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This guy is good! LOL...ROFL and all the rest of the acronyms!

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The framing crew and I came together pretty well and we were able to exceed our production quotas easily. The younger Hawai’ian members of the crew would disappear around 10 AM as usual, but we never noticed anymore. The studs just flew into place and time passed quickly.

Then we started hearing rumors. True; men on construction sites love to gossip! And the gossip was all about the mistakes being made by the other framing crews and then whole wings of completed drywall being removed because backing strips were absent or in the wrong place. Big layoff’s! We were still the ‘good guy’s’. None of our work had been faulted, but once a contractor gets into the ‘firing’ mode, it is hard to tell the good guy’s from the bad guy’s. And every one is suspect.

It was about this time that Mr. Ernie Jackson decided to bring in some heavyweight supervisors. He recruited them from the Fresno area; people he knew and was comfortable with. And their method of supervision had me ready to find another job. First, they assembled the crew, all 300 plus men. Then they told us that there was going to be all new foremen. But only after an evaluation period. All who were foremen at the current time were no longer in charge…or being paid as foremen. We would be foremen in name only. The exit was being prepared for me, but I decided to stick around for awhile and see what developed.

I seem to remember that we were already framing on the 21^st floor with 3 more to go. So, framing wasn’t a problem area and I was assigned to a drywall crew. Some good things had been said about me and this was going to be my foremen’s ‘test’. I decided to press the issue and said, “No, thanks.” And told them I wanted foreman’s pay now and not at some later date if they wanted me to run a crew. That worked, I got the pay and I was told not to tell anyone else.

I returned to the 11^th floor and began re-installing drywall. We quickly moved up the tower and were soon installing on the 14^th floor.

Success? It was not be. All of the foremen were asked to attend a meeting at Ernie’s house in Sparks. (He had bought a house for his new superintendents) At the meeting, he informed us that it was all over. He was turning the project over to the bonding company and sailing back to Hawai’i. Whoa! That was startling news. He was going to lose the cost of his bond ($250,000) and lose the ability to be bonded ever again.

Well, I didn’t have to agonize over a decision. Should I quit? Ha! The next morning found me at the Carpenter’s Union hall and talking to my new friend, the business agent. He informed me that C. Solari and Son’s, the local drywall contractor, would probably take over the job and finish it for the bonding company, so he was going to see if he could get me hired by them. Sure enough, a phone call later and I had orders to report to Art Engebrittsen the following morning.

Back to Work

Meanwhile, back at the MGM.

As I was saying earlier, I was supposed to be the foreman of the layout crew, but as it worked out, Frenchie didn’t want to go home to Hawai’i. Some problem with a warrant? They continued to pay me foremen’s wages and Frenchie was the boss. OK with me.

And as I also said, I was the only non-Hawai’ian on the crew. Haole. The crew spoke what I learned was called ‘pidgin’. An interesting blend of English, Polynesian and maybe some Tagalog from the Philippines. For me, it was sink or swim, I had to learn what they were saying and it proved to be quite easy. Too easy, in fact I was soon speaking it all of the time. This drew some complaints from those at home.

I also learned something about the Hawai’ian work ethic; which was minimal. Half of our crew would disappear around the time for our first break of the day and we wouldn’t see them again till the next morning. As the foreman in pay only, I wasn’t too concerned. It was Frenchie’s problem and he never seemed to notice their absence.

A little something about Frenchie; he was originally from Philadelphia and he was a French Canadian ‘gangsta’ to boot. It sounds odd now, but he was pretty much typical of drywallers in that day. If you hadn’t been in the ‘joint’ you were considered odd. So I was odd.

Even with just half a crew present and accounted for, we used lots of shortcuts and were soon cutting our allotted layout labor budget in half. Frenchie’s response to this was to slow down. He really didn’t want to get back to Hawai’i too soon.

I was soon frustrated and began to talk to the powers above and asked to be given something with more responsibility. This was soon given to me. I had a framing crew now and a goal of framing all of the walls on a floor within a week. I also had a crew of Hawaiians. OK, the work began…

I Recall

A thought or two that I had yesterday while I was mowing the orchard. I was thinking about the fact that my career suited my personality. I have always enjoyed working alone and that was something I could do in the construction business. Early on, when I was an apprentice and working ‘piece work’ on houses and apartments, I always worked alone because that was how you made the most money. And you quickly learned that having someone nearby who might strike up a conversation would cost you money in the long run. And when you did have to work with someone, the best partner was one that knew what to do without being told.

I can remember many days of working on high rise buildings, installing the panels that made up the skin of those building, and never saying more than a dozen words. You controlled the crane with hand signals and the crew knew what they were doing without being told; if they didn’t… you didn’t want them around. It was far too dangerous.

Working as a foreman or superintendent meant that you didn’t spend a lot of time in conversation. You have very few friends when you’re the boss. And I remember making lots of people upset because I wouldn’t let them work with a partner. I knew that production would increase when people worked alone and I was always right. Part of my job was to make sure that conversations didn’t occur during the workday.

What a grouch!

Driving

Now that I had a job, I had to get used to a long commute. 75 miles, one way. I started the job in the spring of 1977 and so the trip was quite pleasant; certainly better than half that distance on a Los Angeles freeway. Great scenery and no crowds.

