well son

i was 36 years old and i was my own contractor now, renovating some apartments in Concord and it was summer and hot as hades, and we were cutting out old rotten studs in a building, and replacing them with new ones and then resheeting the sides and then adding felt and lath and stucco over all this and then painting. it was hard work, old wood is like iron, just hell to cut through, it takes technique and a powerful saw and good blade and a good arm, along with patience. it's really back breaking, especially in the heat, and on a hot day in the summer, Concord was sweltering, maybe 105 with a high humidty. i had these three football players from Chico State working for me for the summer, really big guys, with the names of Samson, he went about 6 feet, 250 pounds and Andre the giant, even bigger at 6'3 ,260 and Tweeter more modest at 6 feet, 200 pounds. they were all of twenty years old and their girlfriends used to bring them lunch everyday and sashay around them, just to make sure the old man, me, wasn't abusing their heroes. i'm a shade under six feet and weight about 165, less i'm sure in that heat and my wife never ever brought me lunch. well one morning i was one side of an apartment building and Samson, he was their alpha dog, being the strongest and self proclaimed the meanest, and toughest, was on the other side and the other two were on another building, and we started knocking the stucco off with mallets and then cutting and pulling off the wire and nails and felt and then got to the task of the dry rot and pretty soon, i mean within a few hours i've worked my way on down to the end of my building and was framing in new studs and i went around to see how my boys were doing and they all were still within the first couple of feet of where they had started, sweating, and snorting, i said damn, and went and showed them how to cut through the studs, but they couldn't quite get the hang of it, and i said do the best you can and went back to work and by the end of the first day Tweeter had enough and quit with the excuse i wasn't paying him enough. the other two came back the next day and we struggled through the week. at the end of that first week those big old boys were tired, frustrated and pissed off. i had worked circles around them and they knew it and i was old and fresh, and skinny to boot and on top of it I was the boss. Samson remarked that men where afraid of him on the football field and just sort of fell down when they saw him running at them and i said "well that's not how it is out here," and I think this just pushed him right over the edge, so they challenged me to fight them both right there. i said that was impossible but i'd arm wrestle both of them on the hood of my truck and they couldn't wait to get to it and the girl friends were there by now, rubbing their men's backs, their boys would set the world right again, order would be restored. Their arms were bigger than my thighs, gleaming with sweat, their eyes piggy with hate and blood lust and i beat them both right handed and then gave them a chance left handed and whipped them again and we tried it again, them figuring it must have been a fluke and it having been impossible. the results were the same only worse, I pumped their arms like a water pump, now that they were as weak as those broken studs I'd torn out. I paid them for the week's work and thanked them both and Andre never did come back but Samson stayed and did well, he being stronger minded, better character, and curious. " how could you have done that to us?" he used to ask. "Magic" i'd say, kidding him, pointing to my bicep, "magic baby." he went back to school and I heard he did steroids and lifted massive weights to come back and try me the next summer and when he showed up he looked like a whale with arm the size of a Nissan. i figured there was no way i was messing with that, and never went there again. jgk