...and I'm getting my vote hands ready

He’d hold his right hand high above his head for extra effect…kind of like he was making some sort of proclamation or promise. Then…always in a loud and passionate voice, my grandpa would say the following in his thick Swedish accent: “If I live to be as old as Methuselah…I will never vote for another Republican.” He was perhaps among the most religiously dogmatic people I’ve ever known…but despite his fervent social conservatism, from the time after the Great Depression up until his death at 96 in 1991, to my knowledge, he never voted for a Republican for U.S. President (he may have pulled the lever a time or two for Republican North Dakota Senator Mark Andrews).

I never really got why my grandfather was so committed to the Democratic Party, and given my knowledge of his deep-rooted traditional religious values, I still don’t know how he reconciled his old-school social conservatism with his pledge to support only Democrats.  He apparently didn’t allow his judgment to be clouded by any ancillary issues…however seemingly diametrically opposed to his religious beliefs…he just voted his pocketbook. He didn’t begrudge the wealthy for voting Republican...he expected them to. I even got the sense that if he ever were to become wealthy…he’d vote that way too. But he also counted on the working man to vote in his economic interests as well…and for him…that always meant pulling the lever for a D. It was just the way it was and there was no need for any of the polarizing, rancorous debate that dominates the airwaves today.

Speaking of obnoxious political debates on television, I was sitting in the US Airways Lounge at LAX’s Terminal 1 this past Sunday when the NBC Sunday morning talk show (Meet the Press I think) with David Gregory began. It was a bit outside my preferred New Jersey Housewives/Kardashian’s TV genre, but because there was only one flat-screen and no visible clicker…I begrudgingly started to watch.  Not long into the program there was a discussion involving surrogates from both the Obama and Romney campaigns presumably on the set to analyze the week’s election related events. Gregory framed the discussion with a less-than-flattering analysis of Romney’s past couple of weeks…citing various gaffs and highlighting mounting evidence hinting that the former Massachusetts Governor may be out of touch with the average working American.

The discussion included current Massachusetts’s Governor Duval Patrick, and a woman (Kelly Ayotte I believe) senator from the state of New Hampshire.  My normal M.O. would have been to keep working and ignore the show, however as I continued answering emails, the civil tone of the discourse caught my attention and I began to watch more closely. In the present-day sound-bite/gotcha journalism environment the exchange seemed almost like a throwback to an era when folks like William F. Buckley would sit reclined in his chair with a twinkle in his eye, holding his ink pen in a relaxed fashion, while having a respectful conversation with someone who often held a completely different point of view.

Unlike Chris Matthews interrupting and screaming into the camera…Gregory and his guests seemed to be having a ratings killing respectful dialogue. However it wasn’t long before it became rather apparent that both the Sunday show campaign lackeys were largely repeating party talking points…which included the Ayotte lambasting Obama for his failed job’s record, and Duval noting that the President created more jobs in four years than his predecessor (Bush II) did in the previous eight.  Almost regardless of the subject, one speaker seemed to have a statistic that somehow completely refuted the pervious speaker’s point. The discussion was however respectful and refreshingly civil…and it got me to thinking that the normal polarizing rancor over most elections really is largely unnecessary. The fact-of-the-matter is that there are absolutely good reasons for certain people to vote for Governor Romney…and an equally appropriate rationale to pull the lever for the President. At the end-of-the-day, there really isn’t a need for all the acidic rhetoric and heated debate…because knowing who to vote for, as my grandfather wisely figured out long ago, really isn’t all that complicated.

You see…if you love this country, if you are patriotic, and if you are among the percentage of population that is quite well off (it’s more than 1%), you might want to vote for the former Governor from New England.  Regardless how you came about your fortune…whether you worked up from nothing through your own hard work (and very likely the labor of many that work for you that helped), or if you were seeded a good sum as a start or even if you inherited most of your wealth, your instinct to protect as much of your riches and shield it from taxes is understandable.

However if you love this country, if you are patriotic, and if you are among the multitudes that work hard every day struggling to get ahead while a relatively small percentage of the already wealthy get even richer, then your desire for a more just share of the economic pie is equally understandable…and your instinct to check the box next to the President’s name also makes perfect sense.

It isn’t complicated, it isn’t about good or bad, it isn’t about patriotism and there really isn’t a need for all the acrimonious bank-n-forth. If you’re rich…or even just very well off, go ahead and vote for the Governor. He has been unequivocal in his pledge to protect your interests…and I suspect as a man of his word…he will do just that. However if you’re not rich…or even among the population’s top 10% of income earners, then consider punching the card for a President committed to protecting working people and their families.

