I remember sitting having lunch one hot October afternoon during one such Santa Ana event
with one of my
early IBEW electrician mentors Joe Zamora. We were working for a
company called Amelco Electric on a historic construction project in the
mid-Wilshire area of downtown Los Angeles.
The all too rare restoration effort at an old-school open air market was
unusual for a city that has a poor record maintaining its few architectural treasures, and this particular 6th
Street gem just blocks from the iconic Ambassador Hotel (think Coconut Grove and RFK)
and the original Brown Derby restaurant offered an interesting challenge
for any construction electrician.
We were taking our collectively
bargained 30-minute lunch time break, sitting on the curb with a couple of
other union tradesmen after buying a couple of carnitas burritos from the roach
coach (BTW…this is just a side note…but those trendy food trucks where you
pay inflated prices for what you think is gourmet food aren’t new. Vendors have
been poisoning construction workers with tasty food prepared in vermin infested
mobile kitchens for decades. They just didn’t paint their trucks goofy colors,
give them exotic names to lure white-collar workers or charge exorbitant
amounts for food laced with rat droppings). In typical fashion, I was
sitting there bitching to my fellow brothers about everything that is wrong
with job I had just finished running at Crocker Center (now Wells Fargo) and
all the heartache I’d received from stubborn old electricians resistant to my
more evolved way of electrical construction.
At that point in my mid-20s, I
was a cocky, weight-trained greenhorn foreman and though my inaugural effort to
run work had been a successful money maker for the contractor, there was no
shortage of stress from my perspective. Mostly there was a general sense that
things hadn’t gone nearly as smooth as they could or should have…especially if
those working for me had only been more open-minded and reasonable. In
classic fashion, my mentor Joe was patiently listening to me bellyache. He was
a seasoned veteran at running big electrical construction projects and a
well-respected instructor in the much heralded labor/management
apprenticeship program. Those reasons alone were enough to seek his
advice, but he also had this great voice that was like listening to Cheech
Marin. Every time he ever saw me he used to begin by enthusiastically asking
“Hey homes…waz up?”
Shortly after I’d finished my whining about all the push back I’d gotten from dinosaur electricians resistant to doing things my new and improved way, I was curious what pearls of wisdom Joe would offer to help me deal with uncooperative crews. As I waited, Joe smiled and pointed across the streets lined with bungalows at the classic tall palm trees that line so many of LA’s older streets…particularly in the inner city. If you haven’t been there you’ve seen them in the movies…and given their towering height and their alarmingly small diameter trunks…it’s amazing that their able to stand at all.
The wind was howling hard that
day, and as Joe motioned towards the trees bending in the force of the wind, we
had an exchange that went something pretty much like this.
Joe: “Hey homes…did you notice
all the downed trees driving into work this morning?”
Me: “Yeah…of course…it was hard
not to. Heard it blew in some places close to 70mph for hours.”
Joe: “Yeah…there were down all
around me too. Big sturdy oaks with rigid trunks uprooted and pretty much
toppled over.”
Me: “Yep”
Joe: “But homes…check out all
those palm trees. Did you see any palm trees like them knocked down?”
Me: “Now that you mention it…no.
But I’m unclear what this has to do with anything.”
Joe: “Do you ever see any of
those flimsy palm trees down after a wind storm? I mean really…how is that
possible, they don’t even look strong enough to stand when it’s still.”
Me: “Yeah…I guess I really never
thought much about it. But again… what the hell does this have to do with my
problems running the job?”
Joe: “Well don’t you even wonder
why those skinny palm trees are still standing while all those much sturdier
trees can’t withstand the wind?”
Me: “What?”
Joe: “Homes…look at those palm
trees. The wind is blowing close to 40mph now and they’re almost bent in half.
The rigid trees you saw laying down this morning stand strong but eventually
break…but the much thinner palm trees sway back-n-forth and all they do is bend
and bounce back. That’s how it ties to your work problems…if you’re going to
survive in the big time construction industry over the long haul…you got to
learn how to bend and sway.”
At the time I didn’t think much
of Joe’s sage advice, however the older I get the more it seems to resonate. If
I tried to stand strong in the face of the unyielding forces resistant to
change, I’d burnout in almost no time. However on the days I’m flexible…and let
myself bend when it’s blowing, somehow I seem better positioned to withstand
the constant headwinds. It’s funny, in my early years I put so much value in
being like an oak…now, as I get older, I see so much more virtue in being like
a palm.
Have a fabulous weekend, and if
you feel a variety of forces conspiring to take you down, don’t be afraid to be
strong enough to bend.
Fresh scent of what???
Bonus track...We may lose and we may win...
Kirk, I love the columns and look forward to how you pair them with music each week. But I have to ask how dare you subject your loyal readers to not one but two Eagles songs in one day?
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