Falling Forward

Soooo I have been in the great state of Tennessee now for just over 180 days and now between here and Gainesville  I have proved to myself that I  can survive anywhere. I always knew that I could it was just a matter of crawling up out of the grasp of the safety net. Some people don’t. They build a life right where whatever higher power they believe in put them. And I get jealous of this from time to time. Because  I have it somewhere in my mind that I would have this life with my house in Lake Helen, a bunch of kids to fill it and woman to wake up next to every morning.  I wanted to be the father that George Fredrick wasn’t, Rufus couldn’t be and that I make believe Gus is.  I wanted Sunday suppers in the carport with my kids and their cousins running through yard and bugging us for dollar bills to take to 66 to buy penny candy. Then I realize I wanted my past. And you can’t live in the past. Because I’ve got a sister that will never talk to me again let alone have Sunday supper. And the rest of the cousins that I grew up with are scattered like leaves in the wind and the house that you dreamed in has been sold  so that a new group of people can make dreams of their own. So you have to fall forward and make the best of what you are doing with what you have. Because the past only works in the movies.

Random Pictures

I spend alot of time in hotels and because you can only do so many pushups and me and the treadmill don't along I spend a fair amount of time goofing around on the internet.

Here are a couple of pictures that I have found that I think are pretty damn neat and if you are half the engineering, construction, or big loud stuff nerd that I am you will too. Enjoy

Willy

 

D-11 Shoving Coal

 

 



 

OSHA WHAT? OSHA WHO?

Traveling Circus

 I often joke that my  life is like a  traveling circus due to the random nature of the places that I am sent to work.  I follow the specialized contractors that work on the stuff that keeps the lights on, water flowing and trashed picked up around to make sure that the stuff they are building or working on meets the design and specifications created by the engineers. Sometimes the manpower that the job requires is specialized  and the contractors bring in an established workforce that they have trained and nurtured over the course of many years and many projects. In other cases the contractors bring in their supervision and hire locally. This is often the case when the general contractor is a regional contractor and may not have manpower in the area where the work is happening.

Right now the project that I am working on requires the latter. This crew was brought in because they are one of the best. They are in the process of finishing up the earthwork for the one of the first nuclear plants to be brought online since the 70's and at one time had 500 employee's working 24 hours a day to complete the foundation work for the site. These guys are a different breed. I have a project manager, safety manager and project engineer from South Carolina, a superintendent from Alabama and a general foreman from Georgia. For the older guys it means telling your wife you love her and getting on the road Sunday morning to make the 7am Monday call and maybe a round of golf or some fishing once you get to where you are going. For the younger guys it means a late night or early morning drive after one last kiss to your favorite girl or one more story before bed time. If a man home schools his children then they come with and the family stays together and get to explore whatever random place that that gets stationed. It is a tough life, but the men are well compensated. It something that gets in your blood and many don't quit traveling until they are ready to retire.

Once the contract is in place and the job starts then the contractor is faced with a whole new set of challenges. In the case of my project the contractor must meet  with the client to learn of the project expectations, meet with  craft unions who assigns manpower and meet with local vendors to get materials delivered. And then dirt gets moved, pipes get laid, concrete gets poured and asphalt gets installed so that a new piece of infrastructure is born from an open field or crowded spot in a existing plant so that you can turn on your lights, flush your toilet or have your garbage magically disappear from the curb.

Once the project is complete the traveling circus packs up heads to where ever the project estimators have nailed the numbers and the whole process starts over again. Throughout  the journey relationships and memories were created that will be shared over and over through time whether it be additional work at the site or shared over a cup of coffee while leaning on the tailgate and swapping war stories.

Lake Helen:

I love the smell of dirt and  have had dreams about running yellow iron since the first time Rufus threw me in the truck and took me to work with him at the city. Santa Claus brought me a fleet of Tonka Trucks one Christmas (y'all know, the ones made of real sheet metal) and by the end of the day the back yard was dug up and stayed that way till I figured out what bicycles and books were. George Fredrick left in 84 and then we were really poor. I came home from elementary school and told my mom that  I was droppin out so I could go run a bulldozer and make us some real money. And then  Rufus got old,bikes, books,FFA and being a teenager happened and a new mentor came into my life. I thought it was gone but somewhere way back in the back of my brain pan a little fat man was plugging a way on a D-6 shoving all the crap to the side so that I could really see where I was headed.