My grandpa  was the hardworking son of Swedish immigrants and despite his efforts and struggles, he never earned much more than 10K in any given year. Despite his rigid social beliefs deeply rooted in the hugely conservative Evangelical Free Church, he was a yellow dog Roosevelt Democrat that never forgave Herbert Hoover for “turning his back” on the family farm during the Great Depression. I don’t know of a more religious man than my grandpa…and when he died in 1991 he actually looked forward to a mansion on a hilltop situated on streets paved with gold. In the living room of his modest North Dakota home there was a picture of Jesus Christ. Just next to it was a picture of Franklin D. Roosevelt…and as I recall…the carpenter’s picture hung no higher than the one of the former president. I asked him once how he could be a Democrat given his old-school social ideology and without hesitation he responded by saying that it really wasn’t all that complicated. “If you sign the front of the payroll check you’re a Republican…if you sign the back…you’re a Democrat.” I sign the back…I’m a Democrat. It’s pretty simple.” 

Interestingly, most of his grandkids (not me) have attained astonishing wealth as hardworking business owners in the domestic automobile industry.   They are devotedly religious people with a strong Midwestern work ethic. On pay day, they sign the front of the checks of their hardworking employees. All of my successful cousins own multiple homes and are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. I don't hold it against them...were I in the same boat, I might vote the same way. But I'm not…and when pay day comes for me…I still sign the back of my check. I’m a Democrat…and this November I’ll proudly pull the level for the President that saved the Domestic auto industry for the good of the country…for my cousins that own dealerships...and for so many of my hardworking Brothers and Sisters that produce the vehicles they successful sell and service.  

It’s simple, it makes perfect sense and there’s no need for any hard feelings. Vote in your economic best interests and nobody should resent you for it. If you’re wealthy…vote for Mitt. If you’re working…vote for Obama. Grandpa was right…it’s really not all that confusing.

I wish I had some game...

...and getting your haircut ain't what it used to be

I’m 50 (sorry…I started to cry)…so I’m guessing for at least the first 35 years I had my hair cut at an old school barber shop with one of those classic twirling red, white and blue barber poles out front. For most of that period it was at Darrell’s Barber Shop in West LA at 2450 Overland Blvd just south of Pico Blvd. It was adjacent to the old May Company (now the east end of the Westside Pavilion) and the old California Federal bank (now Citi I think). The Owner Darrell was an older Jewish fellow that had the chair closest to the door, and his wife, who had a classic white/blond beehive hairdo that must have extended a solid 8 or 9 inches above the top of her skull had a manicure table on the east end of the shop by the bathroom in the corner.

I don’t recall for sure, but it seems to me there were about four barber chairs along the south wall, all with mirrors behind them and cheap frame with a black and white picture of the barber along with a license showing they’d had some level of training to practice their craft. Most of the guys seemed ancient to me as a kid, and it was almost like they’d actually died years ago…but their bodies continued to give haircuts. When I was real young, it wasn’t uncommon to see somebody getting shaved with  some cream whipped up and applied by one of those old-style brushes, and then shaved with a straight blade that at the time looked like a small machete.  It also  wasn’t unusual to walk in there on a Saturday and see the place full of men getting haircuts, drinking coffee and talking about sports…and no man EVER had to have his hair washed before it was cut. You just walked in, sat down, and got a your hair cut.

I suspect there may have been a woman getting a manicure in there a time or two…but other than the occasional brave mother that accompanied a weak young son into the joint, I don’t even really recall seeing another female in the place. To be honest, I don’t ever recall seeing a dude at the manicuring table either. I suspect it may have happened a time or two, but I’m guessing it was at a slow time during the week or later in the evening when there were fewer witnesses.

The north wall of Darrell’s was lined with windows, and about five or six metal and leather chairs where folks could sit and wait, or just kick back and chat with the barbers or other customers. There was usually sections of the day’s LA Times or Herald Examiner spread around the waiting chairs, and a magazine rack on the west end by the door that even had a couple of Playboy magazines. As a young church going boy solidly on the straight-and-narrow, I was repulsed by the filthy periodicals and steadfastly refused to even step into that shop for a haircut more than a couple of times a week. Darrell’s was a classic place…and there was little doubt that it was a sanctuary for men.

In later the years after Darrell and his wife retired, the shop was purchased and run by Rueben (he still operates it today). Rueben was a cool cat, who actually boxed as a welterweight (under the name Ray Rueben I believe) at the old Olympic Auditorium on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. He had old black-and-white 8x10s on the wall of old fighters…including several of him wearing some belts that looked like you would had to have won fights to own.  Rueben was an enigma…because he was also the quintessential 60’s hippy that drove a green and white VW Bus and actually started shampooing hair before he cut it.  The signs of the looming de-evolution were not obvious to me at the time, but a smarter young man would have recognized that this pre-cut hair washing was just a slippery slope towards the general degeneration of manhood…and unchecked it wouldn’t long before men were getting their hair blow dried or worse…making appointments for a mani-pedi.  

