MORE TUBA

 

The neighbors next door are remodeling their house, big time, like everyone else who buys an expensive house around here and wants to pour another few million dollars into it to make it perfect.  Flat roofs, industrial kitchens and gymnasium bathrooms.  Five car garages and wrap around decks, lap pools and great rooms, ski-in mud rooms and pass-out man caves. Who can live without it.   Why not buy or build the perfect house in the first place. 

The county held them up for a few months claiming that the ‘ditch’ in the backyard was a ‘stream’ and they had to stay 50-100 feet away from this waterway.  Being an all-star hydrologist, I argued that streams flow perpendicularly to contours and this ditch obviously flowed parallel to the contours towards other water rights.  In their infinite wisdom, the county eventually succumbed and allowed for the planned construction.  Call things by their real name.

Nonetheless, the framing crew shows up at 730 AM every day and commiserates until 800 when they can begin their real work.  They show up in nice new trucks or cool, used Camaros and work 7 days a week, 12 hours a day.  They are not slackers; these guys are professional.  There are about ten of them, all Latinos in long sleeve shirts and wide brim hats.  They talk loudly, laugh heartily, and work their asses off all day.  They are a family of friends.  They have a microwave for lunch and a stereo for classic Mexican music that they play loudly and sing along with.  The background Tuba sounds like happy Elephants dancing across the Playa to me.  When I see them, I give them the thumbs up and yell “More Tuba:” and they laugh like they understand me and say 'Gracias, Bueno, Da Nada, Tio Mateo'.

When I was building my house, the framing crew was fast and efficient.  Within days we had a house.  Instant gratification.  After that construction slowed down measurably for the inside work.  One day I asked the crew chief why he cut the porte-cochere support beams off before going through the columns to support the overhanging soffits.  He said he did it according to the plans.  We broke out the plans and sure enough that detail was at the end of the drawing page and the paper ran out at the column, so he cut the beam at the column.  I said no no, it is supposed to go through the column, we just ran out of paper. 

He asked me if I knew how the house was to be framed and I said of course, I designed it and did the structural calculations.  He shouted up to his crew in Spanish that I knew how to frame the house and they packed up their tools and went home.  In a panic I called my contractor and he told me never to piss off the framers, or they would poop in my crawl space.  He said he would get them back on the job, but I should show up after work on Friday with a case of good beer for forgiveness. 

Another time I stopped by in the morning and told them to move the master bedroom wall one foot to make the room bigger.   When I went to work, I realized that was a terrible idea and would ruin the architectural symmetry of the layout.  I stopped by on my way home I asked the crew chief if he had moved the wall and he thankfully told me no, because that was just a stupid idea.  I learned to hold my tongue and trust he process, these guys were specialists and very particular.

Chip, the general contractor next door, is here most of the time to offer advice, moral support and energy drinks. He likes getting down and dirty with the boys, doing the finish carpentry and building the cabinets.  He loves these guys and says they work hard, read plans well and hardly make mistakes.  They take it to the next level and add improvements and structural redundancy when in doubt.  After a day of work these guys have a visually gratifyingly framed-in wing of the house to show for it.  They kick back for a Pacifico beer at sundown like it is Mexican Miller Time, before going home or to their other, side job.  Chip has a hard time hiring white guys because they cost more, don’t show, or have a hangover.  I don’t blame him.

This is the American dream; hard work, good rewards, camaraderie, craftsmanship and visible gratification every day.  But some of these guys disappear in the middle of the night, to places unknown, by people unnamed.  These guys pay taxes and support our failing Social Security and Medicare fund that they will never collect.  They contribute more than they cost us.   Unlimited cheap labor is the main tenant to our consumer, waring economy, so why are these guys the enemy.

It used to be ‘Irish Need Not Apply’, then it was Italians, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, women and veterans.  Then they were all eventually assimilated into our society and employment.  We are mostly identified by what we do, and we take our persona from our profession.  Work is the essence in what we contribute to society.  The sweat of our brow is the wealth of nations, as described by Adam Smith in 1775, along with our natural resources and our ability to take risks and innovate.  We all revel in our ability to participate and earn a living in this specialized society. 

Years ago, you were lucky if your job didn’t eventually kill you, where employers took advantage of workers and laborers, and where the people producing in the breadbasket of America were starving to death.  Times have changed and workers have had some concessions and people have been able to find meaning and fulfillment in what they do.  Some people get to follow their passion and do what they love and are good at.  Unions helped for a while, but the Barons fought back with ‘corporations are people too’ and they voted them into oblivion.  So wages have not kept up with productivity, and the working man still must struggle for a living wage, a happy life and respect from society.  Agency, is that too much to ask?

Now it is all jeopardized by Ai taking over our jobs and putting scores of people out of work.  How will we distribute the wealth of nations and the means to live and flourish.  How will we earn our place in a civilized world.  Since Covid we have worked less and seamlessly incorporated our work life with our home life.  Will we all truly become creatures of leisure, with our only burden being our free time?   The guys framing the house next door don’t know or care, they just do their jobs, eat their lunches, drink their beer and go home to their families.  Good for them, for now. More Tuba.