a friend asking for help with a tile shower, Gary showing up to find a mountain of sand that wouldn't fit in the room he's sitting in now. "This guy tells me, 'We're going to put that up there on the third floor.'"

By the end of that day, carrying load after load up three flights of stairs, Gary's arms felt like they'd been stretched out of their sockets. He laughs at the memory, but there's reverence in it too. That weekend of hauling sand, mixing cement, watching someone who knew what they were doing—that's when the art chose him. Forty years later, he's still chasing that feeling. "When you get done with a tile job, unless it's just a boring floor, when you do a shower that turns out absolutely beautiful, you can't take enough pictures of it."

For twenty years, he photographed every job. Then he stopped. "Everybody showed me all these pictures of everything they've done, and I thought, 'That's just like what I did.'" The work became its own proof, needing no documentation beyond the satisfaction of the homeowner, the smooth run of water down a drain that doesn't leak.

Four decades in, materials evolve. The industry shifts like sand. Gary adapts. "Tile is constantly evolving. Some engineer comes up with this new thing to put on the wall instead of cement." He's seen products fail spectacularly—6,000 showers installed with a material that turned out to be trash, Styrofoam masquerading as innovation. "It holds water for ten days, then it starts to leak."

So he does his homework. Reads the ASTM ratings. Tests things carefully. Trusts his instincts born from a lifetime of watching what works and what falls apart. When something new crosses his path, he asks: What's it made of? What's it tested for? Will it still be solid in ten years, twenty, when the homeowner's grandchildren visit? It's the kind of wisdom you can't learn in a classroom, only through decades of showing up, day after day, job after job.

Mountains and Marriages

He came to Idyllwild in 2000, chasing a dream with Jolinda, his second wife. Every weekend they'd rent different cabins, spending money they didn't have on the fantasy of mountain life. "I said, 'Why don't we just move up here?'" Two and a half years of working on his credit, and finally they bought their house in Idyllwild.

Jolinda died a year later.

Loss nearly drowned him. "I crawled into a bottle of Black Velvet. Sometimes two of them a day. Big bottles. I didn't give a shit."

Salvation came in the form of a friend named Christian who showed up one day, threw him in the shower fully clothed, and put him back to work. "A fantastic human being. That was the end of my sorrow."

Then Kathy, a bartender at the Legion, walked into his life. They married the following March.

"She was the sweetest, most giving, just rock of a person you could ever think of meeting," Gary says, and his voice cracks. "I miss her every day."

Cancer took her too. "After that, it was hard to get a date. It's like, 'You killed two of them?'"

He tried again, but some things aren't meant to last. And just recently, Laurel—the woman who stood with him on the Honor Guard, who made him think maybe one more time—moved to Ridgecrest. Three and a half hours away.

"I'm done getting married," Gary says.

The House That Holds Memory

This year brought a strange kind of poetry, the universe offering a chance at closure wrapped in drywall and tile. The house he bought with Jolinda—the one the bank took back after she died, after he stopped working, after everything fell apart—came back to him.

Not to own. To rebuild.

The current owner hired him to renovate it, not knowing it was once his. He stood in the doorway of his old bedroom, saw the fireplace he'd warmed his hands by, walked rooms that held laughter and sickness and love and devastation.

"It was weird at first," he admits. "But I got to do all the stuff to my house that I always wanted to do to it."

For six months now, he's been there almost daily, power tools singing at dawn, his hands moving with the muscle memory of someone who knows this space in his bones. Upgrading bathrooms where there were none. Building the showers he'd dreamed of twenty-five years ago when he was just a tile guy, before he learned plumbing and electrical and everything else that makes a house whole.

"I'm getting to see that house through fruition," Gary says. "It's going to be beautiful when it's finally done, and the owner won't have to do anything to it."

There's healing in the work. In taking something broken and making it better than it was. In proving that even after the worst losses, your hands still know how to build.

The Legion Life

Most days, you'll find him at the American Legion Post 800, the one that became his anchor. He joined first as a legacy member—his father served in Korea, which made Gary eligible even though he never saw combat. Four years in the Navy, painting ship hulls in Norfolk and Jacksonville, training for wars that never came. The Iranian hostage crisis was over before his ship arrived.

But the hardest duty came through the Honor Guard. Seventeen memorials in five months, presenting folded flags to grieving families, speaking the words about a grateful nation. The last one in that brutal stretch—a man Gary knew, whose whole family Gary knew—he stood there with the flag in his hands and nothing would come out.

"Absolutely nothing," he remembers. "And the oldest son just grabbed the flag and said, 'I know, Gary. I know.' I thought, 'I'm never doing this again.'"

