The summer after I turned 13 I went to work in my uncle's machine shop. Every morning that summer my uncle stopped by my house to pick me up and take me across the county to the metal building where he and his ragtag crew assembled various and sundry things from sheet metal and steel rods. I used cutting torches, friction saws, hydraulic presses to bend rods, and a hydraulic drill press to punch holes into steel wheels so a valve could be screwed in to enable easy oiling of the ball bearings inside. Every evening my uncle dropped me off, blacked from the carbon dust on the outside of the metal I handled during the day and still damp from sweating in the building cooled only by a big fan and the natural breezes blowing through the open-sided building. That may be enough to keep cool up north, but not less than an hour's trip from the Florida border.
My parents were perfectly happy to send their barely pubescent son to trundle off each day to do work that could have easily maimed me. This actually isn't surprising as I spent many of my formative years playing on the train tracks or winding my way with my sister through game trails in the snake-infested woods around my house and this never seemed to bother my parents. I actually still bear the scar on my foot where a molten drop of metal burned its way through my shoe and into my foot when I played around a little too much with the blow torch when cutting out sections of steel mesh to make sides for the tobacco wagons we spent most of the summer constructing.
I loved that job. I didn't care much for getting up early each morning, but I actually liked the work. I just regretted not being allowed to use the arc welder. So lame.
The next summer my uncle didn't have enough work for me to justify me showing up, so I signed on with another uncle at his office supply store. I spent a couple of weeks collating print jobs with my grandmother before being moved off-site to help some of his guys unload used office furniture into a couple of their warehouses. This I didn't like so much. It was an entire day of the same old stuff. Pick up desks, filing cabinets, chairs, and conference tables. Lug those pieces off the truck. Stack in empty corner of warehouse. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Go to lunch and do it all over again. And I shouldn't forget to mention that I almost castrated myself when a metal filing cabinet slipped from my grip and almost gouged my scrotum. Luckily the jeans I wore were fairly baggy and managed to redirect the energy of the falling object away from my precious. My sweet, sweet precious.
I was stuck working for the same uncle the next year (I was only 15 and couldn't get a non-family job yet) and spent much of the summer cleaning up a rental property that had been abandoned for a while before my uncle purchased it. After a couple of weeks, I moved from the interior to the back yard and began pulling the honeysuckle vine from the chain link fence. Sometime around 2 p.m. I realized that the honeysuckle had been displaced by poison ivy without my noticing. Not long after that, the rash started popping up and I called it a day and went home. I took a nap and when I woke up, my arms were swollen to more than twice their normal circumference and oozing. That's not really a normal occurrence for me.
I have to admit that I was pretty freaked out. I convinced my parents to take me to the hospital and the ER doctor was shocked enough that my parents felt a little sheepish for having to be convinced to take me. Unfortunately, they couldn't stick the IV into my hands or arms because of the damage done by the poison ivy. The only viable option left, apparently, was to stick a giant needle into my throat and leave it there for the next two days. I'm already skittish around needles, so the idea of having a rather robust one thrust into my neck was totally not cool.
Lucky for me, that was the last time I had to work for that uncle. During the middle of the following school year I turned 16 and soon landed a job as an after-hours janitor at a local trucking company with a friend for a few months before switching over to Food Lion, where I'd work for the remainder of my high school career.
I still would have preferred the machine shop. Blow torches are so cool.
3 comments:
There is something fulfilling about manual labor and while I've never used a blow-torch or welder (or any such cool tools), I imagine they would make it better.
I do sometimes wish I could make a living just building wooden fences and decks in people's back yards with my dad, as I did for a couple of summers. I'm pretty sure I was younger than the recommended age for operating a high-powered nail gun.
Julie: Yes, they do.
Chris: I wouldn't enjoy that sort of work as much just because I like having a variety of stuff to do and that's pretty much the same thing every day. I'd still be able to do it without hating it. It's easy to satisfy my creative needs outside of work.
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