Bucket, Bucket, Who's Got The.......

We've all heard it, the clothes make the man....

And we're talkin a construction jobsite here. I try to dress at least acceptable on the jobsite. I usually wear a pair of cargo pants and a nice button down shirt. I try not to wear tee shirts, or sweats, I just think that's unprofessional....at least that's what my Dad always said. He sure loved his clothes! There were times that he would actually go shopping during the day for clothes and come back with some really nice skins.

This post is about the best suede jacket in the whole world.......Dad's words, although I admit it was a nice jacket until that chilly fall day..................


It was in fact a chilly windy day, and we were working on a brick front of a new home in New Brunswick

New Jersey. That in itself wasn't so bad, what made the situation ten times worse is that we were in the shade for a good part of the day, and the wind ripped around the corner of the house right into our faces. My Dad wasn't in a very good mood that day, in fact nobody was. It's kinda hard to keep a smile on your face when your freezing your ass off, and your boss (Dad) is in such a bad mood you just wish him away!

He complained about everything this day, and nothing we did could make him happy. 

We were moving too slow, or our work was sloppy, or we didn't have enough buckets or well..... you get the idea, nobody wanted him there!

Speaking of buckets, one of his pet peeves was having enough buckets around. Buckets are an invaluable item in the construction industry, and especially in the mason field. The best thing is you could get them for FREE!!. If you caught a house just at the right time, right after the spacklers, you just hit the jackpot.....the mother load! During lean times, we would dumpster dive and most of the time we would come up with about a half dozen buckets. Not a bad haul!

This always made my Dad happy (and eventually me too). It almost felt like stealing, and when I would go into the recently spackeled house, the hairs on the back of my neck would stand up, and I would stealth-fully grab a bunch and rush out of the house. Now that's funny because they were up for grabs, kinda like a first come first serve thing, but no matter how many times I was sent on the bucket mission.....I would get that rush......like a spy taking the crown jewels from the bad guys, and returning them to the King.....(Dad).

There were protocols to follow in bucket retrieval  

  

The first and most important was if you found a lone bucket just sitting alone in the corner of the room, you

Approach with Caution!

were to approach it with caution. If there was a cover on it, you were to be even more careful and cautious!
As you approached the lidded bucket, you should first give it a light kick. If the cover came off, you were to step back three steps, to avoid any undesirable liquids that may be in there and splash on you. If the lid did not come off, you were to carefully lift said bucket, give it a swirl and while you did this you were to observe any solids through the plastic. Most of the time that worked.......sometimes it did not. But even more of the time the bucket just has a bit of left over Spackle and water in it and just needed to be cleaned out. 

Getting back to the job at hand.....we were wishing my Dad away because he was being really nasty all morning. But as noon approached, he announced that he hated his stupid coat that had a rip on the inside and had lost some of it's warming capabilities and he was going to the store to buy a new coat. We all cheered!!!!....as the truck turned the corner.

Hours went by, it got colder but it was somehow more pleasant.

Yeah....that's what it looked like!

Then around three thirty, here came the truck a rollin down the road. It was Dad, and although he was sporting a brand new (pretty nice) tan suede jacket with a fur collar, he seemed to still have retained his bad mood. The first thing he yells when he gets out of the truck was......

"Were you guys sleeping when I was gone!? I'm losing my shirt here!!"

We were wishing him away again!

"Jesus Christ why aren't there any buckets around!!??? It's so damn easy to get them and you guys are working with three dilapidated buckets!"

We tried to explain to him that we looked the day before but were unsuccessful.

"Oh Yeah?! I'll show you guys! I bet I can find at least a dozen!"

And with that he jumped into his truck and sped down the road in a dirt haze.....we again cheered!

I don't know how he did it, but he did in fact come back with about a dozen buckets.....but the majority of them were the forbidden ones .....with covers! He jumped out of the truck and grabbed the buckets, and like a wild man was throwing them and saying things like..." I told you" and " That's because you guys don't know how to look" and See?! see?! I found at least a dozen!!....

The wind was picking up a bit, and we were getting even colder as the day was drawing to a close, which we were all extremely happy about. We started cleaning up and getting ready to leave and no one was really paying any attention to my Dad who was NOT following protocol.........when..........

"SON OF A BITCH!!!!!!!" He screamed

 He hit the mother load for sure! As he ripped off the cover from this one particular bucket he was

Okay, not my Dad....but that's what he looked like!

generously sprayed with.....let's just say someone didn't make it to the port a john. His brand new suede jacket was completely covered with this foul smelling combination of Human waste. I'm pretty sure we were all laughing at this point.....all except my Dad, who is very bad with nasty odors and who was gagging profusely as he ripped off his most beautiful brand new suede jacket and threw it across the street! He now had freckles, and Dad never had freckles before...if you know what I mean.

He drove home alone that day....and about a month after that because that's how long it took to finally get that nasty smell out of the truck.
Oh yeah...he never bought a suede jacket again!

