Joe

Now to the funeral I did in Indiana earlier this week...

I knew Joe because he came to work for my dad right out of high school. When Joe graduated from Ben Davis HS he was done with school forever. I don't know if he ever thought about going back, but I suspect he would have considered it a waste of time.

If Joe wanted to do something he just figured out how to do it. He was really smart in the areas that interested him. Mechanically, he figured out how to make things work.

I remember one of the jobs we worked on (for blog purposes we'll call it the DogBag Company). DogBag bought a steel tower of some kind (radio tower maybe?) to be disassembled, moved, and reassembled at DogBag, Inc. DogBag sent one of their engineers to watch the disassembling process and to mark all of the pieces in order to get it back together properly in its new place.

The engineer came up to Joe as the tower was being reconstructed and said, full of smiles and tentative hope, "You'll cover me on this right?" He meant, "I have no idea how this thing goes back together. Can you keep me from getting fired?" Joe protested in a way that meant "yes, I'll take care of it" (construction language doesn't work the same as minister language, and I'm not just talking about vulgarities).

In what was to be my last week of working in the field for Wymer Construction (the last week of summer before my senior year in college), we made it memorable. We were adding onto a church building in Mooresville, Indiana. The building was to expand in every direction. On the first day of pouring concrete we added slabs along two entire sides. That was the first "L". On the next day we poured the concrete to complete the square around the building. But disaster ensued. A heavy rain came after we had poured the second slab. Tension was high. If a long rain hits before a slab is set it can ruin everything. We sat inside the building watching the rain come down.

"Ok, guys," came Joe's words of instruction, "might as well get an early lunch, 'cause once this rain stops we're gonna be busy."

We made a break for the trucks. I ran through the rain as fast as I could, with my eyes almost closed and my shoulders hunched. I ran across the hardened pour from yesterday. Then, as I ran, I felt something different beneath my feet and I heard Joe and my Dad and my Uncle Phil yelling, "HEY, HEY, HEY, HEY!!!!!" (their voices were sharp, filled with complete indignation and scorn).

I stopped. I looked down. My feet were sunk in the fresh pour, making a very bad situation even worse. In my hurry I had misjudged where yesterday's slab stopped and today's slab started. The horror of that moment! I could only console myself with the thought that nobody at the University of Florida would know about this.

On a job site, though, everybody does something bone-headed sooner or later. That same week Joe had his own special moment. He had rigged a safety handle on the trial machine (it's like a big gas powered fan blade that smooths concrete ... it has a long handle that the operator holds with both hands). As he worked the slab he bumped a floor bolt and lost control of the handle. Because he had rigged the safety, though, it didn't shut down. The handle start spinning like the Tazmanian Devil on the old cartoons. The thing was unstoppable. It boogered the concrete floor as it waddled and spun it's way off the slab and into the surrounding yard. Someone had the bright idea to lasso it with a garden hose. The handle just ripped the garden hose apart. Someone tried holding a 2x4 at an angle but it splintered the board and knocked it out of his hands.

Suddenly my feet in the concrete faded from the foreground of gaffs. Phew!

As a supervisor Joe could get under your skin. That made him like all of my other supervisors when I was growing up. They yelled a lot: Joe, my dad, my uncle, and Scott (Scott's yelling was a little different because there was an ironic twist to his yelling and it somehow ended with a laugh). Tony was the only supervisor that didn't yell at me (thanks, Tony!).

Joe's yelling wasn't personal. It was always focused on getting the job done. It was interesting to me that when he would--off the job-- help me with something, the dynamic was completely different. The same guy who would yell and fuss on the job would come over to my house and help me with a monumental task (for free, on his day off) and never utter a harsh word. He would just smile, laugh, and lead the way. Work was work. Helping a friend was a different matter completely.

I have a great picture of him somewhere. I'll post when I get the chance.

Joe, you will be missed.