Well, Well, Well...

I found out something interesting today. At least, it was interesting to me.

See, I know this rich lady. I worked on her house. A lot. Busted my ass on numerous occasions, in fact. Just like a lot of other guys. She is a widow. Nice as she can be. At least, she's always been very pleasant to me and the other guys, and the stereotypical rich woman isn't always nice to the workers in the movies and TV shows. But she really is a sweet lady.

We had a warranty issue at her house that I had to go and start to take care of today. I knew she had married some rich dude, but I really had no clue as to who it might have been. I think she was rich already when she met him anyway because of either her first husband and the company he owned or she was born into that family, but I had no clue as to the source of wealth for her late husband.

I have no idea if she married into the Williamson family or is a Williamson by birth. That would be the Williamsons of Williamson Dickie Manufacturing. The legendary work clothes people of Ft. Worth. As you can tell, most of my information about the people who own the properties where I work is rumor at best and it's gathered at the breaktime campfire circle. (Now, after doing a bit of searching, yeah, she was in fact a Williamson.)

Anyway, as I learned today, her late husband went by the name of Lawrence Rawl. He was CEO of Exxon Mobil for a few years. I know this for a fact.

I found this very intriguing. I think my jaw dropped, actually. Man, would I have liked to have had the opportunity to talk to that man. But he's gone.

I feel sorry for Mrs. Rawl in a way. She obviously loved him very much and they had a lot of good times together and now he's gone. (I walk through the house, I see photos) That just sucks, but death is a part of life.

I keep telling people things like "I work on rich people's houses" but it doesn't seem to sink in with them. I told a friend about how I spent some time at the long deceased Amon Carter's poolside having a smoke. She had no clue who Amon Carter was.

You may not have a clue either, but I can almost guarantee he had an impact on your life, especially if you live in Texas:

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/CC/fca69.html

I like this link even better:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amon_G._Carter

That's another sonofabitch I'd like to spend some time with.

Anyway, I'm a nobody. A poor nobody. I just find it interesting to see how the rich folks live.

Scattershooting

I have two new laborers at work. Exchange students, I assume. They are brothers from Slovakia and yes the old SNL bit has already been done to death.

One of them speaks a speck of English. It's bad enough with the Mexicans, probably talking shit about us rednecks in a language we can't understand, but now we have two laborers that make me feel like I'm in a spy movie every time I hear them talk.

I want to ask them if they can get me a good deal on some slightly used AK 47s.
Kidding... Actually I think I will teach the hard working little bastards to say "Fuck this shit" in English whenever the boss shows up.

Boy, are those kids in for an education. Working around me all summer? Jeez. As the boss said, I'm sure they will know how to say "motherfucker" before long. I can't wait to see what transpires when they spend some time on the same job as my brother. He's the one that swapped out the CD that our young naive Christian boy was listening to last summer for David Allan Coe's XXX CD. For those who haven't a clue, this is how the first song goes:


"She said someday I'd understand

What love was all about

She said I could have the keys
She was movin' out

She said she'd finally found a man

Whose dick was so much bigger

Then that scum bag mother fucker
Ran off with a Nigger"

I doubt that the kid made it to the chorus, I would gladly pay ten dollars right now to go back in time and see the look on his face had he listened to the whole song:

"And to think I licked the pussy

Where that big black dick had been
And kissed the lips that sucked him off

Time and time again

It's enough to make a man throw up

It sure is hard to figure

How any decent girl
Could ever fuck a greasy Nigger"

Oh, and if you are offended at the fact that I find that funny, get over yourself. Or go fuck yourself. I didn't write the goddamned thing, I just posted it. Besides, the black dude got the woman. I find it funny that Coe was whining about it.

I wanted to ask the Slovak Brothers if they knew what tomorrow is. (July 4th) Of course they would, but I was thinking I could instruct them to say that they understood the significance of the day as the Anniversary of Americans telling King George to go Fuck Himself.

Of course, I find myself in a bit of the same situation as David Allan Coe did, a bit of irony. We told George to go fuck himself over taxes and nowadays most Americans can't seem to wait for a large foreign entity (Washington D.C.) to take the fruits of our labor and spread it around. But that's just the Patriot in me coming out, I didn't intend to get all political.

Anyway, boy are those two kids in for an education in a lot of ways. Probably not the education they expected. They have been in Texas since last Thursday. They are basically doing slave labor, and well, that's what our laborers do. Hard construction work. They spent today moving a pile of dirt with shovels and a wheelbarrow. I didn't figure that either my Cool Hand Luke or Blazing Saddles quotes would resonate with them. Hell, they barely knew what the Iron Curtain was. I told them to ask their parents or grand parents.

It has been unbelievably wet, rainy, and cool in Texas this year. I doubt we have gotten much above 90 degrees so far and it is already July 3rd. It's going to be interesting to see how much effort they put out when it is 105 in a month or less.
...

All those women that have those cute little tattoos on their ankles are going to be embarrassed as hell someday when they are grandmothers.
...

I work on rich people's houses. Build, maintain, remodel. I used to be a trim carpenter, now I'm a construction worker. No telling what the hell I'm going to be doing from day to day.

And when I say rich, I do mean rich. I was put in charge of a bathroom remodel last year. About a $200,000 bathroom remodel. That was a job we really didn't want, and it was a low dollar job for us. There were other things done to this house that added to the price, but the bulk of that money was spent on the bathroom suite.

I'm working on a house right now, we have a contractor doing the framing. This house is roughly 158 feet wide and 84 feet deep. I call it the Boy Scout House because everything seems to invole a hike. The crawlspace is covered with gunite. Like a huge swimming pool. They are going to air condition the crawlspace and the attic. The framers have been working with the lighting designer to position ceiling joists so that we won't have to cut and header them off for lights later. The light fixtures for this house are going to cost roughly $196,000. Our cost. Not installed. Not wired. Just the fixtures.


Keep in mind that this is Texas, the land of cheap real estate compared to most of the rest of the country. Hell, my house with a half acre cost 30 grand. This particular property was around a mil before they tore the house down.

It's a different world in west Ft. Worth. Never been around any construction job situation like it. I'm never leaving it either unless someone shows up with a gun to my head and even then I will be kicking and screaming like some redneck on COPS.



Fuck it, I'm tired now. Hope that you enjoyed my ramblings.