But then another memorial came, and nobody else could do it. So he went back. He always goes back. Sometimes with Jimmy and Nedor, sometimes just the two of them struggling to fold the flag properly because you really need three people. He drives to Hemet and Palm Springs and Riverside, wears his uniform, and speaks the ritual words that never quite feel adequate.

At night, he prays for peace. "For our nation," he says. "For all our men and women who are still in harm's way, and for their families at home who are worried sick about them." He gave up praying for football when the Chargers moved to LA, but he never gave up praying for the things that actually matter.

The Giving Circle

The thing about small mountain towns is they see you when you're down. And Gary has been down before.

When someone broke into his truck and stole all his tools—every saw, every level, every piece of equipment that let him work—the devastation was total. Tools are more than instruments; they're extensions of yourself, each one worn to fit your grip, familiar as your own fingers.

The community put a jar on the bar. Two weeks later, he had enough money to replace everything. "It was just a jar here," Gary says, gesturing to the bar where we sit. "And it was awesome."

He pays it forward now. Anonymously, mostly. Fires terrify him—the finality of it, everything gone in flame—so when someone loses their house, he gives. When a veteran needs help, he gives. 

He remembers being screwed over by a pastor who stole from 26 children saving for winter camp. "I made sure those kids still went," he says of that long-ago betrayal. "I took a loan out and took those 26 kids to that camp."

This is how Idyllwild works, he explains. Small enough that everyone knows when you're hurting. Close enough that they show up with casseroles and cash and power tools. It's not perfect—"Every once in a while you get your bad seed"—but it's good. It's real.

"I've always been a sweetheart," Gary says, and there's a grin in it, self-aware and a little embarrassed. "That's what everybody's always told me all my life. There was a time I was pretty cynical, and I did not like that. It wasn't even fun. So much easier to be nice."

The Mountain's Hold

Twenty-five years in Idyllwild. The population has grown, LA money flowing in, new people buying old cabins. It's good for business—all those showers needing tile—but he misses the smallness sometimes.

Still, he stays. Two and a half hours to the beach, four hours to the desert, already in the mountains. Every Father's Day, he makes the pilgrimage to Lake Fulmor. There's a rock there, 26 feet of granite rising above the water. He climbs it and throws himself into space. The free fall, the shock of cold water, the way you surface gasping and alive. It's a ritual of renewal, a way of reminding himself he's still here, still capable of the leap.

The mountain keeps calling him back.

"I made plans to leave," he says. "And it didn't work. Life wanted me to stay here."

The Late-Night Cheeseburger

Ask Gary what's missing in Idyllwild and he'll tell you: "Going to get a cheeseburger at 12 o'clock at night."

No fast food. No late-night convenience. If you want that cheeseburger, you make it yourself. He hopes it never changes—but sometimes, after a long job, you want what you want.

What the town really needs is representation, he thinks. "We need voices in the state. There's grants out there for all kinds of stuff. We just don't know how to get them."

But that's life at 5,000 feet. You know everyone. Everyone knows you. When you fall apart, someone throws you in the shower. When you lose your tools, the community buys new ones. When you renovate the house where your wife died, you find a way to call it healing.

Hands That Know

Gary finishes the tile work in his old house this week.

The counter gets installed today. Once it's in, he can finish the backsplash, set the final tiles, grout it all smooth. Then it's done—the house complete, his past put properly to rest.

He's lived several lives in this town. The one with his second wife, cut short. The drunk one that almost killed him. The one with Kathy, which was perfect until it wasn't. The recovery. And now this—single again, older, wiser, still showing up to the Legion, still taking calls from contractors, still praying for peace.

"Every day I work on being good," Gary says. "I have to."

It shows in the tile work. The level lines, the perfect spacing, the way water flows exactly where it should. It shows in the memorial services, the folded flags, the prayers for strangers. It shows in the anonymous donations, the jar on the bar refilled for others.

Sixty-four years old. Four marriages, two dead wives, a son, granddaughters he adores. A truck full of tools paid for by community love. A house he lost and rebuilt. A girlfriend who moved away. A mountain that won't let him leave. And most evenings, a seat at the Legion bar.

And hands. Always hands. Moving tile into place. Folding flags. Mixing thin-set. Wrapping around a beer at day's end at the Legion where everyone knows his name.

Hands that build and rebuild, understanding finally that this is what you do: You show up. You do the work right. You stay three months booked because people trust you. You jump off rocks on Father's Day. You make your own cheeseburger at midnight. You pray for peace. You find it easier to be nice. And at the end of each day, you head to the Legion where everyone knows your name and most know your story.

You lay one tile after another, level and true, knowing that what you build might outlast you, might shelter someone else's love story.

But for now, it's yours to do. And you do it right.

Because that's what Gary's hands know how to do.