 

 

When I moved north of Los Angeles to the High Desert, I started going to a Super Cuts and having a girl cut my hair. I  didn’t really know that women cut men’s hair, but that seemed to be the trend and she seemed to do a pretty decent job. They’d wash your hair at Super Cuts which was a tough adjustment, but things just started to seem different.  Plus…a lot of things were changing. People were starting to carry around wireless pagers in case someone was trying to get ahold of them, you could now put a document into a machine and have a copy go through the wire and come out the other end, and there were a bunch of black stealth jets that couldn’t be detected by radar flying all over the Antelope Valley. It just seemed like the world was changing.  

When we moved to Washington, DC, I tried to upgrade yet again and after a few  local Super Cuts debacles, I started going to a Hair Cuttery (or is it cutlery) up in Kensington. I thought the woman that cut my hair there was decent (think it was $14 bucks with a shampoo), but I noticed my wife would always walk several paces behind me in public. Actually, her pretending she’s not actually with me is not all that strange…but this seemed worse than normal…especially after a recent haircut. When I inquired why, she mentioned I needed to get away from the standard bowl-cut and start going to a real salon. As I always do when she talks, I listened and started going to a place in Downtown DC called Piaf. At this joint, a man’s haircut costs about 30 bones (by the time you’re done tipping everyone it’s closer to 50)…and sometimes they wash your hair twice. The woman that cuts my hair there always tries to talk me into getting a manicure, and when she does I can almost hear my German and Swedish ancestors literally spinning in their graves. This past Wednesday she started in again…but this time, she went over the line.

 

As she moved about styling my hair, she suggested I get a “man’s” facial. I told her I thought that sounded like a great idea, and asked if they could also perform castrations in the back. She started busting up, and asked if I really thought facials were only for women. So here we are, it’s 2012, John Wayne is dead and my female stylist is telling me (while blow-drying my hair) that I should get a man’s facial. I’d tell you what I really think about that, but this is a family blog. Plus…I need to run out and  get my eyebrows done (kind of a cut and color thing).

Have a great early fall weekend and try to do something fun. If you can, spend some time with the people that matter most.

 

You may want to start it with a little music too.

 

I got a thing about doors...

...and running a construction crew is a genuine skill I still don't have

An industry mentor of mine emailed me the other day about a new book he is writing and astonishingly, he asked me if I thought there was anything he might be leaving out. The guy has been a monumental success promoting excellence in the construction industry, and I’ve had the good fortune to speak and teach to different audiences essentially mimicking his themes and promoting his cutting-edge ideas (with his permission).  In light of the way he’s helped my career, it struck me as a bad sign for the fortunes of his new book that he was actually asking me for input…so I was reluctant to weigh in. I’m also reminded multiple times a week about the pitfalls of talking just for the sake of doing so (usually by my own failure to keep my trap closed), and as I get older I try to be better about NOT contributing to the conversation when there’s little of value left to be said. Unfortunately, and as increasingly happens of late,  such evolution too often evades me so I responded to my friend with something I hoped would be helpful though knowing full-well his draft stood fine on its own without help from me. The exchange did however get me to thinking about my old days running work in Los Angeles as an electrical foreman back in the 1980s…and it brought to mind a lesson about work and managing people I’ve never fully learned.

The construction economy was booming in Southern California in the 1980s, and there were literally thousands of electricians working in the area from all over the United States and for that matter…all over the world. There was such a shortage of skilled manpower, some larger projects like the Budweiser Brewery in the San Fernando Valley were distributing “Bud Points” based on attendance which could be redeemed for prizes (like big-screen TVs). Other jobs were paying bonuses for “ringers,” which meant folks got extra money simply for showing up five days in a row in the course of a week. Several of the construction sites were massive, and manning them with the appropriate number of trained craftsman was essential to meeting scheduling milestones and critical completion deadlines.

Needless to say, such a robust construction climate made it difficult for those of us tasked with running run-of-the-mill electrical projects. Job opportunities were a dime and dozen, and keeping quality men and women electricians tempted almost daily by more overtime, better conditions, more interesting work or just a shorter commute was a genuine challenge. Thankfully, I had vials of cocaine to pass out on the job…so I was able to keep people around…and more importantly, keep them working productively. Actually, that’s not even close to true…but it is fun to test to see if anyone is still actually reading. So while I didn’t have the benefit of mind-altering substances in our drug-free work environment,  I did have a worn out copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”  given to me by my IBEW dad and some awfully good lessons passed down from journeymen and foremen when I was working as a cub.

