Goodbye

I was thinking the other day that I have spent some time writing here about my jobs but not a lot of time writing about what I did before work entered my life. That would be back in the days of childhood, from age 4 to 10. Hmmm? I hadn't thought about that before…it's only six years. At the age of 10 or 11, I was jumping into the world of commerce by mowing lawns and delivering papers. I even went door to door as a magazine subscription salesman. Bye-bye childhood.

But what did I do for fun? As a child? Being an asthmatic, I got to spend far too much time at home and in bed. And my mother had to devise ways for me to entertain myself. One of her ideas was to give me modeling clay; the kind that never hardens and has the ability to stay locked forever within the fibers of the carpet. Great stuff! And I loved it; making armies and castles. Making automobiles and submarines. And I could merge the clay with all of my other activities; such as Tinker Toys and Erector sets.

And I loved to draw. Sketch. Doodle. Nothing ever came of it; I never became a 'famous artist'. I did have a dream of going to the Art Center and graduating from that famous school. I read everything I could about the school and I thought that would be heaven; to spend your days in class being 'artistic'. There didn't seem to be any work involved. But money was involved and so I didn't get to go. That and the fact that I wasn't able to focus on one thing long enough to become really good at it.

That probably explains why I enjoyed construction so much. I could enjoy each project because I knew that there was an end to it. I would finish and then move on to another. Never bored. In fact, the jobs that lasted over a year at the same site were dreaded. I enjoyed the size and the scope of such projects but hated the duration! Whenever a project came down to the last few weeks, I was more than ready to turn it over to someone else to finish so that I could begin another.

I thought, and still do…that working at the same job and in the same place for 30+ years would be worst possible fate that could befall a person.

Only The Best

Our fishing trip was in the fall of that year and pretty soon winter time descended on the jobsite. And Reno can become quite cold. Snow and ice were soon part of our normal work day.

And that work day began when we would leave Janesville very early in the morning and make our way, carefully, over the 75 miles of two lane highway into Reno. I say 'we' because my daughter, Alicia, had agreed to work with me as my 'secretary'. We had an old construction trailer pulled onto the site and hooked up to some power; enough for some lights and a miniature heater. My boss didn't want to spend any money on fixing the old wall furnace that was in the trailer, and so while I was out on the jobsite all day, Alicia was stuck in the cold trailer, doing my filing and copying tasks, while never straying far from the heater. We closed all of the other rooms in the trailer in an attempt to keep it above freezing in there.

At this point, the basement walls and slab had been poured. A most difficult task as there was an underground river flowing through the site. There was layer of clay about 20' down and the river ran on top of that clay. They had to drill a dozen de-watering wells around the foundation and keep the pumps going 24/7. Once the walls were poured, the pumps would be shut down and a very large sump pump in the basement would take over. This pump was on a dedicated circuit, one that could never be shut down, as at this stage; the basement would 'pop' up out of the ground if the groundwater was allowed to accumulate under it. Only after the weight of the entire building was resting there would it be safe for an occasional power outage.

Some info on the 'river'. The existence of this water was not known when the plans were drawn and it was only when a D9 Caterpillar broke through during the excavating, that it was discovered. The driver of the 'Cat' got off just in time as it dropped into the river in the desert. It then took two Cats to get it back out!

Back to the drawing boards. Besides adding a huge sump pump and an ingenious landscaping plan that utilized the water to create a myriad of streams across what was once sagebrush and alkali, the new plans required a lengthy delay. This is why we were doing this prelim work in the winter. Ah! But the plans…very lovely and quite expensive. You see; the basement could have been abandoned as its only function was that of the executive parking lot. A nicely heated and undercover parking garage. Snow should never fall on a VP's head. And besides, the rate payers would be paying for the building anyway. Wouldn't they want the very best for the executives that labored in this building?

Fishing

After a time I was back in Reno and the California projects were finished and faded from memory. Solari & Sons never got a foothold in the business there and transport across the Sierra's was always a headache. And since the company had most of the state to themselves, there was always plenty of work in Nevada.

And one of the projects I began was the new Sierra Pacific Power Company headquarters' building, located south of town, near Moana Lane. At first glance, just a simple 4-story office building.

But, after I received the construction drawings and began to plan for the project, I finally saw the true scale of the building. It was huge. Even today, if you drive by, you see the office building located in the middle of large and beautifully landscaped park like setting. The scale can only be appreciated when you're up close to it. And since there is a guard at the gate, most people don't see it up close at all.

NVE was going to be the construction manager on the project and I was told that the superintendent was going to be 'Smitty', a person that I had had some angry run-in's with in the past. He had been the superintendent on the Meadowwood Mall project and although we weren't working directly for him, he had tried his best to direct our work as he saw fit. That didn't happen because I told him 'no!' and some shouting ensued. Oh, oh! I was looking at project that might run for a full year and I would have to be polite all of that time. Could I do it?

