See, here how it went down. Mom headed out the window and Ginty sat next to me, posing questions. Did I fuck Barb. I love your wife. Your ex wife. Kerry asked also Did I fuck Barb. There was some rational. They were preparing for the great escape.
But no, I didn't. I was just kissy face and huggy bod. And I was way wrong. I'm surprised Ginty didn't try to kick my ass--which he probly could've given my weakened state. I mean Jerry Walsh got the upper hand in our living room melee. And then the Kanes. I was on top of the one Kane and another dude pulled my hair out from the back of my head. I went over to Grandpas. No, there was only one light on. They'd probably turned in for the night. I should've went over across the street and got the Reeds fired up. Then it would've been tables turned.
The band played on.
And then, I was leaving. I think Joe Probst said, "Your wife just went out the window." But then I would've gone after her.
But the letter I found, said that she froze in the car, waiting for Mick. And then they drank coffee all night at the Karousel.
And I remember I was stuck on the lane in the snow. And Ginty drove by, not stopping to help.
And I remember waking up to a cold Jan. 1, 1974 morning.
Well, now we've got to try to find Chapter 10.
Because now I was back at the UP as an electrician apprentice, climbing, with Bob partner, ever higher and higher.
I fell with the ladder on the false floor. And the Capital guys said, "Go get some help, go get that looked at." I just shrugged it off and kept on going.
Now I'm back tracking. I did find Chapter Six.
Chapter Six WELL, NOW IS THE TIME TO COME TO AIDE….OF OUR COUNTRYMEN.
10/3/2003 8:01:45 PM
WELL, NOW IS THE TIME TO COME TO AIDE….OF OUR COUNTRYMEN.
GB remains a joke.
But I got to the point where I saw Kaitlin slightly ahead, going downhill, oh-so-slow it seemed, Allison a few paces behind her.
They finished 40th and 42nd respectively. Allie at the top of the hill looked like she was trotting along, Erin not a few paces ahead of both of them.
Yes, I did see Dan Fogarty leaning over at the finish line with a smile on his face, they love their Erin and support her and she has begun to assert herself as a gal who will not quit trying hard to succeed. 11/26/2006 10:29:23 AM I wish I would’ve looked closer because, the next month, Dan was dead.
BUT I DON’T EVEN bother to go up and pal with the Millard Teachers: I did say hello to one of them, for Millard South, who does the hurdles. Coach Rainbow? I’m not sure, I don’t know.
WHISTLER’S NOT been around and I think he’s running after the harriers of Creighton Prep.
ARE YOUNG SCHOLAR SAID THAT THE college of St. Mary’s was talking to her pre-race. Asking her about her scores on the ACT, CC, etc. AND THEN the Concordia Coach called and is willing to pay for gas and hotel in St. Paul.
I’M LOOKING AT MY CHECK of $357 and I have a sinking feeling in my gut that this money is so low given my education, my training as to be an insult. I also think back on this week and how difficult it was to, like Whitey from the gym said, Bull that construction work.
BUT RUSS AND I WERE on the 14th floor and now we are so far above Madding crowd that the views each and everywhere are spectacular.
WELL, “HEY, WATCH WHERE YOU’re sweepin’ that shit.” I was so tired Thursday morning, I went into sortofa ennui—go from 4th to 14th. Then I began sweeping again. Rod1 gave me a broom to use and I swept swept, not realizing that there were people below me.
ACTUALLY, I HAD TO drop down with Ron2 and cut 2 x 6’s 1 ¾ inches and then a bunch 1 ½ inches. Almost all the boards. It took us awhile to get the engine of the table saw and Will and his partner Robert helped. Helped us get it all connected and fired up and started.
IT WAS REALLY THE FIRST TIME in a straight 3 months of working on the job that I’d actually seen wood cut.
ROD1 has a great way of looking at blue prints then coming up with what he has to do. It’s amazing. It’s a parapet wall and he can talk to Russ briefly and Russ, who has now moved that new gang box of our into a state of fine art, is able to nod his head and commence.
BUT A COUPLE DAYS AGO IT SUDDENLY CLICKED ON ME THAT I GOTTA BE LIKE PINEAPPLE. Stu would do anything to come up out of the grave and have your Friday beer
10/8/2003 4:16 PM
10/8/2003 4:14 PM
THIS SEEMS TO HELP, EVEN THO’ I’M at a pale edge of beings so tired. The call came FROM NCB BECUZ Tyler CAME AND SAID
“I gotta talk to you personally.”
