And now, the news...

It seems that I have more damage from my early life in construction. My T9 vertebra has collapsed and T1-7 are headed the same way. That explains the terrible backaches I have been experiencing when I stand for more than 2 or 3 minutes. I already have 4 Lumbar vertebra fused as well as 3 Cervical vertebra. So why not some Thoracic ones? No thank you! I'm all through with surgeries.

Logic says that I should regret my days in construction, but I don't, in fact I love them. Building things satisfied my soul! I resisted efforts made to entice me into an office job and then, 25+ years after starting, I gave up and became an estimator. I had been a foreman, superintendent and a project manager; jobs that didn't require a lot of physical stress. But I never let the title stop me from working with my hands...and back. I'm sure that I have expressed these thoughts before, but I'm old, and I'm entitled to repeat myself.

But right now I am trying hard to find a memory of a project that I haven't written about before. Now that is hard work! We did a department store job in Fresno, back in the late 60s. Is that one to write about? We did a small shoe store in Santa Barbara during that era. All through the 60s and 70s, I was doing any good paying piecework job, houses or apartments. This was my weekend work. Then there were the smaller hourly pay jobs that rarely lasted more than a week or two. One was remodeling some condos, just off Wilshire Blvd. They were quite luxurious but they had never sold in the year (more or less) since they had been built. They were being remodeled to attract some customers. I remember that the GC had piled all of the furnishings down in the basement and said they were free for the taking. I took a couple of large 4 door kitchen cabinets and put them in my garage in Newbury Park. Others had taken stacked washer/dryer units, doors, dishwashers and even marble tiles from the entry vestibules. Now my memory says that I installed those big and very heavy cabinets by myself. That sounds like me. So my back problems were definitely caused by my choices... 

Something about being old

Ah, yes! The golden years of retirement. Well, the gold is disappearing quickly and is being replaced with Norco tablets for pain relief. But, here is a moment of honesty...I would not have changed my career for anything else.

As I mentioned earlier, I have COPD, and as part of my therapy for this insidious process of slowly dying from a lack of oxygen, I attend a program at the local hospital; Pulmonary Rehab. There are half a dozen or more in each class meeting, 3 times a week. We exercise with small weights or elastic  bands, and we spend time on cardio-vascular exercise, such as treadmills, stationary bikes and the like. Part of the exercise is designed to help with balance and I had no idea that my balance was as bad as it really is. I believe it's called 'denial' as I already own 2 canes. Anyway, I started thinking about the projects I had been on where balance was critical. My balance saved me from injury or death many times. There was a time when I was welding exterior panel support clips onto the embeds on the edge of the slab. The slab, or slabs, were on a 22 story building. With a gloved hand I would hold the clip in position while my other hand held the 'stinger, or the welding rod. I was on my knees but I had to lean out and over the edge to be able to see where I was welding. Once the clip was where I wanted it, I had to shake my head in order to flip the welding hood down and over my face. Suddenly, everything is black. I can't see a thing. There is a brief moment where I had no sense of balance at all and in my mind I could see the ground, 240' feet below me. Then I struck an arc and a purple and gold light filled my vision as I began to weld. Thoroughly engaged in my work, I forgot all about where I was.

200' or 20' feet, working on high rise construction is always dangerous and only a fool doesn't believe that. But that was one of the things I loved about it. I never dwelled on it, but I never forgot it. It began on the very first job I had, as a first stage apprentice, and my journeyman extended a plank out the side of the building, on the 4th? floor, stood on the inside end of it and asked me to walk out on the plank and place a piece of lath where it was missing. "Don't worry, I won't step off of the plank." was what he told me. I had to do it. I was just an apprentice and had to do whatever my journeyman told me to do.

That question mark at the end of 4th floor? The incident happened over 55 years ago and my memory can't handle it...the building itself was just 9 stories in height so it could have been any one of them, except the first floor of course.

This story reminds me of another...but first, if you want to start at the beginning go here

As I said...

As I said in the last post, I'm 79 years old now. That means (in my case) that my memory is not all it used to be. Undoubtedly, you will see me repeating myself. Sorry, but that's the way it is. In fact, this disclaimer may be a repeat?

In the last post I described how 'hanging lids' contributed to my spine injuries. I'm certain of it. I also have COPD and was hospitalized twice last fall because of pneumonia. Like most of my generation, I was a smoker until the late 70's, when I had a small portion of my right lung removed because of suspected cancer cells. They were wrong, the suspect cells were pneumonia scars. I had worked right through a bout of pneumonia at one time. The doctor told me that he could see signs of emphysema and encouraged me to stop smoking. That was one reason for my COPD. Another was the conditions of the workplace. I would be working right next to a laborer that was grinding concrete and billowing clouds of cement dust were everywhere. Then there were the tapers that were sanding joint compound on the walls & ceilings. There were times when we would have a 'sanding party'. everyone would have a sanding pole and we would sand everywhere. Soon, the air was thick with the fine dust we had created. We would all be coated with it, white hair, white skin, eyebrows, etc. We could even taste it on our tongues. I would often spray white lacquer on ceilings before I sprayed acoustic material. I sprayed fireproofing material and I sprayed acoustical insulation. When my partner and I were in business, I chose to handle all of the framing, sanding and spraying while he would do framing and hanging drywall. I also did the estimating while he did the bill collections. I never thought twice about the damage I was doing to my lungs in all of those years. And we rarely wore protection for those lungs.    

I'm still here...