It didn't look good at first; Smitty remembered me and told my boss that he didn't want me on the project. After some negotiations and apologies all around, a settlement was made and I was given a spot to set our job trailer. My home away from home!

And then, just to make certain that bygones were really bygones, I was told by my boss, Al Solari, to ask Smitty to join me on a fishing trip. We were going to go fishing on a private lake that is located off of the Mount Rose Highway and just below the crest leading to Tahoe. Little Lake was the name and there was a lodge and caretaker at the lake. Boats were available and the caretaker would handle all of the arrangements for us.

A little info on the lake; it had been purchased many years ago by the 'movers and shakers' of the Reno business community. Ascuaga, Solari, Quilici, etc. It was very private and only used by the principals and those they favored. OK, so I was favored once. But only once.

Smitty and I drove up together and didn't have much to say to each other. But after we got out onto the lake and Smitty and I started catching fish; our differences faded away. This was fun! We were both fly fishing and we could do nothing wrong that morning. And since it was a workday and there were no 'millionaires' on the lake; we had it all to ourselves.

That fishing trip removed all of the barriers that had grown between Smitty and me and we became good friends.

Crossing A Bridge

The Clarion Hotel project continued on as the Sacramento project finished up and I was soon spending all of my weekdays in Millbrae. And I soon discovered that if I wanted to get home to Lassen County before midnight, I would have to be on the Bay Bridge and headed east by 1 PM on a Friday. Any time later than that and the traffic was simply horrendous.

Winter time was the worst. In miles traveled, it made more sense to drive up I-80 and into Reno before heading north to Janesville. But Donner Pass is one of the few roads where chain controls are rigidly enforced and my company truck was not a 4-wheel drive model. When chains were required, I had to put them on. And join the crowd in the right lane that was traveling at 20 mph.

If I chose to travel the alternate route, Highways 32 and 36, I had to deal with roads that were not plowed or poorly plowed. Scary times going over Fredonyer Pass in a blizzard! Plus, these roads were lightly traveled in the winter and there’s definitely safety in numbers.

Once safely home on a Friday night, I had to start planning for a return trip on Sunday evening. Would there be a storm? Which way should I go? And one of my monumental mistakes had me sitting in traffic on I-80 in Verdi, Nevada. Thousands of us waited as the CHP directed 50 cars at a time over the pass at Donner. It took me 11 hours to go from Reno to Sacramento.

OK, back to work. Some of the panels for the Clarion were quite large and we needed to get an oversized load permit from CalTrans so that we could get them over the mountain.

Here’s how that works. You contact CalTrans and tell them all about your load. Size, height and weight. Origin and destination. You can tell them when you would like to make the trip…but they will tell you. And they also tell you which roads you can take and at what hours. It’s all pretty tightly controlled. As it should be. Until your truck gets to the toll plaza at the Bay Bridge. That was where the CHP directed our truck to join a few other ‘Wide Loads’ just west of the toll booths. The officer then said that in a few minutes, the toll booths would shutdown just long enough for these three trucks to get in gear and head for the bridge itself. He said, “You’ve only got a minute, so straddle the white lines and don’t let those b******d’s get ahead of you!” It worked.

Moving On Some More

Eventually the pile driving was complete and the old hotel stopped moving and we finished up our repairs without any more problems. Then it was time to start on the hoisting and installation of the prefinished skin of the building. The panels had been finished and stored in Reno so all I had to do was call the plant and let them know which ones I wanted. The truck would be loaded and on it’s way in a day. And the panels were finished in a dark brown color, so I didn’t have to worry about them being ‘smoked’ by the truck as they came over Donner Pass.

Interesting. I was parked near the corner of the project site, studying some detail on the blueprints that were lying on the hood of my truck. I was probably 50 yards away from the off ramp at Millbrae Avenue. Suddenly, I noticed that the truck was vibrating! It was bouncing up and down. Slightly. Nothing dramatic, but it certainly got my attention. I looked up and saw a concrete truck passing by on the Bayshore Freeway. As it moved north and away from us, the vibrations faded away as well. Sure enough, the soil in this part of the bay was less than solid and if you paid close attention, you could even feel the vibration of ordinary traffic, 300’ feet away from the freeway!

So, what would happen during an earthquake? I found out a few weeks later. I was in my hotel room/office and making a phone call to our Reno office when I suddenly felt the room shaking. Violently. I said goodbye in mid-sentence and headed down the stairs. Probably not the smartest thing to do…

Moving

While the Sacramento project continued on schedule and was even making some money, the estimators in Reno had been busy securing more work in California for me to run. We were going to be involved in the construction of the AC Transit headquarters building in Oakland and the new and remodeled Clarion Hotel in Millbrae.

