Picture this

As I continue this story called “Working”, I want to be able to post some photos as I go along. I don’t have a lot of those from the early years and the ones I do have are mostly Polaroid’s; remember those? And since posting photos means that I will have to browse through the boxes of photos we have and then scan them, this project may take awhile. Have you ever been successful at quickly browsing through old photographs? The hours fly by and I’m still looking at the first box!

Back to the story…I’ll look at the photos later.

One of the remodel projects that I was involved in was on the 3rd floor of the Broadway store on the corner of Hollywood and Vine; that most famous of intersections. It was pretty much a normal job for us, except for the location. Everyday, as we went down the street to buy lunch, we found the corner crowded with tourists, all taking pictures of the street sign. In fact, all four corners had a crowd. And a lot of them would step out into traffic to get that perfect shot!

The story I remember most about this store remodel was an incident that didn’t happen to me at all; it happened to a plumber.

One day, I was using a High Velocity powder actuated tool to fasten some steel to a concrete column and before I pulled the trigger, the plumber stopped me…and told me why he had been off the job recently. He had been doing the same thing I was about to do, except when he pulled the trigger, the pin drove into the concrete and then hit a buried piece of roof drain piping. The shape of the pipe made the pin turn and come back out, point first. This is called “Fish hooking” and there was an armored plate at the end of the gun to catch those rare instances. But in this case, it missed the plate and entered his stomach, cutting him up very badly. He had spent the last few weeks in the hospital and had just come back to work. Then he showed me his scar…very sobering!

Yes, I pulled the trigger…but it was with some reluctance. I had always depended on that armor plate and thought it was fool proof.