Today is the day

Uncle Monk is probably my very favorite uncle.  Now I hate to show favorites because I have some great uncles.  I have some great relatives that have all taught me things about life and had an impact on who I am today.  I think our personalities are formed by our association with our family members, friends and those who we associate with on a daily basis.   We learn bits and pieces from each of them, they mold and change us.

Uncle Monk is retired Navy.  When I was a kid, he was off sailing around the world, sending picture post cards and "stuff" back from exotic places.  Several years at Christmas he gave me and cousin Jimmy a sailor hats.  There couldn't have been a bigger prize.  New bicycles, train sets, nothing could compare to that sailor hat just like Uncle Monk wore.  Sailor hats then were white and they didn't stay clean for long when you are 10 years old.  Granny would wash it regularly; with the red dirt of Talladega County and constant washing they became tattered pretty quick. 

Back to the story.  Uncle Monk retired as a Chief Petty Officer from the Navy after 20 or 25 years, bought a farm at Bernie Station and got a job as a postman in Childersburg.  He delivered mail around Childersburg for many years.  He worked enough years to be able to retire from the postal service.  I think you call that double dipping.  As he was approaching his 65^th birthday, his supervisor had asked him several times when he was going to retire.  Uncle Monk found out that he want to make sure one of his relatives got his job when it retired.  Apparently there must be something about advertising for the position and applying that has to be timed for a selected individual to get a selected job.  Sixty-fifth birthday came and went, Uncle Monk enjoyed his work and wasn't in much of a hurry to make up his mind about when to retire, although his boss keep asking.  One day Uncle Monk came in off his route and the supervisor called him into the office, shut the door and told him to sit down.  The guy in not very polite language said “Damn it Grady, I have to know when you are going to retire”.  It was just something about the tone of the voice that Uncle Monk didn’t like.  Uncle Monk looked at him and said “Today is the day”.   The guy apparently got even more un-polite and told him he couldn't retire that day.  Uncle Monk informed him that he could, told him he was going to be taking his sick leave for the next three weeks and would then start his 2 weeks of vacation.  He got in the car drove to Birmingham, filled out the paper work and never went back. 

Everyone at the office knows this story.  I have kidding them for years telling them that I don’t need to work anymore so don’t piss me off because I can always say “Today is the day”. 

Actually a very similar thing happened to Carole.  She had her twenty years in with the school system and wanted to spend more time with Paul and Michael while they were still at home.  She was secure in her job that she loved.  She was struggling with the thoughts of retirement.  What would she do?  Her job had defined her, what definition would she have if she didn't work.  She absolutely loved school.  She love working with the students.  The administrative side of her job wasn't “her joy” to put it mildly.  She had the retirement papers on her desk for weeks and was procrastinating signing them.  Was it the right thing to do?  Should I work for another year?  Then one morning one of the other teachers came into her office and just went off about something she had no control over.  She thought “Today is the Day”.  As the other teacher was taking she reached over, signed the paper and mailed it that afternoon.  She never had to worry about not having definition.  She has substantially added to her resume or obituary, which every way you want to look at it, since she retired. 

Apparently a lot of people have trouble with making the decision to retire.  I certainly have.  My main problem is I love to do what we do.  I think my work is about the most fun you can have.  I worked with two individuals who were outstanding professionals.  Both were at the top of their profession.  Both worked too long and didn't keep up with the profession.  At the end of their career people were laughing at them and their decision.  I never wanted to be that way.  I have always wanted to finish as a John Madden and not a Tom Landry.  John Madden quit with a winning record, Landry who literally changed the game of football, won more super bowls and division championships was fired after three losing seasons.  I have been waiting for someone to make me mad and so I could tell them “Today is the Day”.   Maybe it isn't going to happen; I may have to say “I have boats to build”.  As of the start of the year, I quit doing anything design related on new projects.  I still talk to clients but pass them off to one of the younger smarter engineers that work in our company. 