I would have to get up early; maybe 4 AM. Then it was a 90 minute drive to the jobsite. I liked to arrive about 6:30 or before, in time for a cup of coffee and a breakfast burrito before heading over to the manlift and taking a short ride to the 4^th floor and the gang box where we assembled each morning before heading up into the tower for that day’s project.

When I started the job, the steel frame of the hotel tower was complete up to about the 16^th floor, with 11 more floors to go. Concrete had been poured to about the 12^th floor. We (Oahu Interiors) had begun framing and had completed the framing from the 3^rd floor to the 7^th. And my job, laying out the walls, had progressed to the 10^th floor.

Drywall installation hadn’t started yet as we were waiting for the exterior panels to be installed and that was still a few weeks off. And that also meant that we had a great and unobstructed view of the Truckee Meadows from our vantage point on the 10^th floor.

One of the things we could see from that floor was a huge open pit gravel mine. It had to have been over 300’ deep and was located about a quarter mile from the new hotel tower. And because this pit was so deep, it had to be dewatered 24 hours a day by huge pumps that returned the water to the Truckee River, from where it had escaped.

(At the completion of the hotel project, the pumps were shut off and the pit became a lake, still to be seen in the parking lot.)

And away we go...

I'm going to leave out the high drama of our moving saga and move directly into the world of working...

After moving to Janesville, I did nothing for 2 or 3 months, living off of the profits of our home sale in Southern California. I really felt burned out, and the time off was therapeutic. Finally, it was time to go back to work. But where? The closest large city was Reno NV. There wasn’t much work in Lassen County, or certainly not my kind of work. So I drove to Reno and looked around. What I didn’t know, before I left that morning, was that the MGM Grand Hotel was being built. Of course I saw it as soon as I came over the hill on US 395, up by Sun Valley. It was just a steel structure, maybe 16 stories high at the time, but it already dominated the valley floor.

I went to the Carpenters Union and talked to the Business agent. I had been given his name and a letter of recommendation from the Union that I had left in Los Angeles. I was quickly hired and went to work on the project. Surprisingly, within a few hours I saw a familiar face, Bill Fritchell, formerly a foreman for Solari & Sons Drywall. I had met him 5 or 6 years ago when I was involved with building the Weinstocks stores in Reno and Sacramento. He was now the Superintendent for Oahu Interiors, the company that had just hired me. Right away, he wanted me to become a foreman for him. I told him that I really wasn’t ready for that. I kind of liked my vacation from stress. He insisted, and I finally agreed to run the layout crew. It turned out that the layout was being done by one of the Hawaiians, “Frenchie” and he was supposed to be leaving soon. Someone was needed to replace him. Me.

A little something about Oahu Interiors. Sometime in the 60’s, a drywaller, Ernie Jackson, from the central valley of California, had decided to move to Hawai’i and become a rich contractor. Which he did. And after awhile he decided to branch out and do some work back on the mainland. He had bid on the MGM tower project and was easily the lowest bid. The company I was going to work for eventually, Solari & Sons, had bid on the hotel tower project and couldn’t even come close to the Oahu bid. (Solari was already doing the lower levels, convention center and casino levels. So they had plenty to do without the hotel tower)

Since Ernie Jackson wasn’t sure about the qualifications of the local labor force and he had found that Solari already had most of the good talent employed, he decided to bring a lot of his labor from the islands. That included Frenchie and a dozen others. In fact, the entire layout crew of 6 men was all Hawaiians and I was the only haole.

Continuing the trip…

Sure enough, 30 minutes later I drove into Susanville on a beautiful fall afternoon. The temperature was in the low 70’s and I learned later that the next morning would bring a ‘below freezing’ mark. There were fall colors everywhere, making the little town quite spectacular; at least for this city boy!

I found a motel to stay in, in the downtown area. As I remember it, there were no more than 4 or 5 motels in town, and this one was clean enough. Then I drove around the city, which didn’t take long. After dinner I decided to walk and see the town close up. It was certainly quiet; there was no comparing it to Orange County. And the smell of incense cedar was strong in the air. The local mill was burning wood and an inversion layer had trapped the delightful smell. OK! I was hooked…

The next day I walked around town again, stopping once for breakfast and then looking in the windows of the various real estate offices I passed. According to the ads I saw, the prices of land and houses were fantastically low. Ranch acreage ran from $100 to $500 an acre and houses were down in the $25,000 range.

I finally found a real estate office that was open and went in. Mike Egan Realty and Zella Mae Miles introduced herself as a sales agent. Pretty soon we were joined by another agent, Marla Miller, and after agreeing on some guidelines, off we went to look at houses.

Long story, short… I found the house we would move to in the little village of Janesville. About 13 miles east of Susanville and tucked into the side of the mountains. We were going to live on 8 acres of second growth pines, so we had no view of the Honey Lake Valley below us. Thompson Peak was behind us, to the south. Nothing to look at but the trees. That would do. I made an offer on the property; it was accepted and then it was time to call Laurae and tell her what I had just done.

What does this story have to do with Working? Hang on, more to come...