The job included several office buildings just west of Beverly Hills in Century City on a street appropriately named “Avenue of the Stars.” It was only a few miles from my boyhood home (and my former paper route in two top-end 28-story condo high rises).  This particular week, the crescendo of looming construction deadlines made things especially stressful. To make matters worse, I was facing several important electrical inspections and the call I’d put in for extra manpower hadn’t been filled for days. There simply was too much work and not enough people to do it.

One morning amidst the growing pressure and chaos, I was particularly disgusted as I arrived at the building only to notice that some derelict that wandered into the lobby from the street. Later that morning as the crew was gathering around the gang box before the weekly safety meeting, one of the wireman joked about the lagging building security saying he’d seen the same homeless guy hanging out in the lobby. Another guy cracked that the fellow was probably one of the new electricians…but I wasn’t much in the mood for lame attempts at humor. Sometime later, the elevator opened on one of the floors we were remodeling and the shabbily dressed degenerate I’d spotted in the lobby walked off the elevator car with the security guard and handed me a pink dispatch receipt indicating he was one of the folks answering my call for additional help.

My instinct was to refuse the guy and send him back immediately, but I had waited four days to get somebody and I desperately needed a warm body to install down lights in the 10^th floor lobby. Getting something less than impeccably trained journeymen electricians was somewhat unusual but not unheard of when work was booming…as most all-stars were already working steadily at the project of their choice. However this chap seemed particularly bad, and worse, his dress and general demeanor literally made him look (at least to me) as though he’d spent the last few evenings on a bus bench. Desperate for help I decided to give him a try, however it dawned on me almost immediately that he didn’t speak or understand any English. I tried a little German and Spanish on him (all I knew at the time…I know less now) but that didn’t work. It turned out the guy’s name was Victor and he was from Yugoslavia, but other than him smiling when I said “Tito,” we could not communicate at all.

To say I was frustrated was an understatement, and after trying to work with him for an hour or so and realizing I couldn’t even communicate with him, I decided to essentially fire him on the spot (wasn’t sure how I’d explain it to him, but was confident he’d get the picture). Exasperated, I pushed the button for the elevator and when it arrived, I motioned for him to get on and planned to walk him out the front door. On the way down the door opened on the 8^th floor and there was a guy that answered my last call (some Polish guy named Jakub) on a ladder installing light fixtures in the elevator lobby. Despite the language challenges Jakub was a good hand, and thankfully he could speak very limited English and a little more German. I waved at him, the doors closed and Victor and I continued our ride down. When the car stopped on the first floor I was hit with an epiphany…and I held my hand across the door to prevent Victor from walking off the elevator. I then pushed 8, and we rode back up to where Jakub was diligently working. I introduced Victor to him, told him Victor was from Yugoslavia, and asked him if he could communicate with someone from that country. I’ll never forget his reply as he responded in broken English “maybe.”

Jakub proceeded to say something to Victor (I think in Polish…but it just sounded like a bunch of hard consonants and more like cussing than anything meaningful), and immediately Victor’s face lit up. Touchdown! I paired the two communists up immediately, and though they had limited electrical skills, they did some basic tasks (like install light fixtures) as well as anybody…probably better than me. Victor had actually worked as an electrician back home, and except for the language barrier with me, he worked well with Jakub and the two were adequate hands and better than average fixture installers on the 50-plus person crew. As it turned out, they wired the lion’s share of the elevator lobby lights in that entire high-rise building.

What’s the point of all this…not sure really. It’s probably mostly about feeling the obligation to provide content at 4am on a Friday morning when you’ve committed yourself to some stupid blog, but it might also have something to do with not judging a book by its cover. I suppose it could also demonstrate something about exercising the patience to get the most of people, and to learn a bit more about a person’s potential as an electrician…and as a person…before rushing to any unwarranted judgment.  As it turned out Victor was really a pretty good guy, a decent electrician…and to be honest, he probably dressed better than me (he actually would wear old black slacks, dark socks and worn dress shoes to work…until I bought him a pair of work boots). Aside from the fact that we couldn’t talk much, he turned out to be a pretty good hand, and as tool buddies, Victor and Jakub were tough to beat by any measure. They ended up staying on for the duration of the job, and ultimately getting transferred to another project where they worked as a productive team for quite some time.

Anybody can manage people when times are bad, but doing so in a good climate when workers have options is a rare talent I still don’t possess. Such an environment highlights the need to convey genuine appreciation, to motivate, and the necessity to demonstrate patience when evaluating the best use of all resources…including human.

Have a wonderful weekend. Football is back, the days are getting shorter, the conventions are over and the race is on.

I bought a new Ukulele this week and have been working on this song. If you take the time to listen…you’ll have a better day…guaranteed. But if you don’t like this…I can’t help you.

 

Sorry for the typos and mispellings.  

Lemon drops...