Where is everyone #5

Nice

 

Kind of sad to think about it...the last of the legitimate tough guys are retiring. 15 years from now, tough guy ‘war stories’ will be viewed as mythology.

 

Thanks buddy. Dad bought a storage container several years back. Parked it next to his garage in the backyard. He’s been catching woodworking tools on sale and cramming that container full. Most of the stuff he hasn’t used yet. Just been waiting to retire.

I’m looking forward to seeing the stuff he’s gonna build.

 

"Are you ready for the country?"

 

She’s breaking the 4th wall.

 

Cool! When he gets some of them completed you know where to post pictures. Looking forward to them.

 

When I was a little guy I’d beg dad to wake me up when he got called during the night to go load trucks. He hardly ever got to sleep a full night. He’d get me up and we’d go to the shop. He would run the overhead crane and let me hook the chains. I got to climb all over the big oilfield tools and the flatbed trucks. Sometimes we’d go deliver to a rig, even though dad ran the shop, cuz they were short handed a lot.

Back when hardhats were optional. Tough guys back then for sure.

 

I prefer external doors on the ground floor, away from view of the office (some get kind of upset).

 

My kid does the same thing

 

When I was a kid, I took a job on a construction crew as a laborer (back in the days when it was not shameful to do hard manual labor). They gave me one of those cheap cloth nail apron and I had brought along my mom’s little household claw hammer. We’re framing, and I am trying to drive nails with this little POS hammer while everyone else is swinging big 24oz framing hammers.
My hands blistered up that night. They hurt. I chopped wood as a kid, but swinging that hammer gave me a whole new set of blisters. They hurt. Wrapped my fingers in duct tape and kept working. Of course, when the blisters leave, you have callouses. Once the callouses were there, I was ready to rumble.
A few years later, my brother and I started our own construction company. We could frame a house in 2-3 days. By this time, I was swinging a 32oz framing hammer and was as fast as a nail gun. All day, all night, all day, all night... we were as strong as we could possibly be and worked as hard as we possibly could. Loved the housing industry because when the house was completed, you could see it standing in front of you.

Hard work builds character. Those callouses...you’re proud of them, those scars and cuts and bruises, you remember every one of them. We knew that we would never get rich, but can you really put a price on a satisfying life?