The Big Meltdown

Ollie and I have returned to the backyard for our football reps.

That’s hard to fathom.

It was just last Friday that my drive was cleared enough to park all 3 vehicles. They pushed the snow into a 10’ high pile on my side lawn. 

That pile is now about 7’ high. The icicles are nearly gone.

And so are the Bills…

…so all that we were worried about last week has melted away.

The entire storm and all the aggravation feels like it happened to someone else.

There has to be some sort of message that applies.

‘This too shall pass,” was something my grandmother used to say.

And I’m doing a lot of classroom instruction now, which often lends me to talking about my days as a construction laborer, and how an entire career originated.

“You’ve been doing this sort of thing for 32 years?” A kid asked. 

He said he was 19 years old.

“I walked onto my first construction site 42 years ago,” I said. “Seems odd to even say that.”

That’s the thing about life…

…it goes on.

I think of Louis C.K. talking about someone asking him if there’s life after death.

“There is,” he said. “You just ain’t in it!”

The kid was vastly interested in what sort of construction world I entered back in the early 1980’s.

“Was it a lot different than it is now?” He asked.

I laughed.

“The owner of the company I worked for in California, when I was your age, had a Friday evening ritual,” I said. “A truck would pull up around 3:30 and we would all gather to grab as many beers we could out of the 20 cases the owner bought for us. We’d hang in the parking lot, drinking, laughing and talking. We wouldn’t leave until all the beer was gone. Then everyone would drive home.”

The kid was rightly horrified.

“We didn’t go to safety classes. No one wore fall protection equipment. You’d go up there and pray you didn’t fall. If you asked for protection everyone in the crew would laugh at you.”

Hard to believe, actually.

Back in those days, guys did get hurt, of course, but days off were hard to come by. You’d limp into work and keep going, with a sore hand or a bum knee.

No one ever even thought of calling a lawyer or OSHA or anyone else.

There would be fist fights, huge shouting matches, and I once had a foreman who threw his hard hat at me…

…hit me in the ass.

We all laughed about that.

Just a moment in time.

Weeks pass.

Troubles pass.

Snow melts.

And we go on.

Yet, one day, back in 1983, I had a jack hammer in my hand.

19 years old.

I was in the penthouse of the 47-story hotel. My job, that day, was to remove a large portion of the concrete floor that had been poured in the wrong manner.

All day long.

Just me.

Not another soul around.

I took a break for lunch and ate a couple of salami sandwiches that I’d brought in a brown bag.

Concrete dust, dirt and sweat all went down along with the bread and meat, and I thought:

“Will I ever remember this day? This moment? How I felt today?”

I have, of course, only because I concentrated on being present in that very moment.

Someday soon, I will work my way back to that hotel and go up to the penthouse and have a look around.

Life is a funny old thing, ain’t it?

Damn, I felt good at 19 years old.