What Happened on March the 3rd and 4th, 2008... Dawg Story ...well, heck, who’s counting?

Saturday, March 08, 2008


Category: Jobs, Work, Careers


Posted on the Club site this week...

Monday morning March the 3rd:

Somebody's hunting dog came through here and attacked one of our
roosters. We've lost over 30 chickens in the past year due to
predators, but this was the first time we'd caught one in the act
(moment of silence...the hunting dog is buried back in the woods)...
Anyway, we thought the rooster was dead, but then I saw him blink his
eyes and move some, so we gave him some water...then he got up and
started hopping around...seems the main injuries were a broken leg
and missing tailfeathers.

At the same time as all this, my mom showed up with two new puppies,
whose job it will eventually be to protect the chickens. As the
injured rooster hopped in the back door of the welding shop, Mom told
me to hold one of the new dogs (no jokes, please). It was quite some
time before I could go look for that rooster. Finally I went and
followed spots of blood and some feathers behind the main steel
racks, and then there was nothing... We looked all over the place for
that bird, but it was like he'd vanished. Still, we left some food
and water just in case.

I was away from the shop most of the day Tuesday on an installation
job (that's another story), but Wednesday morning when I was fixin to get
to work, we heard a rooster crowing from a back corner of the shop
(behind a couple of my old welders, underneath the landing that
sometimes serves as my bed when too much company chases me out of the
apartment). I pulled one of the welders out and sure enough, there
was the rooster... we took him out to one of the spare chicken houses
and gave him some food and water. We'll let him get his strength back
before we turn him loose with the other chickens.


Tuesday March the 4th:


On the Monday after the Daytona 500 (sorry, that's how I still measure time...that's February the 18th) I got a call from a store owner in Danville, about 30 or 35 miles from here, wantin an estimate on some bars to cover the windows of his clothing store. Seems there have been a lot of break-ins in the area, and he didn't want to be next, which is completely understandable. So the next day I went to take a look at the job. The store is in a little shopping center on the north end of town at the corner of North Main Street and the Franklin Turnpike (as if that means anything to somebody outside the area). It's not really the type of place I'd want to be after dark...

The job called for a total of ten separate panels... three each of two different sizes for a total of six windows, and an upper and lower panel for the double doors. To keep from having the appearance of a prison (we'll get to that in a bit) I would mount the panels on the INSIDE of the windows and doors, and the window panels would have a double scroll on top. We came up with an estimate that the guy agreed with (even though I was takin' a hit as far as covering the labor). I bought the steel on Thursday the 21st of February and got right to work. The first two days were mainly cuttin' and fittin'... then I got into assembling the panels, which all told took over 568 linear feet of steel rod, angle and strap -- basically a bar of steel more than a tenth of a mile long. The assembly was pretty much finished by Wednesday the 27th, and then they had to be painted...which is fun since the paint shop right now is basically a big tent type of thing behind the welding shop. So you have to wait 'til a decent day to get things painted. You can't paint when it's 40 degrees. It was Friday before conditions were really suitable. And we had to check for certain things... like dirt getting in the wet paint due to winds...or chickens ( ) waltzing through and leaving feathers in the wet paint (A paint room is on the to-do list). The final coat of paint was sprayed on Monday, then Tuesday morning, the panels were loaded up, wrapped in U-Haul moving blankets and such, along with the tools I'd need, then hit the road.



I got there and the place was closed. The owner showed up about fifteen minutes later and opened up while his oaf of a brother () watched me unload the panels. He WAS big enough to help clear things from the windows so I could begin mounting the panels. I got one side done, then the other...except for the last panel. Something didn't quite match up; the one corner of the panel was 3/8 of an inch too short...the window was out of square. And some of the mounting points required longer screws than what I had with me. So it was off to Lowe's...a little trip that took most of an hour with traffic and all. Then it turned out that the pre-drilled holes in the door bar sections weren't quite far enough apart. It was too much for me to do there, so I loaded them up and went back to the shop, stoppin off to get fuel ($3.09 a gallon) and a can of black spray paint. My dad cut and drilled new pieces for the panels while I ground the paint off the surfaces to be welded on, then welded the new pieces on them. Soon as I was done he'd take 'em out and shoot 'em with paint.

While I was at the shop welding, I had a slightly painful experience -- it goes along with my theory that the more desperate the situation, the more likely it is that bad things will happen. A speck of molten steel bounced up inside my helmet and into my mouth which was closed, and I felt it burn into one of my top teeth on the left side...strange sensation. That was a first. Somehow it seemed worse than the times I've burned my tongue the same way. Interestingly there's no pain in that tooth as we speak, but it could be that I'm achin' all over enough to cover up anything else... We got all the modifications done, loaded up and back on the way to Danville by 4:30. Halfway there, the threatening skies opened up and I had all I needed to see the way there.



Got to the store about 5:10 and while the oaf stood right inside watching, I unloaded the truck in the rain. He had the decency to open the door when I needed to get in with the window panel. Did I mention that they filled that window back up while I was gone? They did... Well, they cleared it out and I put that panel in, no problem. Then the door panels went on relatively easy. Oaf even helped hold one of them so I had a free hand to get a couple of the screws in it -- what a guy...(can you tell I wasn't very impressed with him?) I got the tools loaded up and got paid... and before I was able to get away from there, the owner asked if I could remove the bars from a store of his in Wilmington, NC, tweak them and install them in ANOTHER store in Danville...and give him a good deal (if I would take that job, it's a guaranteed Dawg story, I can tell you right now -- I don't need stories THAT bad)...

After one of the roughest installation jobs in all of March 2008, I headed home in the dark and a downpour (I don't like bein on the road at night OR in the rain, 'cause I can't see). Obviously I made it back... got to live to see another day...and wonder what's gonna happen NEXT...