I’m the son of a mason contractor. A mason contractor from the days of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and most of the 80’s. This sorta means two things. One, I know what a real small business is like on the inside. Small…small. The kind of small that supports just a family when things are going good and stresses people heavily when things are…not so good. Two, mason work is hard work, really hard work. Lifting cement, sand, block and scaffolding all day is no easy task and doing it on super hot summer days or really cold fall and spring days does not help.
That’s me on the right
Now a lot of people might expect next to hear a story about how “my Mom and Dad didn’t want me to get stuck in a life of hard work like masonry and sent me off to college” to be a ~insert high paid, low labor intensive job here~ so I could live “The American Dream”, to do better than my parents.
Well fortunately, my parents were also hardcore, “you need to do what you want in life” type of people and allowed me to find my own path. When I was young my path was BMX bikes and since I had no idea how to go about “getting a job in the BMX industry”, I didn’t have a path that said, take x and y in college to get a degree to help get a job in BMX. This then meant that I had to get a real job after high school, that was going to pay decent wages so that I could make money to pay for coming up with ideas to “make BMX happen” for me. This meant, labor intensive work.
Right out of High School, like literally, right out of, graduate, then on the job the following week, I was hustling for dollars. At this point in my lifeness I was riding into work every day with a buddy of mine who had been taking me to the BMX races the last couple of years, Bill Giarretta. He found me to be a personable guy and trustworthy so he offered me a job straight up making very good money “assisting” (being his gopher) him in his supervisor job at Foxboro Village in Old Bridge, NJ. Five days a week, 7:00 am to 3:30 pm, I’d hitch a ride with Bill and go off to write lists?…nah, more often than not, I’d be cleaning up after other people, slinging crap out of holes, basically just working my butt off and then going home to…relax with a brew and do nothing? Nope, I’d get on my BMX bike and then practice till late hours learning freestyle tricks and planning out what to do with my freestyle team. Work, then more work albeit the after work…work was fun work.
Dem’s was deh days…
A couple years into doing that and it became apparent to both myself and my pal Bill that I was getting more than a little burned out on the whole driving down to Old Bridge everyday routine and I needed a change. At that time my Dad was getting up there in age and as people who do masonry and carpentry contracting know, good, reliable help is hard to find. I decided to spend some time working with my Father doing the mason gig. This would allow two things to happen. Since I was now working for my Dad I could easily get time off to travel when necessary for the freestyle thing and it also allowed me to get the winters to practice, since doing masonry outdoors in what used to be very cold winters in NJ was not happening. So now my routine became, get up at 7:00 am to head out to the job site and get things done. This involved moving block, making cement, digging trenches, hustling concrete and various other mason jobs. Ya know that Mike Rowe show, “Dirty Jobs”, yep, I was one of those guys. Being a mason is not an easy job, no way no how. Whether you are in a ditch in the ground or 40 feet in the air building a fireplace chimney out of brick and block, you are busting your ass. A few times we had some of my friends come on the job to help out and…it was a bit rough for them to get up that early, do the work and have any energy left. What was I doing during those mason years? Same thing, work all day, come home and ride all evening. (At 50 now, I wonder where all that energy came from!) My Father used to tell me when I was a kid, “you need to come to work with me to learn where those BMX bikes come from”. I used to bust his chops and tell him, “I know where they come from, California!”, but now busting ass to get the cold cash to put together a freestyle team and all the assorted stuff I needed to make it happen, I realized what he was saying. In order to get what you need and or want, you have to be willing to work…sometimes very hard, for it.
And I did. I worked the mason job all day, practiced all night and on off days and weekends, pushed my “hobby” of BMX freestyle. Life was work to me, there was no time for sitting around drinking, doing drugs or “chasing tail”. I wanted to make stuff happen and I did.
On the road with General bikes…
Eventually all my hard work on the BMX side payed off. I was offered the gig I wanted since I started doing BMX freestyle. Harry Myers from General Bicycles offered to fly me to Chicago to manage the east coast team and tour. At that point my Dad was up there in age almost to retirement and I had a bit of guilt asking him if I could take off from the business during our busiest time and tour across the country doing what I loved.
Pop, part of the Greatest Generation, WWII vet, survivor of the Great Depression, didn’t hesitate one bit and told me, you need to do this, go out and pursue your dream. Interesting right? One might think someone well into their 60’s at that point would be telling me to buckle down, get it together, stay at the job, but no, my Dad and my Mom both wished me well and sent me off to do what I wanted.