 

TIP OF THE DAY:

How to turn an ordinary 5 gallon bucket into a planter!

• Get yourself a nice 5 gallon bucket.
• If you don't have one, you can get one at your local home improvement center for about four dollars.
• Pick up some spray paint while your at the store.

• 

  Not so creative, but you get the idea!

• Call your artistic friend or just paint the bucket yourself.
• Drill about ten 3/8" holes in the bottom of the bucket (after it dries)
• Then put about 2" loose gravel on the bottom of the bucket, should be at least 3/4" stone.
• Fill it halfway with potting soil.
• Put your really nice plant in there...I have a couple of fig trees.
• Fill up the bucket the rest of the way......and enjoy!
• You just saved yourself about thirty dollars for an overpriced plastic planter!
• Oh yeah, if you do have a bucket just laying around, and it's covered.......

REMEMBER PROTOCOL!!

See you next time......from beyond.........

Respect your elders...please!

I was taught at a young age to respect my elders.

As a matter of fact my mother instilled (sometimes with a wooden Dr. Scholl's shoe) many of my manners that have stayed with me until today. She was Sicilian and really acted like one! When she walked by us, we would duck......just a natural instinct. We were taught things like: "children should be seen and not heard" and "say please and thank you" and we were taught to eat everything on our plate, and not complain while doing it, or we would forgo our cheerios in the morning and get our cold dinner from the night before for breakfast.

I realize that she was just a bit extreme, but  there was value in the things she would beat into us.

So this post goes back to the job in Lambertville, NJ. My youngest brother (by 12 years) was working for me at the time. He had a way to make our day interesting....to say the least. We had just started the job, and as a matter of fact we really didn't do anything yet. This was going to be the first real day of the demo part of the job.
Because of the access to the back yard (where the addition was going to be) and the fact that the back yard was barely big enough for a small machine to fit there, I had to pay the town for parking spaces in front of the house so we could put the dumpster in the street. I had "no parking" signs made up and they were posted the day before to give the neighbors a heads up as to what was going to happen. I had a talk with my men the night before about what to do when the dumpster arrived because I had a meeting with the county the next morning and I was going to be a little late. I told them that if the dumpster got there before I did and someone was parked in our paid-for space to go to the door, and kindly ask them to move their car.

This is the actual dumpster!

I arrived at the job around 9 am to see all of my men sitting on the front porch, and no dumpster.  

I got out of my truck, and my brother exclaims:

"Man, you shoulda been here! Oh my God, there's a crazy old lady up the street, she's like 80 years old and she IS nasty!! I went over to her house and told her to move her car, and she went ballistic on me, so I told her that we paid for her spot and she better move it or I was gonna call the police. She got really nasty then, and we were both yelling at each other.....so I told her to shut her mouth and I called the cops right in front of her!, and guess what....they gave her a ticket! that stupid Bi*#%!"

I was not happy at all to hear this. I feel that when I start a job, especially a larger job, that I become part of the neighborhood. I need to get along with everyone, as I'm going to be there for a while, and I think of how I would feel if some contractor didn't respect our property.
So I asked my brother..."where does she live?"..... "Oh she's right up the street....over there" I looked over and saw that she was two houses up,....we didn't pay for that space and somehow my "no parking" sign was in front of her house. Now my blood began to boil...I asked who moved that sign? My brother confessed that he did it because he thought that the truck that was going to deliver the dumpster may need more room. Now I was having a really hard time controlling my temper.
"First of all.....THERE IS NO DUMPSTER HERE YET!, and second of all you had no right to move that sign. And most of all you yelled at this old woman???!!! I can't believe that you would put me in this predicament!! You should be ashamed of yourself....." He got mad at me and walked off to the back of the property.
It wasn't an easy thing to do, but I went over and rang her doorbell. She answered and started going off on me about how disrespectful my men were to her, and that she had every right to park in front of her house...It took about ten minutes to calm her down, and I promised that not only would I pay for the ticket, but that would never happen again. Turned out she (Helen) was the nicest person in that neighborhood, and we became good friends. Sadly, my brother didn't last too long after this incident, and I'm sure some of the neighbors were happy about that.

TIP OF THE DAY:

Dumpsters....

We need to do some spring cleaning.....like the yard, and the Garage, and finally get those never used things out of the basement. But how do we get rid of these things?? 

Actually your township should take most of it. Call them to see what they will take and if they'll pick it up. In most cases, you can rid of the majority of garbage that way. 

Dumpster in a bag!

But if not there is a really cool thing at some major home improvement stores now. It's the "Bagster" the dumpster in a bag! You buy one of these fabric containers at your local home improvement store for about $30.  Then, take it home, fill it with up to 3,300 pounds of unwanted material and call the number that came with it for a scheduled pick up.  There is an additional pick up fee that varies by locale.  The service is available in many, but not, all areas. Happy Dumping!

See you next time......from beyond.........