Life in the Shop
by Larry Heer
DAY ONE
Pierce Plumbing and Heating was in an old building long ago torn down on Main Street in Los Gatos, near San Jose. The wood of the walls and floor was soft with age, dirt, and human sweat. The shop smelled of cutting oil and stale cigars. In the dim light of the dusty room, in the corner; I saw the pipe. It was orange clay, about 18 inches in diameter with two inch thick walls, three feet tall. I was thirteen. My dad had decided that I was finally old enough to come to work. My first task was to move this terra-cotta chimney liner to a storage shed out back. It was my first morning in a sheet metal shop.
I rolled a hand truck up to the heavy cylinder. The truck was a big ugly wooden thing with steel wheels, not like the shiny rubber tired models they sell these days. I shoved against the top edge of the pipe with the heel of my left hand, and tipped it back, slipped the steel blade of the hand truck underneath. I wrapped my fingers over the rough rim of the pipe, pulled the top forward, and with my right hand clenched on the truck handle by my ear, leaned it back towards me. I slowly backed out of the corner, carefully balancing the weight. I steered the truck around a workbench and across the rough wooden shop floor. More than forty years later I remember the scene as if it was a movie I watched last night. This was the moment I had dreamed of for years. No more newspaper route, no more fruit picking, or weed hoeing. I had a real job and I was making a dollar an hour. Life was sweet.
The steel wheels of the hand truck thumped on the nail heads in the worn floor and jarred against the gaps between the boards. I maneuvered past the leaf brake and around into the plumbing department, past shelves filled with mysterious pipe fittings. At the back of the shop there was a ramp leading down to the dirt floor of the pipe cutting area. I leaned the truck way back, balancing down the planks. I felt like I was performing a trick in the circus my brothers and sisters used to put on under the big oak tree on our rope swings at the cabin. My summers at the cabin were over. I had a real job. I was grown up.
I reached the ground and out into the bright sunlight of a June day. My confidence grew as I wheeled down the driveway, the truck bouncing along the hard dirt. The door to the storage shed was hanging open, I pushed the truck into the darkness, stood the pipe up. I remember a shaft of sunlight coming through a large crack in the wall, and dust flecks slowly spinning in the light. I remember the pipe settling onto the dirt, rocking forward. In slow motion the pipe tipped, rolled, and fell to the floor, shattering.
I was sure that since only a second had gone by that it must be possible to push back the clock, just a tick or two. Just a little bit, please God, just let me back it up a minute, that’s not asking much. I looked around, how was I going to explain this? I wish a brother, or better yet, a sister were here, I could blame it on them. The cold horror of the situation hit me. I’m going to be fired. Ten minutes into the first day of the first real job in my whole useless life and I’m going to be fired. The world’s youngest failure. Maybe I could pretend it didn’t happen. Just go back and clean the shop. Maybe no one will notice. Maybe I could hide the pieces, they’ll never miss it. Maybe....
The walk back up to the front of the shop, to my dad’s office, was the longest of my young life. I stood in front of the old man’s desk fighting tears and told him what I’d done and waited for my punishment. He looked up from his blueprints, there was no anger in his face. He told me to clean up the mess and get on with my work.
I learned some tough lessons that day. That disaster often happens just when I think I have it made. That I should take the time to consider the possible consequences of what I am about to do. That being an adult means taking responsibility for my actions.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes since. The time I crushed my finger in a machine, I really wanted to back up the clock. Didn’t work that time either. I confess, over the years, I’ve hid a few. Blamed a couple on the other guy. There have been times when I’ve fouled things up so bad, I wondered how did I ever think I could do this work? How did I convince anyone to hire me? Then, confidence destroyed, screw up again, and sometimes a third time.
To excel, you must care deeply about your work, always striving for the perfect result. Sometimes that passion for perfection can make it almost impossible to deal with the inevitable flaws.
Everyone makes mistakes. The challenge is to accept the responsibility, fix the problem, ensure that it doesn’t happen again, and get on with our work.
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
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