I Have A Headache and Can't Help You

Work can sometimes be described as a four-letter word. Before you start jumping to conclusions, remember I said, “can” be a four-letter word.  I have worked all kinds of jobs in my lifetime, some good, some not so good. I think I came to this conclusion when Susie and I moved into what hopes to be our final house. After a week of loading and unloading, packing and unpacking and listening to my back scream, I have come to the conclusion that first on my list of hated jobs or tasks is MOVING.

Moving One’s Stuff

This includes moving me or anyone else. Oh sure, when you’re young and your worldly possessions amount to a few boxes, your bed and a frying pan, moving is a snap. Hell, when I was in college, I moved literally every semester. Loading and packing took about 45 minutes and plus, it gave you a reason to drink beer. As you get older, you (as George Carlin once said) accumulate stuff and you need a place to put your stuff. Still, you always seem come up with a test you have to study for or become suddenly invisible when your buddies look for help moving their stuff. Unless of course they had beer. Before I left Tarleton to go to my college internship, the late Dr. Don Henneke gave me great tips on a cross-country trip. Plastic garbage bags. You can stuff them with clothes, towels, loaves of bread and pillows. They compact easy and fill the gaps. Brilliant. 

After I got married and Susie and I began combing our possessions, moving started to suck. I made one last move with the U-Haul truck and called it quits. I have hired movers or loaders ever since. This last move cost me a cool grand to hire someone to load and unload. They way I looked at it, if I had not hired them, the muscle relaxers and prescription Advil would have been 2 grand when it was all said and done.

Plumbing-The Devil’s Task

Most home repair sucks, but it can be done if you have the right tools and your wife doesn’t mind you cussing a blue streak until the job is done. Painting is bad enough, but I can suck it up and operate a roller or a brush if I had to. PLUMBING JOBS bite. Welcome to number two on the list. Get it, number 2???

With plumbing the job is either right or wrong, there is no halfway. Unless you are like me and you don’t mind drips in all your faucets. Our house would sometimes sound like the school gym locker showers with the constant and multiple drip, drip, drips. To do most plumbing jobs, you never have the right tool. You have to stop, drive to the hardware store, find out they just ran out of a seat for a 1972 shower faucet and you have to go to 2 other stores to find them. When you do find said seat, you don’t buy just one, you purchase 10 of the bastards, because you know you’ll either strip the threads or drop it down the drain because you forgot to plug it up with a towel like they do on “This Old House”. I hate the cast of “This Old House” and I think I will haunt them when I die.  Norm, Tommy and Richard are a three major league asses that love to show us how simple it is to change a washer.  Bastards.

A Romp In The Hay

This leads me to the bane of my existence and the one task I will lie, cheat or steal to get out of. HAULING HAY. I lived in Arizona for a year and was introduced to 3 string Alfalfa bales. Why the hell do you have 3 string bales when 2 strings are more than sufficient? A three-string bale only weighs a couple of hundred pounds and it literally takes two people to lift them into a pickup bed. And then they want you to stack the bales 3o feet high.  This is why I love round bales so much. You simply stick the bale with the spike and press the lever on the tractor and pick it up. Simple.

In Texas, Bermuda grass hay was somewhat dominant to Alfalfa, but it still had to be hauled. Damn it. I didn’t always hate hauling hay. I could make a dime or a little more per bale hauling square bales, so the pay was not bad for an unemployed college kid. Shoot, if I made $75.00 one weekend, that could be stretched into a few cases of beer and Whataburgers for lunch instead of Top Ramen for a week.. What pushed me over the edge was Dr. Bill Jackson. I worked a few hours a week cleaning stalls and helping him breed the few mares he kept. One summer evening, I had worked my usual hour and was about to leave, when he told me to grab my gloves and come with him. I’ll preface this with informing you that he paid me $5.00 an hour. We spent the next 3 hours picking up grass hay out a pasture. Me and him. He drove and I picked up the hay out of the field and stacked it on the trailer.  For $5.00 an hour. We or should I say I, picked up about 400 bales in about two trips. If I was getting paid by the bale, I could have made a least $40.00 or 2 cases of beer and 3 cheeseburgers. But I was paid $15.00 or a six-pack and two cans of Vienna Sausages.

I kid and laugh about this now, but Dr. Jackson was diabetic and I wouldn’t let him load the hay. He about passed out on me one hot, muggy summer morning while we were building fence. He picked up a corner post to set it in the hole I had dug, fell and almost landed on top of me. He asked me if I had ever seen someone having diabetic shock and I told him no, I had not. He said “Get me to the truck and take me back to the house or you ‘ll see one”. I drove that short distance in record time.

All kidding aside, I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. I think the problem is that I’m not very good at it. If I build something, 10 times out of 10 it looks like something 7^th grade shop class put together. I think I do better using my head than my hands. I wanted to learn to build saddles, but I don’t have one bit of artistic talent. I thought I would learn to play guitar, but I can’t carry a note and I’m all thumbs. Thank God I’m not a farmer, because I’d be a skinny one. I even thought I could be a radio broadcaster at one time. We all know how that would have worked out. Longest show on the air and I still couldn’t say a thing.

I guess the moral is to find what you like to do and do it well. I love what I do now and I love the people I work with. Just don’t ask me to help you fill your hay barn.