SWOOPING ALL ABOUT
For building restoration purposes I’ve been swooping about on 40- and 50-foot lifts, and those machines are kind of fun so long as you’re not feeling overly familiar with them, putting your mind on autopilot and pulling the wrong control lever, which is very easy to do. I inadvertently drove one lift off 2x8 leveling blocks at substantial height, and in its work cage came close to smashing against the building and hollered, “Jesus!” and hoped then that no one had heard.
A few years ago I yanked the wrong lever while a lift was on blocks of three inches on the low side of the street because otherwise gas would have leaked from its tank. This lift’s electronic system to warn of imbalance was not working, which I’d not been aware of; and its renter charged me $40 for petrol when I was finished with that machine, whereas I’d topped off its tank with gas before returning the bugger. Safe to say I won’t be renting a lift from that company again. Driving a boom lift off of three-inch blocks while one is three stories in the air is kind of a “pants-pooper” feeling, I must say, but no underdrawers were sullied, thank goodness.
For the front of the building I’d been working on in Coldwater, the work on which was completed last Saturday, I had orange contractor’s fencing isolating the lift and directing pedestrians into a covered, 25-foot-long tunnel of scaffolding. Smart people didn’t hesitate to walk or ride their bicycles through my tunnel. One day a whole parade of people protesting violence against women walked through my tunnel, and many of this parade’s participant men were clad in women’s dresses and high heels. “Walk a mile in her shoes” was the theme of the protesting men-folk, who were not necessarily transvestites. I stopped work in my lift’s cage high above the fray for a quarter-mile-long line of people who came through twice, enjoyed the show and gave them a thumb-up or two. Smart people they were, walking through the tunnel.
Of the people who avoided my pedestrian-protection lane, 99 percent were guys, dumb guys, and half-a-block away I’d see them coming, their gaits awkward, their clothing ill-fitting and mismatched, their eyes dull even at long distance. These dimwits would walk around the rear end of the lift’s turret into the busy street, U.S.-12, instead of taking the safer route.
One day a dumb guy and his very young son entered my fenced-off area and sat down on a bench just a few feet inboard of the lift. I happened to see them the moment they plopped their butts down on the bench. Way up in the air, I started the loud machine and had fun watching father and son jump about three feet. “Sir, you can’t sit there!” I hollered down. I resented calling the father “sir” and very much wanted to call him something less respectful.
It was a relief to be finished with the front of the building, which amplifies the godawful noises of semis, Harleys and boomboxes along the federal highway. I’m not prone to headaches, but at least one day while working off 12 I suffered a low-level one. Have relocated to the back of the building, and oh what a relief it is, so much quieter. In swooping to the roof I also discovered that it is an excellent, very private place to pee.
A very handy place for micturition is one of my job requirements. In Detroit I once overcharged his-and-her ministers who came and went from and to their place in their new Cadillacs all day, with no place for me to pee in their yard, and no offer of the use of their porcelain facilities.
Working for this ministerial couple was the only time I was humiliatingly forced to pee in a plastic bottle in my truck. But the preacher couple paid for their inconsideration, praise the Lord and pass the Cadillacs.
For building restoration purposes I’ve been swooping about on 40- and 50-foot lifts, and those machines are kind of fun so long as you’re not feeling overly familiar with them, putting your mind on autopilot and pulling the wrong control lever, which is very easy to do. I inadvertently drove one lift off 2x8 leveling blocks at substantial height, and in its work cage came close to smashing against the building and hollered, “Jesus!” and hoped then that no one had heard.
A few years ago I yanked the wrong lever while a lift was on blocks of three inches on the low side of the street because otherwise gas would have leaked from its tank. This lift’s electronic system to warn of imbalance was not working, which I’d not been aware of; and its renter charged me $40 for petrol when I was finished with that machine, whereas I’d topped off its tank with gas before returning the bugger. Safe to say I won’t be renting a lift from that company again. Driving a boom lift off of three-inch blocks while one is three stories in the air is kind of a “pants-pooper” feeling, I must say, but no underdrawers were sullied, thank goodness.
For the front of the building I’d been working on in Coldwater, the work on which was completed last Saturday, I had orange contractor’s fencing isolating the lift and directing pedestrians into a covered, 25-foot-long tunnel of scaffolding. Smart people didn’t hesitate to walk or ride their bicycles through my tunnel. One day a whole parade of people protesting violence against women walked through my tunnel, and many of this parade’s participant men were clad in women’s dresses and high heels. “Walk a mile in her shoes” was the theme of the protesting men-folk, who were not necessarily transvestites. I stopped work in my lift’s cage high above the fray for a quarter-mile-long line of people who came through twice, enjoyed the show and gave them a thumb-up or two. Smart people they were, walking through the tunnel.
Of the people who avoided my pedestrian-protection lane, 99 percent were guys, dumb guys, and half-a-block away I’d see them coming, their gaits awkward, their clothing ill-fitting and mismatched, their eyes dull even at long distance. These dimwits would walk around the rear end of the lift’s turret into the busy street, U.S.-12, instead of taking the safer route.
One day a dumb guy and his very young son entered my fenced-off area and sat down on a bench just a few feet inboard of the lift. I happened to see them the moment they plopped their butts down on the bench. Way up in the air, I started the loud machine and had fun watching father and son jump about three feet. “Sir, you can’t sit there!” I hollered down. I resented calling the father “sir” and very much wanted to call him something less respectful.
It was a relief to be finished with the front of the building, which amplifies the godawful noises of semis, Harleys and boomboxes along the federal highway. I’m not prone to headaches, but at least one day while working off 12 I suffered a low-level one. Have relocated to the back of the building, and oh what a relief it is, so much quieter. In swooping to the roof I also discovered that it is an excellent, very private place to pee.
A very handy place for micturition is one of my job requirements. In Detroit I once overcharged his-and-her ministers who came and went from and to their place in their new Cadillacs all day, with no place for me to pee in their yard, and no offer of the use of their porcelain facilities.
Working for this ministerial couple was the only time I was humiliatingly forced to pee in a plastic bottle in my truck. But the preacher couple paid for their inconsideration, praise the Lord and pass the Cadillacs.