He was wearing a nifty blue skier’s cap. There were tattoos all over his arm.
“I heard you were talking something sexual.”
“No, I was just responding to what they were saying”
“You put a dollar on the table.”
We were now past the library. I found out about Doug’s Friday being his last day. “I had two panic attacks.” Doug said, his eyes narrowing. He’s my erstwhile democratic soulmate and we kid endlessly about the Bush administration and his buffoonery.
“I resigned.”
“I was on disability before. I guess I’ll try to get on it again.”
This surprised the living hell out of me: that Doug was resigning.
He gave me his phone number and wanted mine. “My wife left me also.”
This news almost put it in the realm of tragic-comedy. I’m tryin’ to quell a nervous Tyler's “I don’t want to get you fired. You’re a good teacher and maybe a little too fast and sometimes hard to understand but I don’t want to see you fired.”
10/8/2003 5:06 PM
SO I’M PULLED BETWEEN TWO CONVERSATIONS IN DISSONANT DIRECTIONS:
“Yeah,” Tyler advised. “I don’t want to see you fired. You’re a good teacher,” he repeated. “a little too fast. You should just apologize to the class.”
“Yeah, all right.”
I was concerned and consternated so I went to Harry.
“What’s up.”
“You tell me what’s up.”
“Well, I talked to Tyler and he said some girls were offended and I should apologize.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “He talked to me. I don’t know why he thinks he’s the class spokesman.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking back on the dynamics, thinking about Doug’s departure, his wife’s departure, the unsettled atmosphere in the small classroom with a handful of students, guilty as charged. “I know, he’s been gone for two weeks.”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “That’s true.”
“he wants me to apologize to the class.”
“Well, you do what yo want to do.”
I thought about it and two of the female blacks weren’t there. But I just taught the lesson and gave them the what-for, feeling tired and slightly worn out, finding out that Electricians only start at $10/hour the first year and how this is so much less than what I thought I’d start at.
I was going to reveal this to Mike Bellevue but he was busy talking with Harry and I just got out of there fairly early.
WELL THIS WEEK WE put up a small wall for the atrium. This will be the cusp of where the copper will land.
I saw Darrell ironworker. “It’s a bad day.”
“It’s a Monday.”
“It’s a bad Monday.”
He just walked off out of the southern buckhoist and shook his head.
BUT WE GOT a nice little wall built and below is Ron putting up the studs that completes the top of the copper wall. I went down and looked
10/8/2003 6:56:42 PM
YESTERDAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON I have to report how an ax hammer almost his Rodd and I in the head. He was leaning over the place where he’d put down track.
“Hey, what the fuck was that. That came only," and he opened up his arms, “that close to me.”
I would say that I was just as close.
We heard this big thing coming down and we were just too dumb and startled to look.
“Yeah,” I said to Rodd, “the scaffold guys said to be aware that we don’t have anything protecting above us.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Rodd said.
But this a.m. we had the track and the studs in after yesterday afternoon that Russ and I brought up. We tried to get 6 bundles altogether but somehow managed to only get five up there. I remember how it was to grab them out of the pile and try to remember how I got them up there on the buckhoist a few weeks ago and did not look favorably on doing it this time.
But I just grabbed a hold of a bundle and carried up the stairs. Russ more or less leaned up against the platform on which the buckhoists are parked and I didn’t quite no what to do with this injunction so I was able to pull it free then set it up on the top of the roof that is where the buckhoist jumps down to. The female ironworker was there with a little one wheeled pully-type thing because they were moving some big pieces of iron that was like a huge sheet of plywood only it was gray and white metal off a truck and onto the platform. They also wanted to get it up somewhere.
So there’s competition: up the buckhoist to get it to different floors.
YES, IT WAS PROB’LY LATE LAST WEEK that I said to heck with walking up all the stairs with my lunch bucket donated by the neighbor: I started accompanying Russ on the buckhoist.
And I was LAST WEEK I JUST HAPPENED to start talking TO AN ELECTRITION: “YEAH, I took the test and had the interview and scored pretty high on the interview and I haven’t heard nothin’.”
He related how someone was 3 years in apprenctice carpenter before he got it. So now my question is, what is the starting pay/
WELL, LAST FRIDAY, it was like a gift from heaven: that a white manialla envelope from the electricians. YOU;VE BEEN ACCEPTED INTO THE APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM. Then there was a meeting scheduled for Friday next at 2, a three hour meeting.