Now I had to spend part of each week driving over to the Bay area to check on progress and determine when I would need full crews at each location. You couldn’t always depend on the General contractor to call you in time. They always assumed that you had a crew for them, just standing around and waiting to be called. Not.

AC Transit (Alameda County Transit) was located just off of East 14^th Street. And in a very undesirable location. I remember that you turned left just a few blocks from the East Bay Drifters motorcycle gang clubhouse. And the East Bay Dragons MC was close by.

I already knew the General contractor’s superintendent from a time spent in Reno on another job, so we had a good relationship. And he told me that just about everyone on the jobsite was ‘packin’. Guns in their lunch pails and guns in their vehicles. The jobsite itself was fenced with razor wire and everyone parked their car on the site and not on the street outside. Culture shock!

I talked a couple of likely guys into becoming foreman and distributed the plans and spec’s to them so that they might become familiar with the jobs.

The AC Transit project, except for location, was a pretty straight forward job. No mystery and I wasn’t going to worry about it. But the Clarion hotel was a different story. It was located near the end of the runway at San Francisco International Airport and close enough that the FAA had jurisdiction over the type of construction we were doing and the height of that construction. It was also a ‘panel’ job and that meant that the exterior skin of the hotel was going to be built in Reno and then trucked to the jobsite, where we would hoist it into place. And that’s where the FAA got involved.

We needed a crane for this work and the General contractor had one for us to use. A very special one that sat on railroad tracks located next to the building. It was a tower crane, but one that could quickly move to the end of the tracks and then lower itself to the ground whenever the FAA called to tell us they were going to use that runway for southbound take-off’s. Pretty cool! Except for the fact that we had no idea as to when they would call and so all of our schedules depended on which way the wind was blowing. A wind from the south meant we couldn’t use the crane until it shifted…but then we would be behind schedule! A no-win situation.

But first, before we could even begin new work, we had to repair the old hotel. Since the new hotel was being built on fill dirt and who knew what else that had been placed in the bay a long time ago, pilings had to be driven into the muck to support the new construction. As there is a law of physics that says there is a reaction to every action, sure enough, every piling driven in was raising the old hotel a few inches at a time. After a couple hundred hammer blows, the old 3-story hotel was about a foot off of its original elevation and water and sewer pipes were breaking every day. Plus, walls and ceilings were now cracked and broken. A big job for us and all extra work. $$$$

Back in Sacramento

The L Street project had continued without any delays while I was gone and although I would have enjoyed a few days at home after a working vacation, it was not to be. I was right back in my apartment in Sacramento and making the short trip downtown every morning.

And I shared that apartment with a fireproofer, Joe Tiki. He had been the number one nozzleman in Reno and we needed that kind of talent on this large project. Before I could hang (weld) panels on the outside frame, Joe had to have fireproofed them with Monokote fireproofing spray.

A little background. Fireproofing (and some plaster) is applied with a Thomsen ‘Tommy Gun’ fireproofing pump. Powerful! It will spray a bag a minute in high gear and that means the machine is literally screaming. It uses air pressure to diffuse the mix at the nozzle and in high gear; this produces a screaming sound that requires ear plugs. Plus you have to hold the gun hose between your legs while you maneuver the ‘whip hose’ to spray the structural steel. That hose pulses with each stroke of the piston; and has been known to jerk a shooter right off of their feet if the hose develops a ‘pack’ (Material that suddenly hardens in the hose and won’t pump any further.) All of this is happening while you are standing on a wet and slippery plank. Said plank is sometimes 20’- or more above the floor. In fact, my favorite memory image of Joe has him standing on one plank, laid across a couple of scaffolds and spanning the elevator shaft. He was walking, spraying and talking to me at the same time; and probably close to 200’ above the floor at the time.

Joe was a real craftsman; a one-eyed craftsman. He had lost his left eye in a plaster hose blowout; an altogether too common occurrence among plasterers who worked the ‘guns’. He wore a patch on his eye while working, so there were plenty of superintendents who questioned his ability. After all, you have to spray the fireproofing on evenly and to within 1/8” of an inch in thickness. Could he do that with one eye? Oh, yes!

And after work, Joe went without the patch, except while going out for dinner. Now there was a real chore; trying to talk to Joe while looking at one good eye and one that was white and shrunken into the socket. That took awhile, but then, after a few weeks, I forgot about it. But it was fun to watch others when confronted with Joe's odd eye.

Last story from camp.

This was our last camp on the base, and as we set up the mangers, Judy warned us that we were in rattlesnake country and to keep an eye out for them. He had seen this camp many years ago and remembered that fact. Well, we were working in thick grass that was at least 3’ tall; it was difficult to see our own boots, let alone a snake!

