With a tight grip on the handle of his Louisville Slugger, William Cahill went to work on a pretty good pitch.
With a short, steady stroke, he swung away, making contact again and again. By the time he was finished, his hit was dead-on.
Don't be confused, though. Cahill's no ballplayer. The 48-year-old Irishman is a thatcher, a roofer with a specialty older than his adopted homeland.
For the past 30 years, five in Ireland and 25 in the U.S., Cahill has perfected the art of making a thatched roof. He declined to discuss the economics of the profession but said that while thatched roofs are expensive, they aren't the most expensive. Stainless-steel roofs, he said, are the most expensive.
For the next month or so, Cahill will be practicing his trade at Henricus Historical Park in Chesterfield County. He's putting the roof on the park's newest re-creation, the home of the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, the man thought to have converted Pocahontas to Christianity.
"This never gets old," Cahill said Thursday morning as he demonstrated the technique of squaring off a corner of a roof made out of a special kind of water reed, which he harvests in New Jersey. "There's always something new to learn."
Early in his career, he said, he learned the most important lesson: "You have to have your wits about you."
For a thatched roof to work, he said, the pitch has to be at least 45 degrees. That looks steep from the safety of solid earth; up on a ladder, making your way to the top, it seems nearly vertical.
"You do have to be careful," he said. "Not much stays when you let go up there."
John Pagano, the historical interpretation supervisor at Henricus, would prefer that Cahill hold on tight.
"There's a narrow window of possibility," he said of the pool of people capable of thatching a roof. "Some people do it as part of their trade, but if you want the best, Cahill is it."
He has worked hard to get to the top. He lives in Cincinnati but spends most of the year on the road, he said.
Since first coming to the U.S. in 1986, to work on a Smithsonian project at Jamestown, he has worked in 41 states.
Most of his jobs have been on historical projects, but he has put thatched roofs on new homes and done plenty of "whimsical stuff in gardens," he said.
One of those projects led him to his baseball bat.
He was working in Louisville several years ago — among other projects, he did roofs in the city's zoo — when he dropped the custom-made tool he uses to square off the ends of the reeds.
It slid off the roof, and the handle broke when it hit the ground.
"I needed a new handle," he said.
The first thing he came across was a Little League-sized Louisville Slugger. Now well-worn, with the signature of former Cincinnati Reds slugger Ted Kluszewski barely legible, the bat has worked out just right.
"The last time I was in Louisville, someone suggested that it should be in a museum," he said.
But not just yet. There's still plenty of work to do before Cahill lets go of his tools.
"Oh, I'm not going to retire. The guys I learned from were in their 80s. When I retire, I'll retire down there," he said, laughing as he pointed to the ground. "But not yet."
zreid@timesdispatch.com
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