5 am, my dad walked into my bedroom. “Wake up, we’ve got to go,” he said sharply though gently. I shook off the morning funk and pulled on my size 5 K-Mart work boots after I pulled on my Wrangler work jeans that were hand-me-downs. Stumbling into the kitchen from the dark hall, I saw my dad making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of an entire loaf of bread and putting it back into the bread bag, then into the lunch box. We walked outside to the moonlit morning and into the frosty truck idling waiting for the defroster to work.

We arrived at the yard to the sound of backhoes starting up and loading onto the beavertail trailers, excavator tracks screeching onto the Ziemen trailers, the low rumble of the 1976 Ford dump truck coming to life. The I-beams covered in dew glistened in the morning sunrise. I tried to lift the viber-plate into the truck; foreman, Dave gives me a gentle smile as he helped me lift in the plate, I had no concept I weighed as much as the tool at that age. We piled into the gang truck after the frantic gathering of tools and delineation. We were off. Put up the men working signs, throw out the delineators and caution tape; the thunder of the partner saws cutting, and jackhammers chipping.

Growing up in a construction family this was my morning on many days I wasn’t in school. The alarm went off and I was up with the crew. My Dad had started a business with a shovel and a dream. He had built it into a well-respected firm on the Central Coast of California doing concrete and heavy structure lifting. He always made sure I wasn’t given any perks as the boss’s kid. I pushed a shovel and swept and tended to the journeyman just like the other laborers. At the time I didn’t get it, why would you ever go into this business. When I was ten years old, all I could think about was getting my $200 weekly check and buying new clothes or lifting weights at the gym. Twenty years later I get why he had my brother, and I go with him. It taught us hard work and a skill—a skill not learned in a classroom and a respect not taught in a book.

We worked along with persons of ‘doing,’ of ‘creating’, and of the tangible. I learned that no matter your feelings you move on, you progress, and you meet your deadline. You stayed with it until you finished whether that was 2 pm or Midnight. My brother and I learned skills that allowed us as teens to make as much as our high school teachers. We learned the feeling of satisfaction that could only be gleaned from failure after failure then finally success. We learned that ‘tired’, that only comes from scrubbing concrete that you are behind on, and what perseverance is, falling with exhaustion after we “broom-ed” the concrete.