Wintertime Rolls

Dude this winter is killer. This photo was taken in January. It's at the end of a shitty day forming foundation walls.
I like concrete as much as any one...maybe more. Foundation work is not really like concrete work. Five percent of it is concrete. The rest is just mule work. Fucking bad ass mule work. Lifting, dragging, cussing, climbing and fucking dying. Hell, it pays, but it's for the dogs. It's for mean dogs. The guys pictured have no faces. They have no emotions and let their blood freeze and thaw on a regular basis. They may hate the boss but may not know love. That statement is unfair. I'm talking for everyone. Maybe I hated the boss and knew no love during these days. At the same time I was thankful for him and everyone there. I froze and burned with hatred but did it loudly and shamefully. -Not like the other men. When the going got rough I cussed and threw tools toward foreman, later to not apologize. God could have forgiven me for the awful things I said in those days, but I would no doubt use the same curses over and over in the freezing weeks to come. Many minutes were spent in freezing shame.
The upright post looking thing in this picture between the sun and the left-most man is the concrete pump. The concrete is poured into a bin on the back of a large boom truck. The bin churns the concrete and pistons pull and push the mixture through two hundred feet of line. The piece of line seen in this photo is the end...or the hose. It's like a big rubbery trunk at the end and it spews concrete into the foundation forms. The hose man communicates with the pump operator through hand signals and abrupt gestures. The other men follow, making sure proper amount of concrete is placed, while smoothing the surface with tools and placing anchors for future framing.

Towards evening, the poured wall must be covered with thermal blankets. The chilling wind turns these blankets into kites of sorts and men cuss to the heavens trying to cover efficiently. My beard continually catches in the metal zipper of my work coat and forces me to growl like an angry bear. I don't know the other men's thoughts at this time. They speak in four letter words of frustration to each other and myself. It is clear that we all chose poorly in careers. Some of these guys quit school. Some were in the armed forces. Me? I still don't know what the fuck I'm doing here, but believe me; this is a shitty job; and awful way to make a living. A living? Yes. But it's unfair the man you become in the stretch of these days.