By Judd Liebman
I don’t have the most ideal construction worker’s body. Weighing 114 lbs. and standing tall at a medium 5’6.5," I’m a scrawny kid who has had more metal in my mouth than I have ever nailed, screwed, or welded. When you see me, the last thing you would think I did this summer was construction work. When would you expect a blue collar job from a Harvard-Westlake sophomore? My construction experience amounted to hanging one or two posters in my room; other than that, I had never done anything like this before.
Getting the job was easier than expected. After asking the owner, a friend of my mother, if I could work for him this summer, all I had to do was fill out some forms.
I was excited to start until I found out I was assigned to the "graveyard shift." Having to work from 12 midnight until 8:30 a.m., I was nervous about falling asleep during my first lunch break. I arrived at the Westwood site where, ultimately, we transformed a store into a Jewish Synagogue. The job started with a nocturnal week; I went to bed at 2 p.m. and woke up at 11 p.m. in order to show up for work at 11:45.
When I arrived, I was greeted by the job manager, my go-to guy. I walked inside the site and was greeted again, this time by a huge pile of trash that I needed to organize and move. I was given a wheelbarrow and a shovel and was told to move the trash across the room into three different piles. Rarely having cleaned my own room, I decided to follow my gut and move the larger pieces first. After I hauled all of the large pieces over to the second and third piles, I shoveled the smaller stuff into buckets to pour them out in the piles.
After I finished with my first task, I felt overwhelmed and undernourished. Instead of taking an early lunch, I decided to help insulate the floor. I insulated until my 4:30 a.m. lunch break at a 24-hour Subway.
When the project manager realized that I actually wanted to work, he delegated tasks accordingly. He pointed to a wall and told me, "make it so I have no wall." Confused, I started with a hammer and made as many holes as possible. I threw all my weight into every hit and cleared the drywall. Next, I took a Sawzall and cut the beams in half in order to take them out of the ceiling and the floor. A Sawzall is a high powered electric saw that can eat through anything: wood, metal, or even some cement. I threw these beams into my new piles of trash and moved on.
The company truck arrived at 5:30 a.m. and parked outside the building. My next task, along with co-workers, was to move all of the piles of trash out into the back of the truck. Normal life on Westwood Boulevard was starting just as my day was finishing. When I got home at 9 a.m., I collapsed. Tired, I tried to deprive myself of sleep until my 2 p.m. bedtime. My first day of a paid job had finished and I didn’t know whether I would be able to finish what I started.
My second work site was in the Pacific Palisades, remodeling the inside of a home and redoing the family’s porch. This house had the perfect California view. I could keep going because I knew that if my jobs, which seemed small and insignificant, didn’t get done, I would push back the project and negatively impact the bigger picture.
My main job for the first week of this Palisades site was to waterproof everything. Not just the new beams, but also the old beams, the door frames, the window frames, etc. Wooly Mammoths got taken down by the tar that makes up this stuff, how could I be able to master it? If you have never had to work with it, you’re lucky. If the tape touches anything, it sticks; if it sticks, it’s ruined; if it’s ruined, you need to cut a new piece, thus wasting money and making the owners angry.
After all the tape was laid, I had to walk on the porch and take off any wood that made up the railings. There were no floor boards to walk on, only two by fours. Walking on a two-inch piece of wood, 15-feet above the cement ground is scary. I’m not going to be tough, it’s scary; no matter who you are, it’s still scary. Again with a hammer, I put all my weight into every smack against the wood. Desperately trying to keep my balance, I attempted to remain calm while I hammered off pieces of the handrail. It was scary.
Toward the end of the summer my tasks became more difficult and seemed more important. My boss assigned me jobs that worked more toward my skills, like measuring, adding and dividing numbers in order to saw wood, and taking off excess wood.
Does construction work sound like fun? If it does, you’re right. I loved demolishing walls, hanging with the guys, and chowing down on greasy burritos. I learned about people’s lives, their struggles, and their challenges that I have never faced. This kind of manual labor in the blistering California weather gets you ready for sleep like never before. Now that my work period is over, I am still a scrawny kid from Harvard-Westlake, have no braces, but feel a little stronger, and am looking forward to next summer.