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.