Thursday, August 27, 2020

It has been a long time.

The pandemic has changed all the 'normal' things in our lives. Even before the pandemic and quarantine, I had not been a 'regular' writer here. There had been too many thing happening in my life. You can read all about it in Projections, another blog. Dull and boring. It's just the reminisces of an old man as he grows older. 

I am that old man, and very often now, I will have vivid memories of some events in my past life. Just a moment ago I remembered Trini. Trini worked for Solari, just as I did. He was a foreman as I was, but he had worked for Solari much longer than I. Trini was also very large; a lot of that size was muscle, but more of it was alcohol generated fat. He was quite proud of his size and strength; he was also a bully. I rarely interacted with him, which was a good thing. Trini and I had to build the elevator machine room at the Sahara hotel/casino. (I wrote about this previously) At the time, I simply ignored his boasting and went to work on the project, which stood about 260' above Lake Street and very close to the edge. Soon enough, we finished and I went to another job, one at Harrah’s Sports Book. I was building the tour bus drive-through on the north end of the building. I was enjoying it and would only see Trini on an occasional Friday afternoon when a lot us went to the small Sports Book bar. We rarely spoke. Then one day at bar we heard the news; Trini was in the hospital in serious condition. What happened? A few nights ago, Trini had let ‘his mouth overload his ass’ as was commonly said. The subjects of Trini’s big mouth objected to what he had said and retaliated when Trini stepped out of the bar. Three of them attacked him in the nearby alley and beat him severely, using their fists, a baseball bat and their boots. I’m sure that Trini had provoked the assault, though that was not what he told the police. I soon forgot about him as I was having too good of a time on my complicated ‘Tour Bus’ project. And, since I have ASD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, my empathy is very limited and I had none for him.      

After some time, I learned that Trini was working at the big warehouse, our panel plant. He was going to be the guy in charge of building the panels and then arranging the transportation of them. Trini was never going to be working in the field again. He needed a cane, as his right knee had been shattered and had been repaired as best they could. I would run across Trini now and then, but it wasn’t till I was building the complex 13 story office building on the corner of 7th and L, in Sacramento, and it was covered in oddly shaped panels. We had found a storage yard for the panels and we had moved the big Link-Belt crane over from Reno. Then Al Solari showed up one day and said we needed to find a 40’ trailer to move the panels from the the storage yard to the job site. He already had an idea as to where we could find one. He got in my little S10 pickup, a company pickup, and off we went. We found the trailer and Al quizzed the owner about it before agreeing to buy it. It was a ‘low boy’ and Al thought it would be great to use around the Washoe Valley once we finished the Sacramento job. It needed a few modifications and Al called Trini and told him to send a tractor over to pull it too Reno so it could be modified and licensed.   

Once the trailer was gone, I went back to normal operations on the job. But I wasn’t through with Trini. About 3 weeks later he called and told me how stupid I was for buying that trailer, and all about the trouble they were having, adapting it to work with the tractors. I explained as best I could that it was a joint decision on buying the trailer with Al Solari having the final say. He calmed down for a moment, then he started up again. It was then that I realized that I would have an enemy for life. Trini never forgot!!!