But sure enough, one was found. Judy quickly trapped it under his boot and removed its head. Now we were doubly nervous. How many cousins did that snake have? We began to move slowly; very slowly. And one of my tasks was to crawl under the hay truck with a logging chain to wrap around the axle as we made the heavy truck a ‘deadman’ for the long line of mangers. I wasn’t happy about that! I grabbed a pole and beat the grass thoroughly before getting down on my hands and knees.

While we finished up, Judy skinned the snake and took the meat down to the cook’s. We were having appetizers tonight! Quite a few as the snake was about 5’ long.

Pretty soon the riders showed up and we no longer worried about snakes; the vibration caused by 150 horses milling about is guaranteed to send any and all snakes to a deep hole in the ground. Or to the next county.

Once the bar was set up, we grabbed our drinks and the plate filled with breaded and fried rattlesnake. Very good. Tastes just like chicken…but you knew that, right?

And then a real treat. Once dinner was over and the horses were all watered and settled in, we got permission from Judy to walk down the road about a mile to a neighboring camp; the barracks of a howitzer battalion. We brought along our soap and towels and begged for a chance to use their showers. They were most gracious and invited us in. What bliss!

Camp Pendleton Continued

Our dreams of a lakeside camp evaporated, much like the water in the lake itself. But we had riders and 150 horses to think about and they would soon be riding in and expecting to see the mangers standing and filled with hay. And water for their horses. Water? It turned out that we had a ‘dry’ camp. The only water available was going to be the remains of the lake and it was located a couple of hundred yards away from the manger line. Too far!

Luckily, we had a Marine Corps Liaison officer with us. Groups like ours weren’t allowed to simply wander about the base unescorted, and so we asked him what he could do for us? The Marines quickly came to our rescue with ‘water buffaloes’, large trailers with water tanks on them and as many as we needed. And each came with a jeep and a Marine to make certain they were replaced as soon as they ran dry.

And since they had selected Privates to deliver this water, they would stand at attention and call us ‘Sir’ every time we spoke to them. Fun! After a week on the ride, there was finally someone lower than us on the social scale.

Spring Break

Earlier in this blog, I wrote about the spring vacations I would take each year and spend a week working as a wrangler on a trail ride. The DeAnza Trail Caballeros was the name of the group and there were always 150 riders and horses. Plus, 7 wranglers and assorted cooks and bottle washers. And the route always took us somewhere into the deserts of Southern California.

One of those years had us scheduled to visit Camp Pendleton as we trekked in from the desert side of this huge Marine Corps base. I had been told that we would enjoy a few nights camping out on the beach and after a couple of days of horse babysitting in the desert; that sounded just right!

Like all well made plans, this one came to an end rather quickly. As soon as we entered the base, we were told that the Marines were using the beach for amphibious assault training and we were going to have to go elsewhere. We were given an escort and told to follow that jeep to our campsite.

We were within smelling distance of the beach when the jeep stopped and told us that our camp for the night was just a right turn and a few miles away. The driver of the jeep handed Judy, our head wrangler, a map and headed back where he had come from. We all studied the map which showed us camping near a lake? OK, not the ocean, but a lake would be nice. Now all we had to do was get there. The right turn that had been mentioned was a jeep trail down into a dry wash, up again and then another jeep trail along the side of a steep mountain.

Jeep trails are just dandy for jeeps. But I was driving a 10 wheeler, a hay truck, fully loaded. And we had our 24’ box truck, plus a couple of pickups with horse trailers attached. And since the hay truck was the slowest when loaded, I was going to be the last one to cross the wash and up the hill.

So I sat and waited while watching the others, hoping to pick up some knowledge of the best route through the wash. Yikes! It was scary… as one after another, the vehicles came close to wrecking. I watched as the box truck came up on one side, teetering, and then fell back onto its wheels. Safe.

The other drivers walked back to tell me how to do it. I volunteered to let them show me instead. None fell for it. The only real good advice I got was to not slow down, no matter what. Pedal to the floor, get into second gear, if I could, before I hit the opposite side of the wash and then make a hard right at the top. More speed and don’t look down while traversing the side of the hill.

Off the edge I went; 15 tons of hay swaying and scaring the heck out of me as the truck rolled and pitched. I double clutched and got it into second about halfway across the wash and then accelerated for the narrow trail ahead.

“Turn hard right at the top” was my mantra and as soon as the front wheels cleared the top I spun the wheel and felt the load pulling me over to the left. It was one of those slow motion moments. I remember watching the faces of the other wranglers as they stood nearby to watch my attempt. They were all grinning! Jerks!

Then, with a crash, I was back on level ground for a moment and heading for the side of the hill…just as planned. The side hill climb was a piece of cake after the crossing and I relaxed. A few more minutes and I was around the mountain and looking at our camp site and a mud puddle. The lake.

