A Manly Hunk Of Love
Some of the fondest memories I have of my father are from the times we worked together. My father was a construction worker, a man’s man, raised in Chicago during the Great Depression and then served during the Korean War. He started his construction job at 16 and put in 50 years before he reluctantly retired.
Dad installed air conditioning in high rise buildings. He was Union labor and committed to his “trade.” So, when the union offered a summer internship program that paid really well, dad let me know about it. I was accepted into the program one summer and he also got me hired by his company, on his jobs.
I learned a lot of things.
I learned how to install air conditioning, to be sure. How to unload trucks with huge air conditioning ducts on them, I learned a lot of that. How to stop my fingers from bleeding without bandages, since I was cutting them 5–6 times a day from raw metal edges. I learned how to eat lunch from a bag with my legs dangling over the un-walled side of a thirty story building on a windy day. I learned bragging was the construction workers’ way of bonding.
I learned architects don’t always take practical obstacles in mind when they map out a building. I learned plumbers and electricians didn’t work as hard as tin knockers (air conditioning installers), laborers worked harder than anyone (and got paid less), and elevator men were coolest because they didn’t come into the building until later and got to build everything since elevators have everything except plumbing. I learned to always clean my work area at the end of the night, lock up my tools at night, and how to drink beer, but never too much on a work night or the next day would resemble hell.
But that’s not all I learned. I also learned my dad was an entirely different man at work than he was at home. And that, while he was great as a dad, I really liked hanging out with him as a man, at work. So did almost everyone it seemed.
At home, mom ruled the roost and dad complied. Mom wasn’t so bad and she made quite the roost considering I had three brothers and all that testosterone in one house could have spelled disaster for many. It was just that, at work, dad was funny, knowledgeable, looked up to, respected. And at work, dad was in charge. If anyone had a problem, even foremen from other construction trades, they’d come to my dad and he’d solve it. Always.
And he was funny.
Dad had trouble keeping his pants up. Not as much “in arrears” as others you might say. One day he was up on a ladder measuring something (he was on a ladder a lot). He didn’t know it, but I was in earshot. One of the junior tin knockers came over and stood by him on the ladder. Poor dad’s knickers were, well “sagging” is being nice. He wore a tool belt as well, weighted down with the tools he needed and the ones “just in case.” Dad always had the tool anyone needed, anytime, in his tool belt. He had the Mary Poppins magical bag of tools around his waste it seemed.
The other guy was asking for some tool or another and sure enough dad pulled it out of his belt and handed it down to the guy. And, as any good construction worker will do, the junior tin knocker took advantage of an opportunity to tease.
“Bob, your pants are falling down. Do you really have to go around the whole job site showing off your butt crack!”
My dad, without even turning around, still measuring, says matter-of-factly and without missing a beat: “Well, Virgil, when you work your ass off for the company there are consequences.”
He was a master craftsman as well. Sometimes a piece of pre-built air conditioning duct wouldn’t quite fit at the job site. The plumbers built wider than the plans called out for, or a corner was a little tighter. Others would scoff and ask dad to order a new piece and he would pull out his tools and somehow reconstruct the piece to fit perfectly, all before lunch.
But the building skills and humor and cleaning up and showing up on time were only the beginning of what I learned. The biggest lesson of all came only days before I left the job site for my last summer.
By now I was left on my own a lot, doing this or that, and today’s job was air-balling duct. It’s not a high-skilled job. It entails running canvas tape through a bucket of white, glue-like liquid, squeezing off the excess, and then applying the tape around the joints of two air conditioning duct pieces, ultimately to seal off any air from leaking for the next 20 years. It was a messy job and required a lot of up and down ladders. No one liked doing it and so it was thus perfect for summer interns like me to do.
I was preparing some tape to go up and I felt some drops of something on my head. I had taken off my hard hat. First I thought I must be getting the airball on myself. So, I stopped what I was doing. But then I felt more drops. I looked up, but the sun was too bright, so I took a step back to refocus.
Boom! Within a mille-second of stepping back, a concrete cylinder the size of my head came crashing down just in front of me and bounced off the floor and further down. I was shocked. I stood stunned. Had it hit me, and it was an inch away from doing so, I’d be dead. There was no doubt about it.
It got a little hazy for me from there, but I remember hearing someone cussing worse than you hear even on a construction site. They were yelling profanities and climbing off of a ladder to my right and across the unwalled expanse of that floor. It was my dad.
He stormed off, still cussing and jumped in the service elevator on the far corner. Within minutes I heard him above me on the next floor, still cussing. I looked up and could see there was a hole in the roof above my head. That’s where the cement cylinder had come from. The concrete guys were cutting a hole in the floor and didn’t bother to check below them.
Dad was not having any of it. He was going toe to toe with them. My dad was not a tall man. 5’6” on a good day and over forty. These guys were tall, burly, and in their twenties, but they backed off, moved away, and cowered to my father. He wouldn’t stop, and eventually ran them off the site. We never saw them again.
No one criticized my father for his behavior. They were all grateful. Those men had endangered themselves, their co-workers and, worse of all his son. He was not having any of it and on a forty-story office building, before the walls or windows are installed, the rules are different.
He didn’t say much to me the rest of the afternoon. He had taken extra care to make sure I was okay. Made me sit in a corner a while to get over the shock. Had me drink water from the large orange water drum that always tasted like plastic. I think he was working off his own fear and steam as much as mine. He rattled me for not wearing my hard hat, which I did every minute on the job after that day.
We went home and didn’t talk about it. We didn’t tell mom. We never mentioned it again his entire life.
But despite that few words were ever exchanged about the incident, something had changed between us forever. It had changed and it was for the better. Like they say happens for two men who go to war together. A traumatic experience can bind you together. For a father and son, already permanently bonded, it can be especially binding. And for me it was the ultimate real-life demonstration that my dad had, and always would have, my back.
