Every Tuesday morning, Scary Barry held a safety meeting in front of his trailer.  The reason it was held on Tuesday was because if it was held on Monday half the guys would miss it, in bed vomiting from the weekend.

     Anyway, here was the safety meeting, begging to begin.  It was seven o’clock in the morning, and we were still rubbing the sleep out of our eyes.

     Scary Barry cleared his throat loudly, and spit the slime on the ground.  “Gentlemen,” he began, “first thing I want to talk about today… is head wounds.”

     First thing we wanted to talk about, too.

     “If somebody comes up to you on the job, and appears to be suffering from some type of head wound, I want you to get that man some help.  Your foreman will give you more information concerning head wounds individually.”

     Scary Barry paused to re-light his cigar.

     “You know,” Scary Barry said, “I was on this job one time…”

     We were all loving it.

     “This guy got his head cut open somehow, and he was bleedin’ like a stuck pig.  His helper panicked.  He tried to stop the bleeding by putting a tourniquet on the poor guy’s neck.  He strangled the son of a bitch!”

     All the gathered electricians hee-ed and haw-ed over this.  I didn’t.  I looked at Spence.  Was that a murderous glint in his eye?

     “Second thing I want to talk about,” Scary Barry told us, “is boots.  No tennis shoes, no sandals, only boots are to be worn on this job!  If you don’t like it, then you just buy yourself a newspaper!”  That’s electrician slang for “find another job.”

     We checked our footwear.

     Scary Barry was about finished.  “Anybody have something to add?”

     Dan Carlson was waving his hands around (of course).  “I’ve got something I want to share with you guys,” Dan said.  “It could affect your life.”

     Dan’s concern overwhelmed us.

     “I’ve found,” Dan went on, “that when I eat a good breakfast before I come to work, I have vitality that lasts the entire day.  I bet we’d all be more productive if we had a good meal in the morning.”

     No applause.

     “You buyin’?” came an anonymous voice from the crowd.  It was a good point.  Most of these boys could barely afford to pay attention.

     A powdered donut bounced off Dan’s head.  Then an orange peel. An empty packet of Zig-Zags sailed intoxicatingly close to his shit-covered nose.

     Chaos threatened to reign.

     Scary Barry defused the situation.  “Let’s go to work, boys!  Let’s go to work!”

     The safety meeting broke up.  Just when it was getting interesting!

2026 R.M. Reliable Electric