the holy wars part two

they weren't all bad. there were plenty of good times with the desperados. a lot of easy going back and forth fun on the job site, it's just that the contradictions in their characters was so great, but that was part of the interesting and compelling side of the whole business. a good number of these guys were smart and talented and some were brave, as well as greedy, and crooked. not out and out thieves, just changing the contract a little here and there so the client would never know, overcharging whenever possible. they had a certain cruel, ignorant streak to them. how can ignorance and intelligence and bravery live side by side? they can and do. once in SF while working on a three story victorian i slipped off the roof and got tangled up in the gutter and Dax shimmied down and held on to the edge of the roof and grapped me and said "let go" and i did and for a moment I was in his hands totally, swinging over the cement side walk and then he literally pressed me over his head and back onto the roof. "Don't do that again," he said. we built that whole victorian house together, and he made all the hard decisions, and I had to respect that. you could find up a bond pretty quickly with someone after they saved your life, but you could never forget you were working with a caged tiger. maybe it was just his nature, and i really believed Dax wanted to be good but it was not his nature, he'd told so many lies he didn't know what to believe anymore. anyway the lies were a whole lot safer, it's what he knew. Dax was one of those guys who had his bible in his truck and would spend time reading it while i was working, he worked at that bible pretty hard and i think it was probably the only thing that kept him from being worse than he was. one of those contradictions again, he'd be reading his bible, i'd get in the truck, and he'd say something about the nxxxxxs all being ugly and then the next morning our black cement finisher big earl and he would be in Dax's truck talking up a storm like old friends. Dax loved big earl, they'd worked together for twenty years by then if not longer. earl told me in the old days Dax used to come to work everyday with a case of brown derby beer under his arm and work and drink all day, Dax calling it his fuel. Dax was also cheap, he wore those wino sneakers to work until his toes stuck out and he had the same worn red flannel shirt to match his hair for years, and he never bought anyone donuts or coffee, a coke, nada. big earl used to say he was having an elvis attack and Dax would let him slip out and get himself a dozen jelly donuts while waiting for the next cement truck. " eyes goota elvis attaaack coming on." big earl was witty,lazy, smart and a genious with the finishing trowel, he could make cement look like glass. Dax had a little book where he wrote down everyone's hours and time, if you were fifteen minutes late he docked you half an hour, if you worked a half an hour over it was on you. this was a fairly common practice in consruction. it was called the cost of doing business, Dax's way or the highway. no complaining, period about anything. even i wasn' immmune to his method. i had to watch my hours like a hawk, a couple of hours here and there from ten guys each day is twenty hours say at 20 dollars per hour thats 200 hundred dollars a day times four, is eight hundred a week savings, compound that over a year that's ten grand or so, and on and on. once we were building a coffee and tea house in SF and Dax came upon the idea to pay everyone twice a month to keep the payroll down he said, payment schedule and all. he missed a week to me and owed me 900 hundred dollars and swore he'd paid me, but the little black book didn't lie, there it was, but he drove off and thought i'd forget about it. come friday i drove to his house in the country, he had this big stucco wall around his place, and i breached it with an extension ladder and saw him in his kitchen having diner so i put the ladder right up to the window and climbed in just as he was shoving some mashed potatoes in his mouth and announced "you owe me 900 hundred dollars," and he says" you're breaking and entering, i'm going to have to shoot you and went off to a room and came back out with a cowboy hat on and a holster and a pistol and took it out and pointed it at me. He looked ridiculous standing there in his socks with the inevitable hole in his toe and i started to laugh, "ok " i said, " what are you going to do shoot me in front of your family? go write me a check you idiot," and he did and then just as i was climbing out the window, he says, " see you on monday, don't be late." contradictions, you learn to live with them. jgk.