Another Easy Day

The El Dorado project was a great stress reliever. I only had to show up each day, climb up onto my scaffold and install ceiling tiles all day, minus a few breaks of course. And in the initial stages of this remodel, we would gather for coffee out on the existing second floor pool area. One morning we had an unexpected visitor ‘drop in’ on us while we were enjoying our break. Gary, a lather apprentice had been up on the ledge of the 7^th floor, installing a safety cable. He had a roll of steel cable and was walking backwards and unrolling it as he went. Of course he walked right off the end of the building.

But…he grabbed the cable tightly as he fell and his momentum swung him out over the intersection and then around the corner and that’s where he dropped onto the pool deck in front of about 50 surprised workers! His hands were a mess, but he was alive and well enough to go back to work immediately. Probably because his uncle, who was a foreman, came down and chewed him out for doing such a dumb stunt!

Later on, Gary became a great foreman in own right, but as an apprentice, he was a lot of fun to have around; you never knew what he might do next!

A short story from the Sahara project; Gary was sitting on the top of the building and signaling for the crane operator, Dennis. We were unloading panels from a trailer and stacking them on the ground, a simple operation. And since Dennis couldn’t see the trailer from his perch in the cab of the tower crane, Gary was to relay signals from the ground. I could hear the whole operation on my radio and suddenly Dennis was swearing; not his usual style at all. It turned out that Gary had turned away from what was happening below just after giving Dennis a ‘hoist’ signal. The panel had started up and had become caught under a large advertising sign. The sign was not going to move from its spot, so the crane began to tilt; quickly. Things like that make tower crane operators nervous and very cranky! Gary, oblivious to it all, was watching clouds or something similar.

We got it all sorted out and sent the panel back to be repaired and we bought Dennis a few beers after work that day. Actually, all he wanted and Gary paid.