Yes, I have not departed this earth yet. My health is not what it was, but I'm 79 years old and what else did I expect? It seems that some of the things I did while I was working have come back to haunt me. My spinal surgeries (4) I believe are a result of my days 'hanging sheetrock' for a living. Of course I was young and dumb and wanted to prove to my peers that I was just as dumb as they were. I would 'hang sheetrock' in tract houses for piecework prices that could bring me close to double my hourly wages. My partner and I would pick a couple of houses (there were plenty of them!) and we would pair up to 'hang the lids' in both houses before we split up to do the walls by ourselves. The 'lids' were especially hard on the body as we would pick up a 4x12 sheet of 1/2" board and then leaning it on our shoulders, we would run to where we had our adjustable 'walkups' or 'horses'. The lead person would climb up using the narrow rail on the side, and then on to the top. The follower now had close to all of the weight shifted to them as they made their way to the top of the 'horse'. Once up, we would roll the sheet over our shoulder and press it against the ceiling joists. To hold it there, we would stand on our toes and use our heads to keep the sheet in place while we dug into our nail bag with one hand and grab our nailing hatchet with the other. Now, using our x-ray vision, we would locate the hidden joists and begin nailing. Okay, that's not true, but we always wished for vision like that, instead, we would draw a few lines on the board, and those represented the location of the joists at our end of the sheet. We had all learned early on, to 'sight' the joists we could see and then follow where that 'sighting' would lead us.

It wasn't all fun and games, as sometimes we had sheets that we had cut to allow pipes or vents to come through. These sheets had to be maneuvered this way and that to get them up. That extra time really hurt...literally. And there were ceilings that were 6" or 12" higher than your walkup could go. That meant that you had to 'stiff arm' the sheet and switching arms back and forth, you might be able to locate the nails and press one in to the board before switching to grab your hatchet and sink the nail. And all the time you are doing this, you are thinking of the time going by and what little you would get for nailing it in place. It might be $1.25 a sheet or just a $1, while hourly pay would get you $5 an hour; you had to hang more than 5 sheets in an hour to make the pain worthwhile.

Here it is, more than 50 years later and that money is long gone while the pain remains. But, being a human male, I rationalize all of it and can tell you that I enjoyed it.

14 years later...

It has been a stormy week here and rain/snow records were broken in many places. I'm one of those people that delights in dramatic weather. I have wonderful memories of hurricanes, storms and blizzards that stretch all of the way back to the 50's. But, that's another story.

This morning I had been checking the traffic cams all over Northeastern California and Northwestern Nevada, just to see the roads I used to use when going to work each day. At the time, traffic had been stopped on I-80 over Donner Pass. This was something I would see often when I was working in Sacramento and or the Bay area. It was usually stopped during a big storm so that the plows could clear a decent path through the drifts. Once it re-opened, the CHP would 'ferry' a group of about 10 cars at a time, over the pass, until conditions improved.

When working in Reno, it was a daily commute from Janesville. And back, of course. It was 75 miles each way and a very nice drive during the 9 months of good weather we used to have. But in winter time, it was a different story. In the early morning, the falling snow would usually wake me early. Yes, the fallen and the falling snow dampened all noise and it was the silence that would wake you. If I started my drive early enough I could get on the highway (US 395) before the plows did. The plows would always leave a thin layer of snow that would quickly turn to ice. The snow I drove on seemed to give me some traction. The disadvantage was the fact that you couldn't see the road. But, I had driven the road so many time, it was quite easy to find my way. Plus, there were reflectors on posts that were always visible. We would usually get 6" to 12"  of snow, so driving was fairly easy. It was even easier if you could come across a big rig on its way to Reno. If they were moving at a reasonable speed, it was best to get in behind him and let him find the road while you followed. You had to be sure that the driver knew you were behind his long trailer, so you would drift over to the left every once in awhile so that he could see you in his mirror. Even better, back in the days of CB radios, you could talk to the driver and let him know what you were doing. I had a CB radio in both of our vehicles, for safety.

On those mornings, I could make the 75 miles in about 2 hours. In the middle of summer it was a 1 and a 1/2 hour drive....this post was supposed to be about working and it ended up starting with weather and ending with driving in the snow. I would call it 'Working'.

This blog started 14 years ago. If interested you can start at the beginning by going to this entry and start going up from there.

Some photos to go with Working

 This is a photo from the Clarion Hotel job in Millbrae. It shows the yellow counterweights for the tower crane behind it. The 'railroad tracks' are for the crane to move on, This was a very special crane; it was designed to move to a spot where it folds itself down to a near horizontal position. This was needed because of FAA rules concerning height when close to an operating runway. When the wind blew from the south or north, the runway close to the project would become operational and the crane had to come down. The prevailing wind was from the east...I could be wrong, but the premise was still the same. The crane had to come down in a hurry.
Also in the photo are the steel studs that make up the walls between units. Also shown are some of the premade exterior panels. Our panel shop in Reno would make them from structural (16 ga)
steel studs, cover them with gypsum sheathing and polystyrene foam, then glass netting and synthetic plaster compound. Then they were trucked to the jobsite where we would use the crane to hoist them into place and we would then weld them to the building; creating the exterior wall seen in the second photo. In this photo you can see the crane tracks more clearly.
I'm sorry about the poor quality of the photos. I was working with a cheap camera and just making progress photos for the record.


One additional shot showing the panel construction.

For future posts, I think I have marginally better quality photos to show you.

Ooops! I have missed quite a few opportunities to post things here. Close to 2 years have gone by. Well, I was pretty sure that no one was reading it so it wasn't much of a guilt trip when I realized how long it had been. As you can see, it's 2019 and that idiot is still the President.

This is supposed to be about my working career and I was scanning some old photos and they were of some part of the MGM Grand Hotel, the Sierra Power office Building and the Clarion Hotel in Millbrae. I also realized that I missed far too many opportunities to photograph some of the work we had done. I will try and put the photos I scanned into this blog along with an explanation.