Lifetime mason John Davidson gives houses a lift

Like any good block-stacking mason, John Davidson is quick to defend his trade.

"Foundations do matter," he said emphatically, while standing next to one of eight, eight-foot-tall pillars of cribbing with a house perched on top of them in Dewey Beach. He and his East Coast Structural Movers crew raised the house. They are going to be building the new block foundation the house will be resting on. "As we go up, we check and double check to make sure things are level, plumb and square. It's about the pride. Otherwise it's like putting a square box on a rectangular box."

Davidson, 61, is not a big man, but he has a wiry build with enough muscle behind it that he easily picked up a chimney block when asked how much it weighed. He estimated 65 pounds. When he was 17, decades before anyone thought it was a good idea to pay for CrossFit, Davidson began learning the masonry trade.

He said early in his teen years, his mom told him he was either going to vocational school to learn a trade or enter the service. "I chose school," he said. "My whole senior year, it was half a day in school and half a day in the field."

Davidson has been self-employed as a mason since he was 21. "I just had enough people asking me to do stuff on the weekends that I decided to take a stab at it," he said matter-of-factly. "It's just how it went."

Other than a few years west of Georgetown, Davidson said he's spent his whole life living in Harbeson. "The only thing that's changed is the owner of the chicken plant," he said, laughing.

And, despite how new housing developments are being advertised, Davidson said when he was growing up, Harbeson was not the beach. "You actually had to be in Lewes or Rehoboth to be at the beach," he said.

Davidson is the second youngest of six kids, and he's proud to say all his siblings inherited his mom's work ethic. Davidson's dad, who was also a mason, died of cancer at the age of 39, when John was 7 years old. He said he vaguely remembers the man.

Davidson said it's impossible to know how things could, or would, have been different if his father had been alive longer, but he credits his mom, a nurse who was schooled at Beebe School of Nursing, with making a tough situation work.

"When she passed, I said a few words at her funeral," he said. "People always asked if I felt like I got cheated because my father died when I was so young, but I'd say we got lucky to have a mother who could be both. She worked her ass off. She was always a worker. We all learned from that. We've all been successful."

In some ways, Georgetown's well-known Lou Davis provided Davidson with father-like reassurances when he first started out in the masonry business.

Davidson said Davis got him one of his first big jobs – a 2,200-square-foot foundation for an addition to the Georgetown Fire Department.

"He always gave me a lot of encouragement," said Davidson of Davis. "He was always saying, 'Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid.'"

Davidson said these days it's hard to find employees who want to learn the trade and then stick around.

"It's hard, bull work," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "It's a dying trade. Young people don't want to play outside, let alone work outside."

Davis is also the reason Davidson got into the structural moving business. Lou asked John to help move a house, and it just took off from there, he said.

Twenty years later, Davidson estimated he's got 4,000 pieces of railroad-tie-sized cribbing at his shop.

Similar to his block work, Davidson said he doesn't leave anything to chance when moving a house. "If I've measured twice, I've measured 10 times," he said. "People tell me all the time they see me out measuring wires' heights. Nothing we touch hasn't had a lot of time put behind it."

Nowadays, he said he moves houses at first light on Sunday mornings because the traffic gets too congested otherwise. "We've moved and gone home before most people have even gotten up," he said.

Over the years, Davidson has had to diversify the services his company provides. In addition to foundations and structural moving, his company also does demolition work and installs helical pilings, a weight-bearing steel piling that gets screwed into the ground in areas where traditional wood pilings would normally be used but there isn't enough room for pile-driving equipment.

Davidson said he looked into doing poured concrete walls, but he decided against it after looking at the investment needed in forms, the wood or metal boards that hold the concrete in place while it hardens. The return on investment is there, he said.

Davidson said the tools of the trade haven't changed much in four decades. "You're still using a trowel," he said. "Some things don't change."

That said, he points to a 16-inch cutoff saw with a scary-looking masonry blade lying on the ground nearby, and then says, some things have changed. Before, there was a lot more hammer-and-chisel work, he said.

Davidson said he's got a pretty varied collection of old glass bottles in his shop from his excavation work. He's uncovered magazines and animal skulls, he said.

"You never know what you're going to find," he said. "Unfortunately, it's never been a big suitcase of money."

Davidson credits his wife of two decades, Cheryl, as the main reason for the company's success and longevity. She handles the office work and is extremely thorough, he said. "There's just a lot for her to do," he said. "It allows me to focus on my expertise, which is out here in the field."

Davidson said he doesn't know when he's going to retire. He said he didn't know at 40 if he'd still be doing it at 61. "When I think about it, I know that I want to stay active as long as I'm alive," he said. "Getting older isn't a choice. I might move a little slower than when I was younger, but as long as I've got my health, I'm going to stick at it."