Bob CollinsRelax, Minnesota. Your winter image is intact.
Those Minnesota ice-dam specialists who rode to the rescue in Massachusetts are getting some front-page love from the colonists today.
“For frantic homeowners, relief hails from Minnesota,” the Boston Globe blares.
“I went home and told my wife, ‘We’re going to Boston,’ ” said Dmitry Lipinskiy, 31, the owner of Ice Dam Liquidators, based in Brooklyn Park, Minn. “She asked, ‘How come?’ And I said, ‘Because they need us.’ ”
And also because there was $20,000 to be made in a week’s worth of work.
The Globe says Lipinskiy and three of his roofers drove from Minneapolis to Boston in one night — an impossible task, by the way; it’s a 23-hour drive if you don’t stop — in February. They went straight to the first job.
Their mornings begin before sunrise, when they don damp gear and scale frozen shingles. At one job, ice formations run the length of a two-story building, creating majestic cascading ice chutes.
Jesus Millan, 41, sprays scalding steam, melting the ice as he inches across the steep incline. It’s a slow business and an exercise in caution. Millan has fallen off roofs seven times in 15 years. He has always gotten back up.
“I always wanted to do something useful with my life,” Millan said. “This serves that purpose . . . helping people before it gets worse.”
The days blur together. Food is devoured — Boston Market three days in a row, TGI Fridays on another night. The guys pass their cellphones around the dinner table, showing off pictures of their kids. They reconnect with their families via Skype.
Craig Koterba, 32, the salesman of the group, brought along his son’s white wool beanie cap. He realized too late that it had a Yankees logo on the back. He hid it under a hoodie at first. Then it turned into a conversation piece with customers.
From the look of the pictures, there’s plenty of work in the Boston area for Minnesotans in the insulation business, too.
