Labor Ready

During a fallow work period in my Florida life, between theaters i ran and at a time when acting jobs were scarce, i became abruptly homeless. I still had my freelance tree trimming, but this crisis came during the summer, when the snowbirds (and income therefrom) were away. I needed regular income, and quick.
I had been living with Shane and his girlfriend Angelina, in Megan's condominium. Shane was one of my oldest FL friends. He had acted in my shows, and been stage manager for many more. Angelina was his girlfriend from Utah, who had moved to be with him. Megan was Shane's father's girlfriend. We paid her monthly (at the time of the crisis, however, i was the only one who was up to date with rent). Shane's dad, who was visiting from NY with Megan, had become direly concerned. In the parlance of his religion, he felt Angelina was a dark mass who would bring Shane to an early death. Even though i was more than a little sympathetic to his concerns, i had long since made my feelings known, and was now content to support my friend in whatever he did. Shane's dad and Megan made an ultimatum: either Shane put Angelina on a plane back to Utah forever, or they would have to leave the condo immediately. Unless i supported this ultimatum, i would have to leave too. Shane stood by her, and i stood by him. We gathered our belongings into my station wagon, and left.
I contacted friends who might be able to help us, and within a few hours, my waitress friend Jenny had offered her guest room. She was on the mainland. We moved in, and shared the apartment with Jenny, her two ferrets, and her occasional boyfriend. She never asked for rent, but i gave her a little money when i could. Shane and Angelina didn't respond well to the crisis...for the 6 or so weeks we were there, they barely worked. On top of that, they kept their part of the house (and often the kitchen) a mess. It embarrassed me, and eventually i chastened them, with some good effect.
When we were shown the curb, i had just paid rent, but Megan said it had already been spent. Finding immediate and regular work that didn't feel like prostitution was a challenge. I scanned the want ads, and found Labor Ready.
There are businesses like Labor Ready all across the land. They provide temp day laborers. The workers who end up there are at the bottom of the labor barrel: dropouts, legal and questionably-legal aliens, and people unable to hold a job in the "regular" world. This attracted me on several levels. When i wasn't being creative, i preferred work that was physical, and working at the bottom of the barrel was spiritually appealing.
With Labor Ready, you rarely knew ahead of time whether you'd work on a given day. You showed up at the office around 6AM, and waited while they handed out assignments. If you were still waiting at 8AM, you were out of luck. Fortunately, i didn't have many days like that. This was probably because i established myself as strong and reliable, and also perhaps because i was white and well-spoken, which increased the likelihood of Labor Ready's getting repeat business.
You got paid by check each day back at the main office. After taxes, it came out to about $40. If you got asked to be a crew supervisor, you got $70 (as one of the newer guys, i only got that honor one time). Most jobs involved several workers, though i remember a couple that were one-man. The companies or individuals who hired us generally treated us well. The work was hard, but seldom prohibitively so. One exception to this was the day i literally dug ditches, during summer in south Florida. I've never experienced anything like it, before or since.
But occasionally you'd get lucky in the other direction, stumbling into something almost laughably easy.
After several weeks, i hit the Labor Ready jackpot: a long-term contract (long-term being anything over a day). A construction company from West Virginia wanted to hire three of us for a two-month job building a concrete mausoleum. I and two others, Bart and Arnie, had worked for them already, and they requested us specifically. The long-term contract meant an extra ten bucks a day. I don't remember Bart and Arnie's real names, but they were an unforgettable pair, a Mutt and Jeff who had lived through life's wringer. They were in their fifties or sixties (it can be hard to gauge an alcoholic's age), and had figured out how to make life work for them. They would pool their money, rent a $35 motel room each night, and spend the other $45 on drink. They sometimes saved enough to get a room for the weekend, but more often they ended up on the street. I never saw them drink on the job though, or be unable to work.
They laughed a lot, and accepted me quickly. Their humor had a gallows edge to it, which i loved. Arnie had had a very well-paying corporate job for much of his life, and a family. He now saw his grown children once a year or less.
The WV crew was a fun bunch. There were about six of them. The foreman was Bubba, a big, round man whose accent was so thick that i could only make out about half of what he was saying. He didn't laugh a lot, but he ran a good crew, and gave us all baseball hats when the job came to an end. His smiley-faced, right-hand man was Felton, who was also rotund, and got along with everyone. The youngest was Reggie. He was bright and a little more sensitive and savvy than the others. The crew found out i was an actor, and got amusement out of that, but Reggie was the only one who asked for details. He also told me about his girlfriend and life in WV.
Their crew traveled together for half the year, then returned home for the winter. We worked with them for six weeks. The mausoleum was honeycomb-styled, with alcoves just big enough for a coffin. It was eight stories high, but only 25'. On the ground, it was 20'x40'. The work was fun. The cement truck would show up, and we would have the molds and rebar skeleton in place. We used huge rubber rakes to push and smooth. My favorite part of the job was retrieving the panels after an alcove had dried. We had to crawl inside, and bang the steel panels loose with a ten-pound hammer. It was dusty and ear-ringingly loud, so we wore goggles and masks and headphones. There was a slightly surreal quality to it, as we lay on our backs banging away. The light and fresh air by your feet seemed further away than it really was. The thought that there would only ever be one other human in that alcove...or rather, one ex-human...it was a pretty unavoidable invitation to think about death. I also loved climbing up the open face of the building, without a ladder.
I had my own hard hat, from my theater costume supply. On my last day, everyone signed it. With heartfelt cameraderie, we all said our goodbyes. I drove Bart and Arnie back to Labor Ready, to pick up our final checks. I had decided that that would be my last day with Labor Ready (though they did reel me back for one more three-day construction cleanup job, down in Naples). There were theater jobs coming, and i knew that anything after the mausoleum would be anti-climactic. I had saved enough money that Shane and Angelina and i were now in a place of our own, back on Ft. Myers Beach.
I drove my compatriots to their motel, grasped their hands one last time, and watched them shuffle off into the sunset.