BIG MONEY (#61): I always worked hard during summer vacation, but the summer after I graduated from UF, I had my highest paying job, also the toughest. I was a mason tender and concrete former for Langford Masonry in St. Pete.
Graduation at UF was a full week after our classes ended. Rather than waste a week my roommate, Mike Ross, and I both went home to work. This worked out particularly well for me, since the girl that I was dating at UF was graduating, and the girl I had dated since SPJC wanted to come to Gainesville to see me graduate.
I was going to be paid $5.25 an hour, so I would make $210 in that extra week I could work by skipping graduation. That was more than I had ever made working one job.
The summer before my junior year in high school, I had a full time job working for Roy Barnes at Lando & Sons Nursery. I worked 8:30 to 5:00 during the week and 8:30 to 1:00 on Saturdays. I also worked 11:00 pm to 7:00 am on Saturday and Sunday nights as a night clerk for a small hotel on St. Pete Beach. For 30 days straight I worked the night shift filling in for vacation time. For that month I worked 44 hours a week at the nursery and 56 hours a week at the hotel. I was 16 years old and for a month I worked 110 hours a week. That was how I bought my first VW.
Langford Masonry was a good size company, employing 12 masons and 25 mason tenders plus me. I was the only white mason tender. All of the masons were white, they made $12.00 an hour. To my shame, I saw nothing unfair or racist about this. It was just life in St. Pete in the 1970s.
All of the men I worked with were good people. The masons worked hard and fast, so the mason tenders worked hard and fast to keep them supplied with concrete blocks and the wet cement or “mud” to hold them together. Most of what we built were the shells of houses. We had a cement mixer set up on the concrete slab of the garage.
We’d fill a wheelbarrow with cement then push it on a 2” x 12” plank to get it up the step from the garage to the house. A wheelbarrow full of cement was heavy and on my first try, the wheelbarrow went off the plank and turned over. Evidently, this had been anticipated and got a good laugh from the other mason tenders. But it was good hearted laughter and they helped me shovel the wet cement back in the wheel barrow and then gave me some tips. I never spilled a wheel barrow of cement again.
Since we were building the walls of houses, we were never in the shade. I wore cut off jeans, work boots, leather work gloves, and a tee shirt that came off as soon as we got to the job site. I was just starting to lose my hair, so I didn’t wear a hat. Luckily. I haven’t had a big problem with skin cancer.
The toughest part of the job was pouring the lintel to finish off the top of the concrete block wall. This would start by nailing plywood into the top cement blocks with cut concrete nails. Once the plywood form was up, we would hang steel rebar and put clamps in place to hold everything together. Then the hard part, we poured the concrete by buckets. I was the new guy, so it was always my job to hand a bucket of concrete up up the man on the scaffold who would dump it in the concrete form. This would go on for half a day. I would switch arms after every few buckets, but I was hurting by the end of the day.
The part I hated the most was nailing the plywood in place. The plywood was used over and over again, so bit of concrete and dust would rain down with every blow from the hammer. Driving a cut nail through plywood into a cement block wasn’t easy. I was careful, and never hit my thumb.
After the concrete had dried, we would pry the clamps off the lintel, remove the plywood, take down the scaffolding and move on to the next job. One day Joe and I were dropped off at a job site to remove the clamps. Joe was my friend and I learned a lot from him that summer. He wasn’t a particularly big man, but like all the mason tenders except me, he was strong and tough. On Fridays, Joe would tell me his plans for the weekend. One thing I remember was that he said he always wore ankle high boots when he went out. He said that was the best place to kept a straight razor, the inside of his right boot. He’d never had to use it, but wouldn’t go out without it.
For some reason the scaffolding had been taken down at this job site, but the clamps and plywood hadn’t been removed. For me, this was a big problem since the walls were two stories tall and the lintel was only 8” wide. I’m not really afraid of heights, but I am very afraid of falling. I told Joe, “There is no way I can get up there.” Joe told me not to worry, he was used to do this part of the job.
So there was Joe, 18 feet in the air, balancing on 8” of concrete, prying off the clamps. Man, I loved him for doing that! I was on the ground, picking up the clamps and stacking the plywood. Did I mention that Joe chewed tobacco? Suddenly I heard, “Scott, I’m sorry! I didn’t see you there!” And I was hit on the side of the head and shoulder with a mouthful of chewing tobacco spit.
I wasn’t mad, I just wiped it off and told Joe not to worry. I knew he didn’t do it on purpose and there was no way I’d trade places with him. I did realize something. There I was, graduated from UF with High Honors and ready to go to law school. I was working with 25 black men who were my equals. We all shared the same cup at the water cooler. I’m was covered in chewing tobacco spit. The lesson, “DON’T GET TOO FULL OF YOURSELF.”
I just realized that if I had worked a full year at $5.25 an hour, I would have made $10,900 a year. When I graduated from Law School three years later, my starting salary was $12,000. No wonder I didn’t like the practice of law. It involved long hours and little money.
My first year at Fisher & Sauls, I worked at least 50 hours a week for $12,000 a year. If I had worked 50 hours a week as a mason tender at $5.25 an hour, I would have made $13,650 a year. Also, I would have been outside, doing honest work that was appreciated.