WELL, IT WAS bundles yesterday and a few pieces of sheet rock today: it is a lugging type of operation.
BUT I’M EXCITED TO HAVE THIS CHOICE and now I’m going to have to see if I can possibly sooth the worries and concerns and the NCB charges: yes, I’ve got to learn to quite being so friendly and unprof with the charges and just keep it straight on down the line.
Linelinelineline.
10/8/2003 7:21:28 PM
10/9/2003 4:58 PM
AND NOW I’M SO DARN TIRED I CAN’T EVEN THINK STRAIGHT. But I’ve been talking to a couple electricians. My ploy: that my neighbor’s son wants to get in the trades. They seem to feel that it is the best union to get in.
Carla, the elevator operator,
10/10/2003 7:42:35 PM
WELL I’VE GOT TO RIGHT ABOUT CARLA AND THE OTHER ELE OPERATOR BBUT I HAVE TO IMPLORE you to listen to the journey to the center of the electrical world: there was no one around
I told Rodd and the gang how I had to take my daughter to the doctor for her back spasms. This was just a ploy to get away to the electrical hall to finish the auspices of my apprentice electrician stuff.
So right away I decide I can’t bear to stand there any longer, even taking a left off dodge because of the hurried pace to get the lanes of Dodge ready for the impending rain, snow, sleet, etc. earlier, I’d looked at a man who’s face was one of utter dejection, leavning over his shovel, moving over the help a couple young Hispanics with the labor of clearing away piles of fill dirt that had been dropped by someone with what looked like the same loader-tractor backhoe that I’d run almost ten year before, doing pretty much the same thing, same area, SAME OMNI COMPANY, in pretty much the same section of the city. In fact, it was only a few blocks east of where I plied my operator trade for a couple weeks after Upward Bound at Creighton U where Dr. Mitchell kindly observed my passage.
And now I know why he put (and this is not a new discovery: I’d discerned the motives some time ago but this is the first time I’ve written about it) “proficient in English” or something to that effect, the only positive in the bucket of U’s that was like a load descending upon my collective conscious because I’d taught English at the college I’d been surreptitiously removed from by one father labi and Frank Sheepers. And, something that came into the collective conscious quite awhile ago was that the reason I can’t force myself to abide by the Mass at the Catholic Church was the way Kresnick pulled a sleight of hand, calling my matrimonial attempts unholy, profane, unclean.
I mean, like I say to Russell, who has a tendency to fall back in Biblical scholar ethos, “first time a philosopher, second time a fool.”
But, at any rate, and this is as ironic as all hell, I too am again wearing a hard hat and, yes, have deigned it to be my end-of-life profession.
But be that as it may, it’s by choice. The man looked almost desperate, like if he had to pick up one more shovel of dirt, smooth out one more bit of fine grade fill, his life would surely come to an end.
WELL, WHAT CAN YOU DO? I MEAN, YOU LOOK AT THEM LEANING over their shovels are backing up their wide company trucks and you think, nay, want to scream out to them, “Work union” but you don’t, you just take your hard hat and your lunch bucket and saunter on over to the vehicle, hoping that you haven’t lost your keys, that it will start, that, even though it was Oct. 10, you could feel the heat of the day and the humidity begin to impress upon you.
So fuck Mitchell, Labi, Kresnic and all the rest: we’ve got to go to the electritian’s hall and find out what the hell.
No, I see I made it 10 minutes early and therein could lounge around. Maybe it was Friday but I saw no one stirring. It seems like this would be the best time to come to the hall but I know how hard it is.
RUSSELL WAS BORDERING slightly on the furious side when he called to say that he hadn’t gotten his card yet. That he’d done his share “I told ‘em I was working with an apprentice and training and Steve said ‘well that’s good, you’re training and apprentice, that’s what a journeyman’s ‘sposed to do.’” And then Steve said he’d make sure that Russ would have his situation cleared up.
AND NOW WE’RE ON THE 15TH FLOOR and the view is spectacular because it really was like a mountain of scaffold and wall that we put up but now it’s narrowing at the peak.
I DID WATCH THEM10/10/2003 9:18:01 PM toiling up above us and the old carp purt near landed a mallet on Rodd and I.
ELEVATOR
AT ANY RATE, CARLA said she thought that there was ads for electrician appren in the paper. Or something to that effect.
