I would not characterize myself as acrophobic, but every once in a while, I get a twinge of panic from heights. My stepdad was a roofer. Sometimes I couldn’t go near the edge. Sometimes I would jump off. Just no[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
One of the guys on the crew was always code-switching from English to Spanish. Since we had two different gloves we had to put on, he just called the silk ones the same thing I called them, “sexies.” We got[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The best part of the zoot suit was the silk gloves we had to wear underneath the latex ones. I started calling them my “sexies.”
The zoot suits were cool, but we had to cover everything. No glove, no love.
We were monkey acrobats at that place. We were forever cleaning ducts. Sometimes, we got to use the man-lift. Usually, they just left us up there, 50 feet off the ground, scrubbing the sheet metal with our acetone infused rags.
We got to work with a LOT of Acetone. As a precaution, they required us to wear respirators. Some didn’t. Clearly, they had no brain cells to kill anyway, so no biggie. I wore mine religiously, but I’m pretty sure[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Bubba represents all the IDIOTS we worked with. We were all young, but some of them were young and stupid. Since we were required to write our names on our hardhats, I joked that I was going to write Bubba,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
90% of the time, my job was to go into a big room ,full of electrical equipment, and pour canned dirt on the dusty floor. Next, I had to sweep up said dirt. Finally, I had to mop it up. […]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
My very first day, my friend and I were assigned to go into a small room and vacuum water out of the concrete. It took all day. I really enjoyed the bilingual danger signs, “Peligro Alto Voltage.”
One of the long lasting lessons from working construction cleanup was how to braid extension cords. I still do it.
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