Saturday, May 20, 2006

Invited To A Bash

This is basically where the live blog begins.
Every post dated earlier than this has been recollected at a later time and then filed away under that dateline.


Ok, yesterday I worked on a demolition ticket, out of the Workforce Labor Pool, demolishing a Holiday Inn, which was way out on Jacksonville Beach.

We went in with mainly (manly) sledgehammers and swung them just about indiscriminately, bashing away.

There were some good hammerers. "Cowboy," or "Wild-man," as he was also called by some, was given stewardship over myself and another worker. He was to direct us in our bashing, telling us what to bash and what not to bash.

When Cowboy had the hammer in his own hands, he became spastic and quite animated, as if he had a personal grudge against the hotel and the objects in it. He was quite an inspiration. With great grunts and groans, he whirled and struck objects repeatedly and in rapid succession, until he was dripping sweat, red in the face and bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

I noticed that he also struck things in the places least likely to produce the desired result of them being dismantled. A lot of times if he had turned an object on its side and whacked it on a weaker spot, I think he would have split them with one or two hits, instead of the twenty or more which he delivered. I didn't want to criticize him, so I just stood back (everyone stood back from him) and let him at it.


It was kind of depressing to think of all the history and memories which were being bashed away, torn down and dropped five stories into a dumpster.
I thought of all the days and nights spent throughout the hundred or so years that the inn was in business.
The honeymoons, the celebrities, the people who knew people who knew people whom I may have met in my life. I had a feeling of nostalgia and wondered what "if these walls could talk..."

Then I grabbed my sledgehammer and started wreaking the place.

The song "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel was in my head most of the day.

I made 53 dollars and change.