Just Do It!

After a few hiccups, we were soon sailing along, panels flying up onto the building on a regular basis and making the schedule work. The real puzzle would come later when we reached a level where our ‘dinosaurs’ wouldn’t work any longer. And for that work we would need a large crane, but it had to be mobile. The city wasn’t going to allow us to block off this important street for more than 4 hours at a time, and a ‘crawler’ type of crane with a fixed boom length would require just that much time to get ready for the first hoist. I would need a very tall self-propelled hydraulic crane. And a very expensive one at that.

After some discussion with the general contractor, we figured out a way to have that same crane hoist material for the roofer and HVAC contractor; that would ease the burden by splitting the cost 3 ways. But it would mean that I would have to wait until those other contractors were ready. In the meantime, I arranged for our 15 ton Link-Belt hydro to be delivered from our warehouse in Reno. It only had a 125’ of boom on it, but it would help.

The Link-Belt was an odd piece of equipment; it had been purchased to hoist panels at our Lake Tahoe Harvey’s project because it was an all terrain crane, the kind with the really big tires! It had to work in snow and ice and those tires were perfect for that. But there was no snow or ice in Sacramento and the tires became a liability as they couldn’t be driven more than 25 mph and must be rested (cooled off) every ten miles. Our office and yard were about 10 miles away and it was a slow drive every morning.

A memory; we had a crane operator but I would sometimes operate it when he was busy doing something else. (We used him as general labor at times) And when it came time to send the crane back to Reno, a truck with a lowboy trailer arrived and it became my job to get the crane onto the trailer. Well, those big tires hung over the trailer by about six inches on each side. This left about 2’ of tire still on the trailer, but each time I went to drive on the ramp, I would look down and see nothing but air beneath the tire on my side. Yikes! And I would quickly back away. The poor truck driver kept signaling me that all was fine, that I was doing it right, but without being able to see the right side of the trailer; my senses kept telling me that I was heading for a fall. And I would back off…about 6 times in a row before I decided to close my eyes and go for it. Very embarrassing!

Dinosaurs

Once we had a trailer load of panels in our storage space next to the building, we would inspect them to see if they needed any repairs after their journey across Donner Pass. And we always had some damage. The most irritating damage was having the panels ‘smoked’. The owner of the building had decided on a white synthetic plaster finish and all it took to ruin the looks of them was diesel exhaust blowing across the panel surface for 100 miles or more. A poorly tuned diesel at that. The first truckload was delivered without being tarped and they had large black streaks on them, plus some additional damage from the binders that held them in place. I had to insist on tarps from then on, but that persistent smoke could still find its way onto the load; turning the outer panels a light gray in color.

After the repairs were complete, we had to find a way to move the huge panels from the trailer and over to a spot on the ground below where they were to be installed. We had a large forklift and some portable stop signs and we would try and halt traffic just long enough to move down L Street and place the panel, resting upright, against the building. Halting traffic without a permit was frowned upon by the authorities and getting a permit each time we needed 5 minutes of hauling time was more trouble than it was worth.

Up on the 6^th floor were our hoisting machines. Nicknamed ‘dinosaurs’, they had a short boom section coupled to a 220 volt 2 phase motor and some reduction gears that would allow it to hoist about 3,000 pounds. Each ‘dinosaur’ had wheels and counterweights to allow for heavy lifting. Plus, a section of pipe that we would raise to the deck above us, clamping the ‘dinosaur’ in place.

And since the ‘dinosaur’ couldn’t always be directly above the panel to be lifted, we used ‘snatch blocks’ to reroute the hoisting cable to a spot where it would work best. It was all improvisation and sometimes the cable was running at 45° to the ground and then back again, depending on what kind of obstructions we had to deal with. No one had ever done this before and so every time we successfully lifted a panel and welded it in place, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I almost forgot to mention the trees; the City of Sacramento was quite proud of it’s designation as a Tree City and the building permit stipulated that NO tree was to be removed or damaged during the construction of the building. Unfortunately, some existing trees were growing right over the building. This meant that sometimes we had to arrive on the jobsite at 6 in the morning while it was still dark. When the sun rose at 7, the offending branch was usually gone and the dumpster was full and covered.

Back in Sacramento…

Progress on the 777 L Street job was slow at first. The first 5 floors were made for parking and so the building was very ordinary at that point; rectangular. But once the building rose past the 6^th floor, there were all sorts of setbacks and jutting balconies to be framed. And by the time the building topped out with a heliport on the 17^th floor, it had a much smaller footprint at that level. To help the crew, and me, I decided to build a model of the building. I bought the heavy card stock and glue and an X-Acto knife. I spent my evenings at the ‘company apartment’ cutting and gluing until I had it completed. Now I could share my ‘vision’ with the crew. (Imagine how easily it can be done today with BIM)

It didn’t take long for the panel plant in Reno to build the panels that would enclose the lower parking levels. They were quite ordinary in appearance and wouldn’t take us long to install; except for one thing - I mentioned the building footprint; well, at ground level, the building took up all of the available working and storage space on three sides. The west side was a short and private alleyway and at most we could put one trailer load of panels in there. And only if the truck driver was good enough to snake a 40’ flat in there…backing it in from a very busy L Street.