Mike had to leave “when push comes to shove” it seems like mike was asking them for bj’s and making other sexual advances and they wouldn’t, according to Fred, “even give us a ride.”
He accents this by widening his eyes. “everybody here likes me. I’m a good carpenter.” At least those are the comments Russell, who is a damn good carpenter, and can really, if he wants to, pull out all the stops to how to do it right, bothering me with his picayance that gets downright annoying when he’s there lookin’ at me, making sure I got the screw in right.
AND I KNOW TALKIN’ to Mike at NCB how important it is to sink the screw. Because then the tapperers can’t work: this holds them up in the process and they don’t have anything to get the screw in further, properly.
BUT MIKE THAT WAS RUN OFF THE JOB FOR THESE advances and reported were his comments by Fred was sorta trumped by Fred this morning when, the cute gal with blond hair pulling up the ramp that goes into the building then pulling down the door then starting the buck hoist to go heavenward, had a slight disturbance. I always try to get in the middle but there was movement on the floor and Russell, saying something like “Hey, I didn’t do that.”
“Here, I’ll kick him for ya.” And then it was Fred’s partner kicking him in the back of the leg. This seemed to be resolved somewhat, following “Hey, who’s doing that” “I didn’t do that” and Fred, and now we’ve begun to steadily climb up through the early morning darkness and the fog after a meeting with Gregg Krugger, reaching out and kicking her in the back of leg again.
“he does that to me all day” said his partner or something like that but I commented to Russell later in the day as we began to get so we could clean out the sheetrock so we could insert the pitcon that we thought it was totally uncalled for.
“that’s harassment. Jesus Christ, that other guy got run off the job and there’s no call for that.”
It was a morning that stayed pretty much on the foggy side and didn’t lift until early afternoon and there was light on the day and it was about time for me to get to the meeting that was going to be 3 hours and I couldn’t imagine what but it seemed important and it was time I went ahead and looked at this my new chapter in my life as an electrician apprentice.
SO MUCH SORTA FELL through yesterday when I get a letter from the Carpenter’s hall and see that I’m up to 65%.
GREG ASKED US TO GATHER around. We did so respectfully. “I want to thank you for the card and the support because it’s really been a tough time.’ This is the first I saw of him since a week or so ago and this was before he lost his son. His son killed himself in some fashion and I didn’t care to ask why. I heard he killed himself with a gun in his room after an argument with his dad.
But Gregg was able to carry on, thanking for the card, then launching into the observation that he is seeing people leave early from the job. “You can’t leave at 3:20 or 3:25 or even 3:29. you’re coffee break is ten minutes and that’s not even in the contract. And you’re on company time when you take that 10 minutes. I don’t want you leavin’ the building.”
He then issued a permit for us to begin our day which was Friday and now he has to continue his life’s work minus one of his offspring.
BUT I DID GO DOWN and there was absolutely no one there and sure enough about 2 on the dot a Mark showed up because Jim Palmidino had surgery and only works half days.
THERE’S JUST THIS OTHER GUY THERE NAMED Jason and there’s a card ready for us and pretty much the same thing that was mailed to us but then I see all the money I have to be shelling out initially, goodbye NCB and all that and I’m thinking how clear it was I n the day, how high up in the building we were getting and how things really, today, started to take on a clear and purposeful meaning: I went after the miter saw that was in the office and set it up on the table and we really had, actually, it was more Russell’s doing than anyone else, a table and a work area where we could really get a lot done, get a lot done quickly. It seemed the higher we got, the more light that was there and things therein seemed to be working faster, last headache and hassle looking for things, unable to get the materials to get it done.
But THE BUCKHOIST.
‘WHAT ARE YOU DOIN’ UP here?” demanded a few of the Sioux City ironworkers and a few others looking at me stepping off. It was my first time I took the buckhoist up to what must’ve been the 4th floor. I started walking around and it was the beginning to the structure and I think the first thing I did was stumble around.
I WAS QUICKLY REMOVED, CHASED BACK DOWN OUT OF THE WORK area and back to the yard and never again did I think I’d ever be riding a buckhoist
BUT 27 YEARS LATER I’M RIDIN’ THE BUCKHOIST.
“Let’s take the south buckhoist,” Russ said. “It goes faster.”
“Ok.”
So we walk to the south buckhoist along with a couple other carpenters and others who are just 10/10/2003 9:51 PM
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