Some jobs just need a little help to make them better and some jobs need a lot of help. This is a story about a job that had many ups and downs. This was the second gas plant I worked at, for the same contractor and the same foreman. John was and still is a great guy. He would have his outburst of frustration, but he did care for his workers. On Fridays, he would invite us all to The Eagle and buy us buckets of beer. All the guys knew him there and I think this was his first chance to be a big shot. I sympathized for him. My career hadn’t gone the way I wanted, so I really understood how he felt.

John really took me under his wing on this project. Most days we would spend the first hour going over prints before joining the crew outside working. There was a lot of underground work on this job, so we spent our fair share of time working in the trenches running conduit. It was around May, and no one minded working outside. The weather had been working in our favor until one week. One Monday morning the rain started coming down in buckets. We tried to wait it out but ended up going home due to thunderstorms. Tuesday wasn’t bad and we had work we could do to keep us going until the ditches dried out. Wednesday came and worked half a day until it started raining again. John told us all to go to the trailer. We all sat down in the trailer, but John was pacing back and forth. We had our first deadline that Friday and he didn’t want to tell us about it. John took a peek outside and it had stopped raining. John looked at us and said, “Let’s get out there and finish these two runs of conduit. ” We all hurried out of the trailer and headed toward the ditch. If you hadn’t guessed, it started raining again and John hit the ceiling! “I know I said we wouldn’t work in the mud, but we have to get this shit done today!” We grumbled a little but kept working. John had an old school way of motivating people through verbal jabs. Needless to say, John started in on all of us and he went on and on until he struck a nerve. “Are you guys even electricians?” We were soaking wet and our boots were sticking in the mud but we were getting the job done.

I came unglued, “Damnit John! I’ve had enough of your shit for one day. Just wait until I get out of this ditch….”

I was interrupted by John’s laughter, “I’ve been picking at you for a year and I finally got you to yell. You don’t let anything get to you. Do you?”

“Everyone has their tipping point, John. ” I was finishing the last of the pipe run, “We’re finished. Let’s say we clean up and get the hell out of here for the day.”

“That sounds like a good idea Jim.” As quickly as John would get fired up, the next minute he would give us fist bumps and tell us what a great job we were doing for him.

On the drive home it had stopped raining, and the sun came out. I replayed the whole scene in my mind and started to smile. I was humming a familiar tune, but the words were coming out different. The words were so clear. I had to pull over and write them down:

The Drag Up Song (Escape)

I was tired of my foreman. We worked together too long. He sounded like a broken record, I couldn’t take it no more. He was at the shop sleeping, I called the job line instead. And on the recorder, there was a message it said,

Do you like pulling wire? Running pipe in the rain? If you are not into health food, if you have half a brain. If the shop calls you after midnight. Would you throw on that red cape. This is the job that you hoped for. Your chance to escape….

I wrote a full version of this parody and typed it up. On John’s birthday, I gave it to him as a gift. I figured a guy like John would appreciate a few verbal jabs being thrown at him. I don’t know this for a fact but I’m pretty sure he took it home and framed it. Now John has been retired for the past five years, and we haven’t really kept in touch. I sometimes imagine he is singing that song and it makes me laugh.

I’ll see you on the next one.