Dangling from rope-supported scaffolding hanging from the top of City Hall, seven stories above the trafficked streets of Philadelphia, seven-year-old Shawn literally learned the ropes of the masonry trade from his father, James Kane.

"We were on rope swings," Shawn Kane said. "They don't use them much anymore."You usually think of window washers when you think of the type of platform Shawn and his father were on. The platform was attached to the roof by steel hooks, and six-inch diameter hemp ropes that passed through huge pulleys on each end."When my father and I would set the swing up, after tying the hooks back he would come down onto the scaffolding," Shawn remembered. "He would untie the rope from one pulley, and I would have to hold the rope when he lowered the platform to where we had to go. He'd say, 'got it' and then tie it off with a half hitch. Then, he'd cross the platform and repeat the process."Shawn, who has traveled across the U.S. Working in the trades, and where possible, following in the masonry footsteps of his dad, currently is working maintenance at the Inn at Jim Thorpe.He remembers that his dad traveled to places like: Liberty Island to work on the base of the Statue of Liberty, West Point to work on the Military Academy, to New York to chalk the windows on the World Trade Center, and Maine to repoint lighthouses. But mostly, he found enough historic structures in Philadelphia. There, he worked on the restoration of the homes of Benjamin Franklin, Betsey Ross, and Edgar Allen Poe.Most memorable was the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Although the museum housed a dinosaur exhibit, working there, helping his father, he had no interest in seeing the dinosaur exhibit - he had already seen it on a class visit. The back door was left open so the workers could use the rest room, so Shawn made his own discoveries."There was a broken sandwich machine and I was getting free sandwiches for the crew in between the times that I was mixing cement. I had the run of the storerooms and I could see the things that weren't on exhibit. There were a lot of big bones."Perhaps James Kane's most enduring memory was of repairing the stone masonry on the base of the Statue of Liberty in the mid 1980s. Although modest from a distance, the quarried stone base rises 89 feet above what was first Fort Wood on Bedloe's Island in 1807. After being used as a Civil War recruiting station, in 1881, New York commissioned the design a 114 feet high pedestal. Faced with financial problems, the height was reduced to 89 feet.James Kane's father passed away when he was young and he was raised in a Catholic orphanage in Philadelphia. All his life, he was a city dweller. Except, one day, he received an assignment to repoint lighthouses in Maine. "Every morning he took a ferry to the lighthouse," Shawn said, "and he would go up 15 to 20 stories to the top of the lighthouse."His father was in Maine for several months. "Nature agreed with him," Shawn said. "When he came home, he was a lot more at peace. He became interested in hunting and the wilderness."Shawn has been practicing what he learned from his dad. But he soon learned that masonry is basically a summer job, so he learned plumbing to get work in the winter. Following Katrina, he spent several month in Biloxi, Mississippi helping with the recovery.He still enjoys masonry and looks forward to working on historic projects. He was recently talking to people in Colonial Williamsburg about repointing many of their buildings using a masonry technique popular during the colonial era call grapevining, where a thin recess is set into the joint to promote water drainage.As he walks the streets of Jim Thorpe, Shawn sees many historic buildings that he would love to repoint. "Only this time," he said, "instead of hanging a platform by hooks from the roof, I'll use a manlift."