Tag: working

Book of the Week

Quote of the week:“Make Love, Not War” was not the rallying banner call we all thought it was. It was but a thought process that produced a lot of bastards”

My book pick of the month:

I Thought I’d Died and Gone To Heaven

An irreverent look at growing up in a parochial, conservative environment in pre-woke era Toronto of the 1950s and 60s.

Just click on “Buy on Amazon” to purchase on line. You can also get this book in audio format. Go to Amazon.ca or Amazon.com (US Residents) and type in audible and the book title.

An Excerpt:

“The next day and the days after that next day at work were
gruesome. I may have been making three dollars and forty-five
cents an hour, but no amount of money could compensate the
physical pain and misery of that job. Shovelling gravel into those
inanimate buckets, hour after hour, day after day for the hottest
summer on record was pure unadulterated torture. I was
dreaming of them. My bucket list! And the only sound heard,
besides Zal’s taunts for more “fucking pitch” being the grunts
and groans from our bodies and the huffs and puffs of our
laboured breaths with every shovelful of gravel taken. Sweat just
poured down every crease and crevasse of our beings. Taking
stints up on the flat roof itself provided no relief with a hot
glaring sun beating down mercilessly on our lithe bodies. The
humidity was a killer. The hard physical work and the potential
for dehydration made it harder and harder to keep our pants
above the waist. As roofers we had the plumber’s crack in
spades. It was kind of comical watching everyone on the crew
continuously pulling up on their pants or tightening their belts as
if stricken by a nervous twitch. On top of that, by the end of the
day, our calloused hands were the worse for wear as newly
formed blisters would crack, then burst, then sting, as the flayed
skin would shed and coagulate with the pus and the blood, which
became an ugly brownish red in colour. The soles of our work
boots expanded vertically, about two to four inches, as the tar and
gravel stuck to the undersides of our boots as we walked around
by the area of the hot tar kettle, the conveyor belt, and the adjacent
pile of gravel. It would take us some time to scrape the
gooey mess off of our boots at the end of the day. But we felt so
tall in our high gravel heels!

“End of the day? Sore and bruised and filthy dirty in sweat
and dust. The long ride home on the bus and subway, lost in
thought, dead to the world, and praying hard and fast for rain on
the morrow or watching the clock, counting hard the seconds,
minutes, and hours before the whole miserable routine would
repeat itself. Please, dear God, let it rain tomorrow for when it
rained roofers didn’t work. But of course it was Murphy’s Law
and not God’s law that ran the day for it only rained on the
weekends.

“The summer finally ended. I was in great shape physically,
well-tanned, and had a few bucks saved in the bank. I helped out
at home financially, naturally, but I didn’t have to give the
majority of my earnings to my parents as I no longer went to the
Catholic private high school for boys. I thanked God for that!
And looking back on that hot and humid summer, my first real
well-paying job, I could have easily said that life was good. In
some respects that summer was Pitcher (sic) Perfect.”

Or:

Life is Good – on weekends at least!

Have a nice Navy day.

 

Pitcher Perfect

“Pitch”, he yelled.

“Pitch,” he yelled again.

We all jumped for this was Zal, the Portuguese foreman of the Portuguese team of my uncle’s roofing company. The other team, as there were two, comprised a group of Maritimers who mumbled their way through the day’s work.  I never knew that English was a foreign language until I met this group of Maritimers that summer of 1968 – the hottest summer of the hottest year on record, I do believe.  At least with Zal, when he screamed “Pitch” you didn’t have to say: “What?” Something that was so common with the Maritimers. But Zal only knew one word of English, “Pitch,” maybe two: “Pitch Asshole!” or maybe three: “Pitch, Fuckin Asshole:” the three English words that came to mind whenever one was in earshot of Zal.  You knew what he wanted.

You could never really tell what the Maritime Foreman wanted as his diction and enunciation resembled that of a person with a bagful of marbles in his mouth. I thought it was just him until I met the other members of his crew. They all talked in the same manner: mumbled jumble. As it turned out they all came from the same small fishing village on the rock.  As it turned out again the Foreman, Bob, married Tom’s sister who was only 12 at the time. Tom was married to Bob’s cousin Jillian, 14, who was the sister of Archie, another member of the Maritimer’s roofing squad, who married Katy, “the caper,” a distant relative, as she lived quite the distance away in the next village, which was about 20 miles around the Cape. Which Cape? Don’t really know as they never said anything other than she was a “Caper” from “away” lad, as they called me.

These two crews always worked apart. Zal’s crew was made up of four of his countrymen, thus the Portuguese crew. The Maritimer’s crew consisted of, well, Maritimers, hence the Maritimer’s crew. What was I? I was the go between as I was told to go between each of these crews and help out as best I could.  I was the summer student. The uncle’s er the owner’s nephew: a fact which presented its own set of unique problems. Not for me but for them, the full time crews, as they immediately surmised a spy was in their midst and would report any or all misdeeds, vocal or otherwise, to the owner, my uncle. I don’t really know why they felt this was the case for even if it was true I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, especially the Maritime crew. When I was around they mumbled as a group, no, they whispered as a group, as if in some huddle, deciding the next course of roofing action, especially if I was within their roofing earshot.  It wouldn’t have mattered because I could not understand a word of their mumbling in a normal voice so when they whispered it was as if they were communicating via Enigma. At least with the Portuguese crew you knew immediately where you stood. Zal didn’t have to speak English for Zal was distinct with his diction. It was a universal diction, like Esperanto. You knew when he was mad, which was almost all of the time, and you knew when he was at peace, with himself that is but never ever ever with us. Thinking back on this I do believe Zal considered himself like the Captain of some roofing ship where familiarity breeds contempt and being in charge, being the Captain, meant being remote and being lonely at the top…of the roof.  He knew he could get things done in his own way. And he was right.

“Pitch” he would yell.

And when the roofing pitch was slow to come!

“Fucking Pitch….asshole.” Zal would yell louder…