At 18 years old all I wanted out of life was air conditioning, cable Tv and a real bed to sleep on. I was pretty much convinced of where my path would lead me. I knew that I wanted to be a construction worker and eventually be a foreman or superintendent over a big project. So I started hanging around at construction sites and blatantly bugging the crap out of people hoping to get a job pullin levers and moving earth. It happened, just like my mentor said it would it just took time.

At 25 I was pretty much set. Had kicked some really nasty habits, had a good job that wasn't going anywhere and a house that I had remodeled into what I wanted in a home, but I was restless. Everything my mentor said would happen did. I learned that there was more to a landfill then just pushing trash into a hole. And I learned that until you got initials at the end of your name, a bunch of grey hairs in your head or a big helping hand up that the best you could be where I was at was a grunt. Grunting is good, it's honest, and it's where all the work gets done. Get on the big yellow stuff, push the stinky stuff or brown stuff around till it quits coming through the gates for the day and then stick a tall boy between your legs for the trip home and in 12 odd hours stick a cup of coffee between your legs for the trip over to start the circus all over again. Some people could leave the trash at the dump but I never could. I immersed myself in every piece and part of that place and once I had figured out every piece of it; I got bored.

Gainesville:

It started with a wedding and a bottle of Crown Royal that seemed to have no bottom. Idle conversation while we watched my mentor give his baby girl away and watched Prince Charming whisk her away in a white horse drawn carriage. Two weeks later I was sitting in a conference room in the first suit I had ever owned getting asked about stuff that I had thought only existed in text books. I was a grunt; self educated white trash that for the longest time was one dead old man away from sleeping in a Datsun or in a shelter. But here I was. In a conference room full of engineers hoping for a chance to learn the other side of trash. And I got it, even after calling a female engineer "Sir" and being more nervous than I had ever been in my life. I carried that offer letter around in my back pocket for days. When I  read it  for the last time and made up my mind it was covered in grease and diesel and leachate and dirt and smelled like my life up till then. Old Spice and sweat and bourbon that I drank by the fifth to keep the stuff that played out in my head at arms length. And then I sat on a couch on a Thursday evening and told my mentor of my plan.  I was told that I would be "flying with out a net" and watch every action that I made cause I would no longer be just a grunt that got on yellow stuff and pushed the stinky stuff till it quit coming through the gate....

And he was right... I did everything they told me to do and never balked. I became as educated as the people around me and I educated the people around me as well because six years of school doesn't always teach you the way a contractor will build something or how something will act in the dirt. Young engineers have to learn that things don't appear in real life as they do in paper space and I had to learn how to turn all the stuff in the dirt back into paper again. I got in trouble from time to time, hell I walked on egg shells around one client all the damn time cause I thought my grunt background would help me fit in with them and it didn't. But I learned from it; hell I learned something every day from it. But I was restless because I knew that unless that I had initials at the end of my name, a head full of grey hair or a big hand up that I was gonna be an educated grunt that made the engineers look good when there was something they couldn't figure it out, take the brunt of the bus when a client decided to throw us under it and continue to make the sacrifices that others would balk at. I sat on the couch in Lake Helen on a Sunday afternoon and told my mentor of my plan. And he told me that he was proud of me and that I would be " flying with out a net" and that I would be responsible for every action that I made. Then I asked him what part of his life he was in when he thought that he had made it and he responded " Do you have responsibility? Is your name on a business card that doesn't have the name of a car lot on it? Do you teach people?" and I responded yes to all of the above and he was right. Just like I knew he would be....

Nashville:

Lake Helen was a place that I would live forever and I was wrong... Gainesville was a place that I hoped that I would stay in until I was ready to move on my terms and I was right about that one. So here I set in Nashville staring out into distance again. I'm still an educated grunt with the hopes of becoming a Project Manager or a Superintendent somewhere out there ahead of me just like I wanted way back at 18. Somebody asked what it took to move  here  and I half joked "  Put in your two weeks, throw all your stuff into a big white box and put your right foot on the little pedal."

There is way more too it than that of course and I hope that y'all will follow me on it.