A memory; I was standing on the 6^th floor and looking east up L Street. As far as I could see, (a long way!) cars were stopped in the west bound lanes. There was no traffic in the east bound lanes. Horns were blaring. And directly below me was our truck, jackknifed across all four lanes and up onto the sidewalk as the driver fought to slip the trailer through that narrow 12’ opening.

BIM -

Building Information Modeling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Progress.

When I started in the construction business, 'blue line' drawings were new and the standard was still an architectural drawing made with white lines on a dark blue background. And you had to have a certain skill to be able to make sense of those drawings. Spatial relationships. And not everyone was capable of it.

Luckily for me, I was able to make sense of them and interpreting these drawings became my career.

Then came CAD, computer aided drawings that could quickly be changed and reprinted. But they were still just lines on a piece of paper.

But BIM... a revolution! I only wish I was there to take part in it.

Where was I?

Let's see...I have finished the Steakhouse story and I've probably told you enough about Saint Mary's Hospital. I worked in Reno for 11 years and so there are plenty of 'monuments' of mine around that town. Maybe it's time for me to remember the out of town work...not necessarily in chronological order.

As I wrote earlier, C. Solari and Sons was heavily into the prefabricated panel business. And when there weren't enough casino hotels to build panels for, the estimators would look for business elsewhere. We had a huge panel plant and needed to keep it busy.

One day I was asked if I wanted to run some work out of town; Sacramento to be exact. The estimators had picked up a new project, a 17 story building in the heart of downtown Sacramento. 777 'L' Street, right across the street from the bus terminal and within sight of the Capitol.

It sounded like a good career move and there was talk of opening a branch office in Sacramento. I signed on for the job.

The first thing to do was to scout the area for a temporary office and a 'yard' to hold any equipment or panels. We found a plastering contractor that was going out of business, retiring, and they had the perfect setup for us on 'C' Street, right behind the levee. Then I found an apartment and I was ready to do business.

I went to the local Carpenter's Union and signed up with them, explaining that I would probably need a dozen men that could weld and work with structural steel.

Then it was time to look at the jobsite. I had driven by a few times and had even stopped once to introduce myself. Now it was time to examine the structure and see how well it was being built in order for us to weld panels onto the frame. It had to be square and plumb for it's full height and ironworkers, the ones bolting it all together,worked to different tolerances. We had to be accurate to within 1/4". Ironworkers worked to within 1". This could lead to some tension on the jobsite.

I had hired 3 men and so the first thing we did was to survey the work that had been done by the ironworkers; using a laser to see how plumb the steel was. Oops! it wasn't plumb at all, and since the steel had been bolted up all of the way to the 7th floor, it was going to be a fight to get the ironworkers to fix it.

After some tense negotiations, we all agreed on what was to be done and I agreed to furnish laser measurements for the ironworkers to follow from that point on.

More later...

Back in the Steak House

It was probably one of the most frustrating projects I had ever been involved with. Once you were up in the restaurant ceiling, it took so long to get back down, you would simply stay up there as long as possible. Right through lunch. It was also painful; metal lath has a very sharp cutting edge to it and could even slice through leather gloves if you weren’t careful. Bandaids were essential. We also had to create some of our own tools to get the job done. We welded long handles on to our wire tying nippers so that we could reach the work from some impossible locations. And dirty! Remember, this was above a restaurant ceiling where there had been a grease fire. Plus, the cold rolled steel channel we used for framing was coated with a sticky black paint that would spray paint fragments whenever it was cut or bent. At the end of the day, our faces were liberally sprinkled with the sticky black flecks. What fun!

And once we had finished the long horizontal run of ductwork, we actually stood up where the duct turned 180°, becoming vertical and went up the mechanical shaft to the first floor. It was a large shaft, about 15’ square and once we put a light in it, we saw that it was filled with all of those pipes that we had been fighting for the past week. But…there was room for us to build a scaffold of sorts. We were going to build a scaffold on top of a plaster ceiling that was suspended over a stairwell. Brilliant!

And so we did. Bringing long planks up through the maze of pipes and then nailing it all together. Below, on the stairs, we built props to hold the ceiling up while we worked above. At the same time, the plasterers were following us through the ceiling as they applied plaster to all of that lath we had put in place for them. This meant, when we crawled back down, we were crawling through wet plaster that they had spilled. Plasterers are not the neatest of craftsmen.

