.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} If I were taking an evening course in meteorology, I would be hooked on clouds. If I had won the Iowa lottery, I would be out at the Ramsey Auto Center right now, taking a series of Porsche test drives.

But I’ve been building a wall where a garage door used to be, so all I can think about is bricks.

When you think like that and walk around downtown Des Moines, you start to get obsessed. Consider Veterans Memorial Auditorium and the Equitable Building and The Plaza and the Hub Tower and so forth, and you might figure a gazillion bricks have been laid downtown. But I think it might be twice that many.

Various century-old warehouses were built with bricks, and so were the Iowa Events Center and the Riverfront YMCA and the Kirkwood Hotel.

Walk along Fourth Street north of Grand Avenue and you find an alley entrance made of well-aged purple bricks. They lie in a straight line by the street, but get all wavy farther in. Was the guy feeling lazy or creative that day? Probably too late to ask him now.

It adds up to countless bricklayers spending countless days placing those units one at a time. There’s an extremely valuable parable about life in there somewhere, which is why we raised the price of the paper.

Is it a dying art? Not at all. Gary Crees, president of the bricklayers union’s local chapter, said the union has about 675 members in Iowa, half of them in the Des Moines area, and the number has held steady during his eight years on the job. About 50 young workers join up every year.

If Greater Des Moines keeps rolling, those guys should have nice careers. The current package of pay and benefits for a union bricklayer is worth about $36 an hour.

Last week bricks were rattling so loudly in my head that I got permission to put on a hard hat, go up in the building being constructed here on Fourth Street and annoy some of those bricklayers for a few minutes. I really just wanted to improve my skills by watching them work, but I did pick up one statistic: they claimed the average bricklayer can set 600 bricks in a day.

That means one member of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 3 Iowa could have finished my garage job in a morning. I’ve been at it for about three weekends. I may work slowly, but I take a lot of breaks.

So why have bricks remained popular from before the Roman Empire until today? I called Daryl Metzger, an architect who works in a red brick building on Grand Avenue, and asked why we keep opting for walls of small rectangles.

“That’s a good question,” Metzger said, although I may have detected the faint sound of eyes rolling. “I think bricks connote permanence and quality,” he said. “There’s something about a bunch of little bricks stuck together making a mass that speaks to most humans in a way most materials don’t. They come from the earth.”

Bricks also transfer the sun’s heat to the building’s interior nice and slowly. Plus, Metzger said, “maintenance is almost nil. (A brick wall) looks as good 20 years from now as the day you opened the place. And they’re actually a ‘green’ building material, because you’re not slapping on paint every few years.”

And you can’t say a brick is a brick is a brick. When Architects Smith Metzger drew up plans for the Josephs Jewelers store out at West Glen Town Center, the architects made sure to specify “long, thin bricks that emphasize the horizontal,” Metzger said.

Yes, people with an eye for design love bricks. We have terrific brick walls here at the old railroad depot, and during warm weather we look out our windows and watch photographers shoot high school senior pictures with a brick background.

We have a wide brick sidewalk, too, and sometimes the photographers make the young girls lie down for a shot. We have a pretty good idea about what happens on those bricks, so close contact with them strikes us as something best left to the Des Moines Fire Department’s hazardous materials unit. But, hey, it’s not our senior picture.

I see the BAC has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. I had been planning to vote for the Natural Law Party candidate this time around, but if she’s good enough for my fellow bricklayers …