You just got to want it
I don’t know why but the rain this morning reminded me of a time of my life when I was a carpenter building new homes, additions, decks, and installing shingles. I did it through most of high school during the summers and on weekends (this crew worked every Saturday).
I remember hauling lumber, nailing and standing up walls, walking backwards on a 2×4 three stories up bending down every two feet to mark where the roof trusses would be nailed. I remember the day I smashed my thumb with a 22 ounce ball peen hammer so bad that I shattered the bone. I had to climb down from the top of the wall before I passed out from shock. I remember not having insurance and asking my mother to do a butterfly stitch with Band-Aids but finally realizing I’d have to go the emergency room to get it taken care of properly. I’d just have to deal with the bills as best I could.
I remember thinking this time I’m going to do it and enter college. We need carpenters but I hated the bone chilling cold of the winters, the inevitable sun burns of the summer, and the ever present rain. I hate being wet but I was damn scared of a walking on a wet roof with anything more than a 6/12 pitch. But I didn’t enroll in college…
I started dating a girl I really liked. Her father told me that if I had intentions with his daughter I better get a college degree. I was working two jobs at this point and thinking college was too expensive. There also wasn’t the family tradition of completing college, I did terrible on my SAT, and I was an average B/C student. I still didn’t know what I was going to be but I knew I wanted more.
One weekend Harold, the crew’s chief and a small business owner, needed strong young legs to help on a roofing job so I got the call. This was before the day where every crew has a machine that helps you get the shingles to the roof. Back in the day everyone formed up in front of the ladder slapped a bundle on the shoulder and hauled it to the ridgeline. Since we normally do a lot of chatting while doing these muscle driven task so I mentioned my college dilemma. Nobody was specifically pushing me one way or another. We just talked about college as another one of those dreams carpenters often have like “I wish I could…” or “If I won the lottery…”
So Harold convinces us to start taking bunds two at a time. One on each shoulder (leaving no hand for the ladder) or two on one shoulder (making you lean heavily as you stretch your arm to hold the 2nd). Legs burn a little by the time you get to the top of a ladder with 100lbs on your back. All along Harold is making comments like “sooner we get it up there the soon it’s done.” Me being a smart ass I suggest we try for three at a time. Harold sits down, lights a cigarette and tells me to give it a try.
Now at this point I’m pretty beefy so I decide what the hell. I can’t even get my hand to the top of the 3rd bundle. A mere 10 steps up (not even halfway) my legs are shaking so bad and I’m so unbalance I knew I was going to fall. The rest of the crew were egging me on with encouragement and laughter. Hoots and hollers of “go, go, go” and a friendly ribbing when I tumbled back down to the earth.
Then Harold, like a cowboy out of an old western, flicked the butt of his cigarette and without a word this 40 year old guys with a 160lb frame made of sinew balanced three bundles on his shoulder and was breaking them across the ridgeline before we knew it. When he got back down this flawed man, this sometimes philosopher and all time bad ass looked me square in the eyes and said, “You just got to want it. Don’t talk about it, do it.”
So I went to college, finishing in 3 years. I still hate rain…but I’m thankful for it.
Mirrored from For Them What Care.