End of the story? Of course we finished the project; we always did. But it was a struggle that we all remembered for a long time.

Steak, anyone?

Taking a break from the Saint Mary’s project…for some reason, I was reminded of the small project we did at Harrah’s Steak House. The Steak House was one of Reno’s premier restaurants and located in the basement of the old Virginia Street casino. We got a call one morning telling us that a crew was needed, immediately, at the restaurant. It turned out that a grease fire had burned out the old ductwork above the ceiling. A sheet metal contractor had been working 24 hours a day to rebuild the grease duct that ran from the basement kitchens to the first floor and exiting high above the alleyway. It was going to be our job to enclose the new duct with metal framing and a thick layer of gypsum plaster over lath. And maintain a 2” air clearance around the ductwork at all times. None of our framing could touch it. To top it off, all of the work was to be done above the existing ceiling and it had to be done in a hurry. All casino work is done in a hurry.

So up we went. Two of us above the ceiling, lying on pipes and framing, while a third was cutting the material that we called for. And since we had to weld a lot of the framing in place, we had to keep a fire extinguisher with us which just added to the crowding we were experiencing. All of this was done while were wearing ‘leathers’ to try and keep the burns to a minimum. It would sometimes take us almost 30 minutes to crawl from our entry point to where we were working. Once in awhile, we would try a shortcut, only to find the way blocked by equipment or piping and then we would have to retrace our steps (crawling) to start all over again. After about a week, we had progressed about 30 feet and we could see our destination off in the gloom; a vertical shaft that rose about 20 feet into total darkness on the first floor.

Saint Mary's Redux

The pace was glacial, but we were building a hospital and it was to be expected. When you walk down the corridor of a hospital, you can’t see the enormous amount of work that is concealed by the ceilings and walls. Piping and ductwork so thick that it’s a wonder it could ever be built. But, slowly, it always is.

And at the same time we were building the hospital interior, we had other crews building the exterior walls at our panel factory up on the hill above the Washoe County fairgrounds. Once these wall sections were completed, they would be transported to the jobsite and lifted into place by our good friends at A&KW Crane Service. We would align these panels and then weld them to the steel framework of the building.

We decided to work a long weekend when it came time to set the panels and we were hoping to complete the two elevations that made up the sides of the patient room addition. The mechanical areas were more complicated and would be done at a later date.

We barricaded the street and set the crane where it could reach the building easily and then we brought the panels down to the jobsite. One after the other, the trailer loads of panels arrived and were quickly emptied. We were setting an average of one panel every 10 minutes; we were flying! And since the crane operator could see the work area, signaling was kept to a minimum. The ground crew would set the chokers and the tag lines and as soon as Lonnie saw he was clear, he would hoist and swing the panel up against the building, usually within a foot or so of where it belonged. Someone would use a pry bar to force the panel into place. A dozen Vise Grips would clamp the panel to the building. A welding hood was snapped down and the sparks would fly. Then, a hand signal to let Lonnie know to drop the ‘headache ball’ down a few inches. The chokers and tag lines were released and the crane swung away to get the next panel. I remember being up on the roof and marveling at how we were working together, as a team. Very few words were ever spoken; everyone knew what to do without being told. It was a long weekend, but oh, so satisfying!

Flight Plans

The Saint Mary’s hospital project was pretty much typical for hospital construction; all steel and all very heavy gauges. We had to weld everything together. Once the fireproofing was complete, the mechanical trades moved in with their large and heavy ductwork and piping. And once they had filled the overhead spaces, it was our turn to construct the walls. Easier said then done, as we could barely see the deck above, let alone put our framing in place. It was slow going and every day we cursed the planners that had scheduled our framing as one of the last activities on the flow charts.

There were days when a crew of 3 might be able to build 10 feet of wall in 8 hours. We frequently had to abandon our scaffolds and climb up onto the ductwork itself to do our work. And we had to wear welding ‘leathers’ to avoid being burned by all of the hot sparks that would shower us in those confined spaces. There was nothing quite like being far above the ground, up in the attic space, in the basement, wearing a leather jacket during a hot Reno summer. It was quite easy to keep the weight off!

But, rank has some privileges and once in awhile, someone from another trade would have a question and I would climb down and we would go out to the trailer to review the plans. And invariably, as soon as I spread the plans out on the table, the emergency helicopter would come in for a landing or power up for a takeoff. The only space available for locating our construction trailer was right next to the helipad and that meant that I had to quickly run around the trailer and shut all of the windows before all of my plans and notes took flight as well. What fun!

Hospital Time

As Saint Mary's continued to grow, the projects became larger and more technical. But always interesting and the best part was the fact that it wasn't downtown among the gamblers! After doing a couple of years of casino work, it was great to be away from that atmosphere.