I bought a couple hundred board feet of number one boat lumber last weekend.  “It is time to start building boats.” 

The day they hung Martin Luther King.

February is Black History Month.  In light of that I thought it might be a good time to share a funny story that happened on one of my project. 

I was fortunate enough to do the design work on the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham.  http://www.bcri.org/index.html  It was an interesting job both technically and politically.  Since it has been about 20 years ago some of the details and names of the people aren’t very clear any longer.  (This is my way of saying the names have been changed to protect the innocent.)   But as best as I remember the original design was way over budget.  I have been on both sides of projects over budget; what normally happens is the original design team gives the owner exactly what they ask for and no one remembers the project has a budget.  The original designers were replaced and I got the job.  I worked with an architectural team out of Atlanta.  I don’t remember the company’s name but they were very talented and could control the budget.  The building had a several unusual features.  One of the most striking is the monumental stairs that leads up to the rotunda at the entrance.  It provided an interesting design challenge to make the building wheel chair accessible and not detract from the entrance.  Rotundas are always an interesting challenge.  (That is structural engineer language for a pain in the ass to design and build.)

The building has a basement.  Well that may not sound like a big deal but believe me, every time it rained in Birmingham every gallon of water that fell in the city wound up in that hole.  It would take a couple of days to get it pumped out and then it would rain again.  They liked to have never got the building out of the ground.  When they finally got it so it wouldn’t fill up when it rained, the contractor had a big party with tee shirts for all of the workers.  The “Coming Out of the Basement” tee shirts had a cartoon character of a “frog man” climbing over a basement wall. 

I won’t completely quote Joe Biden, but constructing the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham Alabama across from the 16^th Street Baptist Church was a “Big Deal”.  There were ground breaking events, dedication events, topping out events, grand openings, special exhibit openings, etc.  Never being one to shy away from a chance to eat, drink, be merry, shake hands, hand out business cards, I attended all of the events.  Of course you can rightly imagine at each of these events there were speeches, note the plural use of the word. 

As part of this project the contractor was required to renovate the Kelly Ingram Park which is across the street from the building.  In the park is a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The contractor was required to remove and relocate the statue as part of the project.  Now this is a bronze statue.  If not properly handle and dropped it would be an expensive mistake.  It is no telling what it would have cost to replace the statue and the new one probably wouldn’t have matched the old one.  It was just too big of a risk to assume, the contractor excluded the moving and relocating the statue from their construction contract.  (For those who are not in my world, it is not that unusual for items to be excluded from a bid.)  After some negotiation the City accepted the contract and agreed to move the statue with their crews.  You can probably guess where this is going.

The topping out party was one of the bigger events.  TV trucks, camera crews, live radio feeds, newspapers, and who knows what other media.  There were speeches by the board members and politicians.  I was standing by the construction superintendent in the back of the audience.  It was a standing room only crowd.  In the middle of Mayor Arrington speech we look across the street to the park.   The city had showed up to remove the statue.  They back a boom truck up to the statue.  A couple of guys pull out ladders and they boom over with a chain on the end of the boom.  The guys go up the ladders and wrap the chain around the statues neck and they proceed to lift the statue with boom.  For a few minutes the statue is hanging by the chain around the neck.  The superintendent is going crazy, he knows at any minute the camera will swing around and start filming the hanging of Dr. King.  His construction career is flashing in front of his face, he knows when the camera picks up the hanging his career is ended, even though he has nothing to do with it.  The city pulls in another truck with a flat bed trailer and they lower the statue on to the bed of the truck.  Dr King is safely resting on the trailer about the time the mayor finishes his speech.  I guess it must have been a long and interesting speech because I don’t know if anyone else saw what we saw.  Personally, I will never forget the day the city hung Martin Luther King. 

If you get a chance go to the museum it is an interesting place.  It depicts a time in history that we should all learn from and pledge to never return.  I don’t know if we can ever completely get rid of discrimination, I would like to think we can.  It is an issue that many struggle with and will be topic of another blog.