Many of my customers have expressed some surprise in that a brick trowel
wasn't put to my right hand at an early age. Others have suspected that
I'd set a career found unsatisfying aside for one I enjoyed. One
observer of my work in Detroit's historic Rosedale Park remarked that I
was more an artist than a mason. He meant that as a compliment, but I
was secretly a little offended. A customer in Hillsdale County, where my
wife Toni and I have lived for 10 years, reckoned I was a former
college professor who had gotten bored with the tutelage rote. This was
an amusing speculation. I'm not much of a talker and I doubt I could
ever have held a class full of students spellbound for more than a
couple of minutes ... with a lot of enthralling visual aids, at that.
I never laid a single brick until I was 44. The instructor at Detroit Local 1's training school was glad to hear that, as I had had no opportunity to adopt any bad masonry habits. After losing a job at a Detroit scaffolding rental and sales outfit that I grimly thought I would hold (after eight years) for the rest of my life, I responded to an ad in the Detroit Free Press, Bricklayers' and Allied Craftworkers' Local 1 on the lookout for apprentices.
Trained in production brick- and blocklaying with guys mostly half my age. My partner was a pianist who was adept enough to play difficult Rachmaninoff, but he had a lot of initial trouble with the "masonry units" that would inspire him to throw his trowel hard to the floor, and cuss quite a bit. My partner had long hair at the time, and I had a bushy beard. Our instructor called us "the band."
All went well for me in training, except for a speed trial run in laying heavy 12-inch block. At the height of five feet I set one as fast as I was able and experienced one of the most searing shots of back pain I've ever known. My yelping at this pain was caught on video tape, but unfortunately, this amusing spectacle was erased.
After brickie school of 12 weeks, I worked for union contractors for about 1 1/2 years. Fine financial circumstances then came as a surprise to Toni and me, when—thanks to a Detroit newspaper she'd helped to found, and for which she received stock in lieu of paychecks in its early days—the publication was sold. This sale made us fairly wealthy for a while, and it enabled me to go into business for myself. Spent two years reading nothing but masonry texts, 1918 to present, to make sure no masonry matters and solutions would not be known to me. The most helpful text by far was "The Art of the Stonemason" by an old Scotsman named Ian Cramb.
McCormick Masonry has done all right for 15 years now, me in the field, Toni on the books. We worried upon our relocation from Detroit to Hillsdale County, in the "cuff" of southern Michigan's "mitten," whether much work would be here for me. The first job in the city of Hillsdale was major restoration work on the 1853 Will Carleton Poorhouse, and one job has led to another. Luck and pluck, it seems ... a dollop of both.
In May 2015, I will be semiretired, thank goodness. My sore left knee will appreciate it. It wants me to keep my crouching and scaffold-climbing to a minimum, and I will do my best to accommodate it.
I never laid a single brick until I was 44. The instructor at Detroit Local 1's training school was glad to hear that, as I had had no opportunity to adopt any bad masonry habits. After losing a job at a Detroit scaffolding rental and sales outfit that I grimly thought I would hold (after eight years) for the rest of my life, I responded to an ad in the Detroit Free Press, Bricklayers' and Allied Craftworkers' Local 1 on the lookout for apprentices.
Trained in production brick- and blocklaying with guys mostly half my age. My partner was a pianist who was adept enough to play difficult Rachmaninoff, but he had a lot of initial trouble with the "masonry units" that would inspire him to throw his trowel hard to the floor, and cuss quite a bit. My partner had long hair at the time, and I had a bushy beard. Our instructor called us "the band."
All went well for me in training, except for a speed trial run in laying heavy 12-inch block. At the height of five feet I set one as fast as I was able and experienced one of the most searing shots of back pain I've ever known. My yelping at this pain was caught on video tape, but unfortunately, this amusing spectacle was erased.
After brickie school of 12 weeks, I worked for union contractors for about 1 1/2 years. Fine financial circumstances then came as a surprise to Toni and me, when—thanks to a Detroit newspaper she'd helped to found, and for which she received stock in lieu of paychecks in its early days—the publication was sold. This sale made us fairly wealthy for a while, and it enabled me to go into business for myself. Spent two years reading nothing but masonry texts, 1918 to present, to make sure no masonry matters and solutions would not be known to me. The most helpful text by far was "The Art of the Stonemason" by an old Scotsman named Ian Cramb.
McCormick Masonry has done all right for 15 years now, me in the field, Toni on the books. We worried upon our relocation from Detroit to Hillsdale County, in the "cuff" of southern Michigan's "mitten," whether much work would be here for me. The first job in the city of Hillsdale was major restoration work on the 1853 Will Carleton Poorhouse, and one job has led to another. Luck and pluck, it seems ... a dollop of both.
In May 2015, I will be semiretired, thank goodness. My sore left knee will appreciate it. It wants me to keep my crouching and scaffold-climbing to a minimum, and I will do my best to accommodate it.