Working For My Uncle

While I have been focusing quite a bit on the neighbors I am going to take a slight pause from that and write a little bit about the summer I spent working for one of my uncles. This would of been the summer of 1995 when I was 15 years old. Although I had worked some minor jobs before like a small paper route this would be my first taste of a true job.

My uncle Randy owned his own construction company and agreed to hire me on full time for the summer at minimum wage, which was 5 dollars at the time. I actually thought this was the greatest thing in the world as I would be making 200 dollars a week which for someone who was used to about 20 spending dollars a month this was a nice change of pace.

I assumed the work would be difficult. It was summertime, temperatures would be soaring, and I was to be used as manual labor as that was the only thing I knew how to do. I will tell you right now the work was physically hard. Since my prior work experience consisted of a one day a week afternoon paper delivery route and chores around the house this was a rude awakening. It was not extremely difficult and most certainly I would work much more physically demanding jobs later in life (what comes to mind here was when I was 18 and worked landscaping for one summer) but it was at the time at least somewhat rough.

To give you a little background on my Uncle Randy, he is actually a really funny person and fairly cool  to hang around. He can come up with some really witty one liners and usually has people laughing. However that would all change when you were on a job site with him. Oh he still has his one liners but most of the time you were not laughing at them.

In my Uncle's words we were donkeys and he was found of saying to one of us "Hey donkey, go join your fellow donkeys for a donkey meeting." This is one of the few one liners I remember years later that did not have at least a couple curse words attached but he usually said this in the morning before he got well and pissed off.

One of the foremen under Randy was a guy named Martin. His son was one of the laborers and one of the few things I remember about him was he always made a funny face whenever he got mad (his son, not Martin). Martin had worked for my Uncle for years and was a fucking creep. I remember one time my cousin and I had to clean up scrap wood behind a house we were working on and Martin went in the woods behind the house and took a shit so we had to smell it the entire time we were working back there. Martin also was a bit of an arsonist and set fires every morning despite the fact that it was reaching a daytime temperature of close to 100 degrees some days. now that I am sitting here thinking about it, I remember one time during lunch break Martin set my cousins tool pouch string on fire and ended up slightly burning my cousins hand.

One day towards the end of the work day Martin started fucking around with his fishing pole and drinking some beers. He must of dicked around with this pole for close to an hour. I remember showing up the next morning and Martin was a no show. We ended up not working that day (and of course I didn't get paid) because he didn't show up. The next day my cousin asked Martin "hey where were you yesterday, fishing?" To which Martin replied "Fuck You."

The other foreman was named Ron. He was an older guy but fairly nice. I remember everytime he got pissed off he would say "GOOOOOOOOOOODAMMMMIT........ (slight pause) Fuck!!!" His daughter's boyfriend was the final laborer. His name was Chris and he was tall and skinny but always bragging about the hood he came from. Apparently he got his ass kicked all the time which is why he thought his neighborhood was so tough. He did tell a funny story though of a time he was fucking Ron's daughter and finished up and left the bedroom and Ron was sitting in the living room with no tv or sound on (implying that he was listening to them fuck). Who knows if that was true but it was funny none the less.

There was another guy who worked with us, I have no idea what he was and he was a nice guy but apparently a part time crack head. So that was the crew. A bunch of fuck-ups, a couple people who semi-knew what they were doing, and my perfectionist Uncle.

Randy has worked in construction his whole life. Seriously he was born with a tool belt on. There was never a moment he didn't know what the fuck he was doing. At least it had to be that way right, because he expected you to know everything about construction right away and without having to be told.

Now granted sometimes it was our fault the fuck-ups we committed. I remember one time Randy told my cousin and Martin's son to pick up the scrap lumber in the basement. For some reason they not only picked up the scrap lumber but also removed all the support boards in the basement. Every fucking one of them. Since we were working on the frame, if we got a heavy rain the house could of collapsed without that structural support.

Randy, "You fucking idiots! You fucking morons! What the fuck you doing??!!! Fucking retards!!! You dumb motherfuckers!!! I told you to pick up the scrap wood!!!!!!!!!!"

Another time my cousin and I were helping him carry a big back patio window. This beast had to be about 7 feet tall by at least 7 feet wide. He kept trying to tell us what direction to turn and I would go one way and my cousin would go the other way until finally in frustration he yelled out, "It's like working with two fucking blind people!!!"

Other times we just fucked each other up. I remember I was on the second floor and my cousin was on the first floor and handing me up a 2 x 12 14 foot long board. He asked me several times if I had it and I said "yeah i fucking got it!" And as soon as he let go and turned around the board slipped out of my hand and came down on the back of his neck.

Another time I had to go to the basement and stand on the top step of a step ladder to hammer in some supports between the floor joists. My cousin was supposed to hold the step ladder because it is not made to stand on the top step. He starts day dreaming and lets go of the ladder and it kicks out from under my so I reach up and grab the floor joists and hang on for dear life. Luckily they had put some type of liquid nails on top of them and that helped to keep me from falling.

Here are some other one liners my Uncle said..

(While standing on the second floor he yells out to me) "Hey Jason if you fuck as slow as you work the women will love you."

"Fucking morons! Take your fucking hands out your pockets when I am talking to you!"

"You move as slow as Molasses."

"I wish I had a vasectomy 16 years ago!" (My cousin was also 15).

It's not so much that my Uncle ended up firing me a couple of months later, but more so he said he would call when he needed me again and just never called. I can't say that I was very sad. I ended up turning 16 a few months later and got paid to bag groceries and not get cussed out everyday.

Last summer Randy built a deck for my mom. My cousin and Randy's youngest son helped him with it. It was so funny to see that nothing had changed in all those years.

"Fucking morons! What the fuck you doing!"