Ah! Finally a moment to do as I please! No adults, on the road, no responsibilities! Wrong. When you are in charge, you aren’t joe cool BMX guy, you are the person responsible for the well being of the crew you have been put in “charge” of. (Quotes are used there because…well…these were 15 to 18 year old kids and I was 22 so…”in charge” of just means, keep them out of jail!!!) So off I went and for the summer of 1988 to the end of the summer of 1989, I was in charge of General Bicycles East Coast Team…just as BMX freestyle was hitting the dumpster. Yay. By the end of 1989’s summer, demand for BMX freestyle shows had dried up for awhile, I was burnt out and I put an end to my days of work and BMX freestyle team manager.
Slot Car City…the front end of the Rampateria
Here I’d love to say it was “back to the grind”, but the reality was, the grind never ended. When I returned from tour in 1988, I had learned that my Dad had gone down and filed for social security and was at that point, unofficially retired. The hardcore mason gig was slowly coming to an end. As those days wound down, I was fortunate enough to hook up (again through the radical idea that when you meet people, you should instill in them a sense of trust in you.) with a guy who was at that time at the forefront of caring about the BMX scene in my area, Greg Wynn from TC Cycles. After helping out for a few years there, I was offered the job of managing the bike shop and with a few new ideas he put together a bike shop, ramp park and believe it or not, slot car track, all in the same spot. Not a radical idea but a pretty insane one back in the early 90’s.
Ah, time to relax and enjoy what I loved. Wrong there bucko. While working a normal job required me to be “work” for 8 hours a day, my new responsibilities at this one required a 7 day a week commitment. Time off was reserved for hitting contests then right back at it. Although the times there were fun, it was, to say the least, taxing. Working 7 days a week, at least to me, should mean making pretty big bank and for those people in the bike shop business, you know the reality. I wasn’t making big bucks, but luckily, I was still living at home. So expenses were really low.
Then, for the first time in my adult life, in 1993, I had no job, no income and no unemployment either. The bike shop, slot car track and ramp park was not making enough money to support itself and well, Dave had no choice but to shut it down. There was talk of reopening at a different location but I knew what this meant. The time had come to move on. Unfortunately by now I had sunk a lot of time into BMX and working but not actually getting a true, decent money making “career” going. Winter was upon me and I needed a way to make money and fast as I had car payments and other bills to consider. “Sitting around was not an option”.
Mr. Manager
I called a friend of mine who ran a temp service and went down, filled out an application and basically said stick me someplace. All of this happened within the course of a couple weeks. Before I knew it I was in Edison, NJ hustling at what would become my current employer. Fortunately for me, due to my open mind and willingness to learn, I was able to work my way into a full time position that has kept me going for over 20 years.
So what’s the point of this diatribe? Where am I headed with this? People today seem to think that “hours worked”, “well my job requires a lot of thinking” or “I do back breaking labor” are reasons to be angry or upset that they aren’t getting what they feel is their fair share.
Well, I’m here to tell you that life can be rough and “fair” is a subjective term that can take many meanings. To really get an idea of what working is, a person should actually experience all sorts of work. From hard labor intensive jobs like masonry, to being in charge, to jobs that require constant updating of skills to stay in the flow of what you are doing. Only then can you really say that you know what “hard” work is.
“What? Hey man I bust my ass digging ditches! Screw you I have a masters and had to kill myself to get it.”
Hard hat for an open mind.
Yes, but in order to be a well rounded person, a civilized human being, you need to experience many levels of working to appreciate the other person who may, at some point, be in need of your services or skills.
Work, all work is hard. Whether it’s a clerical job inputting data, a surgeon performing heart surgery or a carpenter putting up walls. Getting up every day and involving yourself in society to help others and to gain monetary reward means you deserve respect no matter what you do, so give it in return.
My Mom, who all her life was a housewife, (what we call today, nurses, cleaning ladies, small business payroll operators, chefs, dietitians and psychologists) always made it a habit whenever she saw someone working near the house to be a decent person and walk out to ask if they needed a drink or something to eat. Just to show them they were appreciated over and above just “getting paid to do the job”.
So…be like my Mom and go out and be nice people. And like my Mom and Dad…don’t be afraid to work hard…at multiple things.