This Is Me — Part One — How'd You Get Into Construction?
Hell, I didn't grow up dreaming about building decks.
I don't think any kid does.
I wasn't sitting there at fifteen years old thinking someday I was gonna own a construction business.
I was mostly trying to figure out how to get through the day without somebody telling me what the hell to do.
When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time with my buddy Chris. Chris had an older brother named Mike. For whatever reason, I ended up hanging around Mike more and more.
Chris was my age. Mike was older. He had a job. He had some money in his pocket. He knew how to build shit.
At that point in my life, that impressed me.
I grew up pretty fast. Didn't have much choice.
I didn't have a dad around showing me how to do things. My mother had her own problems. Grandma Arlene did the best she could with me, but there wasn't really a man in my life I was looking up to.
Then there was Mike.
I don't even know if he realized what he was doing at the time.
He worked construction and started letting me tag along, especially during the summer. At first I was probably more in the damn way than I was helping.
Carry this. Go get that. Hold this board. Clean that shit up.
Pretty basic stuff.
But I watched.
That's one thing I've always been good at. If something interests me, I'll watch the hell out of somebody until I figure out what they're doing.
Mike started showing me things. How to measure. How to cut. How to use the tools without cutting my damn hand off. How to make something square. How to fix it when it wasn't.
He'd take me out on jobs with him and toss me some money at the end of the day.
Wasn't much. Didn't matter.
I was a kid. I had money in my pocket and somebody was treating me like I was useful.
That meant something to me. Probably more than I realized at the time.
And I liked the work.
You showed up in the morning and there was a pile of lumber sitting there. By the end of the day, you could actually see what the hell you'd been doing all day.
I liked that.
Made a hell of a lot more sense to me than sitting in school doing worksheets about shit I didn't care about.
I wasn't much for school. Hell, I missed more of it than I probably attended some years. I'd skip and hang out at a buddy's house.
I wasn't stupid. I just didn't give a shit about sitting in a classroom listening to somebody talk about something I couldn't see any use for.
Construction was different.
Show me how something works and let me do it.
I'll learn.
That's pretty much how I learned everything I know.
I didn't go to school for this. Mike taught me the basics.
Then I worked. And worked some more. Screwed shit up. Learned how not to screw it up the next time.
Eventually people started trusting me to do more. Then somebody trusted me to do a job myself. Then another one. Then another one.
I never really decided I was gonna be a contractor.
It just kinda happened.
Mike taught me some shit. I got better at it. People started paying me to do it.
Eventually I figured, hell, if I'm doing all the damn work anyway, I might as well work for myself.
So I did.
Been doing it ever since.
That's really the whole story.
Sorry if you were expecting something more interesting. - Joe
Comments ()