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The Greenhorn Construction Company
comments (0) July 16th, 2008 in Blogs
Kevin Ireton, editor-at-large
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My friend Sam visited last weekend. Sam is a remodeling contractor in Lexington, Ky. He was tagging along while his girlfriend, Charlotte, attended a worker’s comp conference on Cape Cod. So they stopped at our place and spent a couple of nights with Cynthia and me.
I met Sam in the summer of 1977. We were both living in Lexington and attending the University of Kentucky. We had both signed on with a temporary-employment agency called Manpower. The work was not great—I remember sweeping warehouses and shoveling gravel—but the assignments were day-to-day, so we had the option of saying no on any given day and hiking the Red River Gorge instead. I never did, of course. I was raised a Lutheran.
Eventually, I was sent to work on a condominium project in Georgetown, Ky. That’s where I met Sam. He had long curly hair and a deep tan, and was in good shape. He had been the quarterback of his high-school football team. I knew the type: arrogant and selfish, the kind of guy for whom things had always been easy. I hated him on sight.
A half-dozen of us from the employment agency were working at the condo project, doing odd jobs to finish up the construction. We shoveled and raked and threw debris in the Dumpster. Behind the condos were small storage sheds where I nailed on my first roof shingles. I remember one of my fellow workers watching me, then saying, “Slow down. We’re getting paid by the hour.” I was so naïve as to be shocked by the suggestion.
That’s how Sam and I got to be friends: not because he was as naïve, but because we both liked to work. It was our way to wonder how good a job we could do or how much we could accomplish, an attitude that set us apart from our fellow Manpower employees. We started commuting together and got to know each other. Sam turned out to be one of the most polite and considerate people I’d ever met in my life, so I forgave him his good looks. We’ve been friends ever since.
Not long after that, we got hired as full-time helpers by the contractor who built the condos. His name was Ed, and he had been a tank commander in the Army during the Korean War. Ed bragged that he could say “hurry up” in six different languages. He frequently accused Sam or me of being “a nickel holding up a dime.” He also taught us to use a worm-drive saw and that any hammer less than 28 oz. was a tack hammer.
Ed had two carpenters working for him who had also attended the University of Kentucky. The five of us got a lot of work done that summer and had a good time doing it. Ed said we were the best-educated crew he ever had, then added, “But none of you knows anything.” That’s why he dubbed us “The Greenhorn Construction Company.
posted in: Blogs
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About this blog
As the editor of Fine Homebuilding, I spend my weekdays trying to produce a magazine that will satisfy 300,000 of the most demanding builders, both professional and amateur. As the owner of a 200-year old Cape in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills, I spend weekends working on my house.
Each activity invariably informs, and complicates, the other. In this blog, I’ll offer observations from both worlds -- publishing and building -- with the hope of providing some useful or at least entertaining insights.
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