Finally it was decided that Saint Mary's needed a whole new addition; one that would easily double the size of the current hospital. And we had plenty to do in the old hospital while they dug the dug the basement level and then poured the walls. Shortly after that they began putting steel in place and that was when we began to set up for the fireproofing. But first we had to drop all of the hanger wires through the steel deck. These would be needed for the future ceilings. This wasn't my favorite job; using a 4' long and very heavy steel deck punch, you would punch holes in the deck in a 3'x4' grid pattern. And it had to be a grid that reflected the architects plans for the floor below you. Bam! Bam! Bam! All day long, or until your arms tired, Then it was time to thread the long hanger wires through the holes you had made & tie them to a piece of rebar.

With all of the hangers in place and concrete poured onto the deck, the fireproofers began to spray the beams and columns. A wet and dirty job. It wasn't going to be very tall, just 5 floors and a helipad on the roof. Fireproofing would be done in a month.

And it was decided by those in charge, that I should have a trailer/office to run my portion of the work from. Good! Except they found a cheap substitute for a real construction trailer, one that been knocking around jobs for the past 20 or 30 years and it showed. Well, I fixed it up the best I could and settled in for the long haul. About a year. No, make that 2.

Oops! Not!

Another memory of a project at Saint Mary’s hospital; I was told that a special operating room needed to be remodeled and this one was going to be different. Because of the special and necessary equipment in the room, we would have to do all of the work behind a polyethylene barrier while the room continued to be in use. For surgery. We had to prepare by making certain that we had all of the material needed, as well as the manpower. All the rest of the ongoing projects would be halted until we had finished this one.

The demolition of the existing walls was quickly finished and then the plumbers had to pipe in all of the medical gas before we could start. And when we did, I was quite surprised to see that the operating table, the patient and the surgical team were only a few feet away from us, on the other side of the clear poly wall. Yikes!

So we did our work quietly on one side of this thin wall while the surgeons did theirs on the other. And neither of us said, "Oops!"

Paper Trail

I didn’t spend all of my Reno years working on casinos. That kind of work was sporadic at best and the Reno construction market had lots of other projects to offer. One of these was the on-going remodel of Saint Mary’s Hospital. Over the years, I would be sent to Saint Mary’s for any little job that came along; a day, a week, or rarely, months at a time. You had to be able to give the contractor, Q & D Construction, a detailed cost estimate before the work began and since I was a former estimator, I could do that. This way our office didn’t have to be bothered with sending someone out to estimate a $500 job; I could do it and then actually do the construction itself. The customer loved it and we never had any of our billings questioned.

And during this time, the hospital administration was quietly buying up houses in the neighborhood around the hospital; preparing for eventual expansions. Quite often we would have to work on one of the old houses as they converted it to temporary office space. And I remember one in particular, a very old house that was being converted into a ‘blood bank’.

I was working in the stairs that went into the basement and as I chopped off the old plaster ceiling, I noticed that the backside of the old wooden lath was covered with newspaper. Very old newspaper. I had heard that this was common in the ‘old days’, a primitive form of insulation.

I carefully peeled the newspaper off of the lath, a tricky job. And I ended up with a couple of fairly large pieces of newsprint from the local paper, printed in 1916. In fact, I still have them today.

I thought I had done quite well, retrieving a little bit of history, but two carpenters had been told to reinforce the joists in the attic and they had found boxes of treasure hidden between the joists. Yes, money had been found. Which went to the hospital administrators and was never talked about again. And no one thanked the carpenters.

El Dorado

All good things must come to an end and pretty soon it was time to open the new hotel, convention center and casino. But not till we survived another disaster. The hotel tower had been built directly over the convention center and on the day of the grand opening, the plumbers opened the main water line to the hotel rooms. They had used a temporary line to test all of the plumbing in the tower, but now it was going to be the real deal; city water pressure.

I was in the convention center, admiring my work, now that all of the lights were on. The walls were freshly painted and the carpet layers were finishing up a few seams on the vast expanse of carpet. Suddenly there was a roar and water began to pour down through the ceiling, about twenty feet above us. I used my radio to call for help. The plumbers responded, but not until a large portion of the ceiling was destroyed. It turned out that one fitting on a 1-1/2” copper line had never been soldered. And that fitting was on the 16^th floor, with an open shaft all of the way down to the convention center.

Crews were soon vacuuming up the water while I took a 20’ length of cold rolled channel and began poking holes in the ceiling wherever it was sagging. Plenty of ceiling tile was already on the floor but we had remove all of the wet, or even damp ceiling before we could begin reconstruction. And the grand opening was scheduled for 8 that evening. It was now 10 in the morning. Yikes!

Of course we did it…money is no object when it’s time to open a casino.

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.