I looked over the prints, looked over the building, looked over the prints again; and bingo! I had it figured out.  All I needed now was someone to do it (under my supervision, of course).

     I made a list of the tools and materials we would need, sparked up one of those Colorado bad-boys your mama warned you about, and waited for the first arrival.

     “Hello there!” came a booming voice from behind me.  I turned and damn was this old boy huge.  Six feet tall and at least three hundred-fifty pounds, the grin on his face was still bigger than his belly.  I was glad to see him smiling. 

     “Hello there!” he said again, peering at me from eyeballs that seemed way too small for his tremendous bulk.  He blinked them at me.

     “Hello,” I said (respectfully).  “My name’s Travis McKluskey.”

     “I’m Bud,” the giant before me intoned.  “I’m supposed to work with you.”  We shook on it.  Those huge fingers of his made me feel real small.

     Bud kept on grinning.

     “Well, Bud,” I ventured, “you done much electric work?”

     “I’ve been doing it for the last five years,” Bud allowed, “and before that I was a truck driver for six years, and before that I worked on an oil platform for eight years.”

     Bud was a well-rounded individual in more ways than one.

     I gave him the list I had written up, and his weird too-small eyes moved slowly over it.

     “Think you can handle that, big guy?”

     Bud looked at me.  Blinked.  Blinked again. 

     “Sure,” I was glad to hear him say.

     “Great,” I replied.  “Later.”  I turned away to intently study the blueprints.  Bud got the hint (smart man) and left.  His bulk was so great that when he moved I could actually feel the air pressure change on my eardrums.

     Well, almost.

     Dan “The Prick” Carlson had said I’d be getting four guys to work for me.  I wondered if Bud would turn out to be two of them combined.

     Happily, that was not the case.

     Number two was competent looking.  He was pretty young, though.

     “Howdy,” he said.  “I’m John Fact.”

     “Is that a fact?”  I blurted out, before I could stop myself. It was barely nine AM, and I was as high as a proverbial Chinese kite.

     The kid was now looking deadly.

     “Yes,” John said slowly.  “That is indeed a fact.”  He had an icy stare.                                                                

     Okay, so that didn’t go well.  Try again: “I’m Travis, glad to have you here.”

     I examined his tools.  He had all the right ones, and they had that weathered appearance that comes with long use.  John Fact looked young, but his tools told of years of experience.  I mentioned this to him.

     “I bought ’em at a pawn shop,” John told me.

     Number threee burst onto the scene.

     “Hi!  I’m Jerry Bugaloo!”  A scrawny guy with wild tufts of kinky black hair joined us.  “You can call me Spider.”

     “Hello, Spider.”  We shook hands all around.  Spider had an oily grip.

     Number four soon showed up.  He told us his name was Spence Cummings, and looked like he was barely out of high school.

     “I’ve got six months of experience,” Spence told us.  “Where’s the benders?”

     “Slow down, Spence,” I admonished him.  Kids.  All they wanted to do was bend pipe, and for some reason refused to believe that straight conduit runs were better than the wild, useless, hallucinatory bends they painstakingly crafted.  Helpers like this had to be watched closely.

     “Hey, you guys,” Bud called from the elevator.  “Help me unload this stuff!”

     My three new friends got real busy when they saw Bud for the first time.  Even I helped out.

     If you can imagine that.

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