Sunday Essay #4: On Our Own

Where Mark Petro and I become self employed.

                                                           On Our Own

        Mark Petro and I left Bandyke.  He had a couple side jobs set up, so we worked on those.  They were small jobs;  a fence, a front stoop, a couple of little decks.  We built a screen porch.  The one I remember in better detail was that next fall.  We were working for a lady who was Italian and she was a wonderful cook.  When we went into the house to talk to her about doing her basement, it was a week before Thanksgiving and the place was already smelling kind of magnificent.  We gave her our price for the basement and Mark told me afterwards, “Man, I hope we get that job because we will be there when there’s leftovers.”

        At this point I think it’s important to mention our fine science of estimating jobs.  It would go something like this;
  “I think running the walls is gonna go pretty quick.  Remember how fast we did Jester’s job?  We had that thing framed up in a morning.  It kinda looked like this one.”  Then the other one might say, 
       “Yeah, how about five hours on that? So, we figure five times $15 per hour is $75 on the labor.  Is that both of us on that?  Okay, so $150 on labor and about 80 studs, plus some long plates around the top and pressure treated along the bottom.” 
       “Did you see that Lowes has a deal on 200 studs?  Works out to about $1.25 per stud.” 
       “That is a sweet deal.  What are we going to do with all those extra studs?"
       ”If we get the Callahan job we’re good to go, got all we need right there.”
And that’s how it went, two financial geniuses making their fortune.  We didn't even know about the concept of profit.  We forgot about taxes, delivery costs, changes that ate up lumber and every little diddly thing that bit into our very slim earnings.  In that early year or two, we didn’t care.  We were our own bosses, we had plenty of beer money and the freedom was something special.

        Back the basement. We had to shift the washer and dryer around to a new spot.  Because of that, we had to move some wiring in the basement ceiling.  That was one of the first jobs where we didn’t call in an electrician because it wasn’t enough work for a subcontractor.  It was just gonna slow us down.  To try to get an electrician the week before Thanksgiving, well our schedule was gonna be shot to hell.  I knew I could handle the work and it would put a hundred dollars more in our pocket.   It happened to be the actual morning of Thanksgiving.  I just wanted to take care of one last detail, get that dryer hooked up, before we took a four day break.  I only planned to be there for an hour and Mark had already taken off for the holiday and besides, he didn’t like fooling around with electricity.  

        I had to crawl under a landing that came down from the upstairs to the basement.  The ceiling inside there was about 3 or 4 feet tall.   At six feet in height, I was scrunched up in a small crampy position and had a flashlight in my mouth.  I had already visited the electric panel in the basement to shut off what I was certain was the circuit breaker serving the dryer.  It was a big 10 gauge cable, hard to miss.  So, there I was, underneath the landing in that miserable crawl space with a razor knife in my hand trying to cut back some sheathing on the cable.  It turns out I wasn’t cutting into the dryer wire. The razor knife bit into the cable and it flashed a big explosion in my face.  In that exact same moment my hand holding the razor knife jerked back in reflex and I pulled the blade into my  thigh.   In that same moment I also jerked my head back into a nail point embedded in the joist.  It poked a hole in my head and I bit down on the flashlight.  I chipped my front left tooth and dropped the flashlight on the ground, which went dark, at which point I was completely blind.  I could feel the blood streaming down the back of my head and down my neck.  I could also feel blood running down my leg.    I split open my upper lip when I bit down on that little flashlight and my chipped tooth felt kind of numb.

        Right about then the Italian lady comes stomping down the staircase, yelling and screaming about the fact that her stove, with the Thanksgiving turkey in it, had shut off and she was hopping mad.  I crawled out of that little space. I was still kind of flash blinded with blood trickling out of a couple spots and my lip swelling up nicely.  I told her that I had made a mistake, but I would straighten things out right away and I did.  I knew that I had crossed the wires between the hot leg and the neutral or the ground.  Although I had made a razor cut in the sheathing I was in no shape to get in there and straighten things out.  I reset the breaker, the stove was hot again, and I knew she was gonna be alright. She said she was okay with not having the dryer working as long as the stove worked.  I came back on Monday and put everything right.   She did have some glorious leftovers for us. There was chestnut cornmeal stuffing, sweet potatoes and some crazy cauliflower dish. All things considered, she was a wonderful lady and that was a memorable job. 

        Later, after that Thanksgiving week, I was getting ready to patch up that cable.  I whipped out my razor knife.  The blade was melted and useless and covered in blood.  That evening, as I was proudly showing it off to a young lady in a bar, she asked, "Why do you keep a bloody razor blade in your pocket?!"  Then she quickly removed herself from my scintillating presence.  Being a moron is a gift that keeps on giving.

       My next several essays go back in time to college working and early laboring.