Construction
Nobody cares about the wage.
Construction is the only sphere of activity in my life in which I have seen men push themselves beyond what they thought themselves capable. In other places, I have seen men talk this way and attempt to act this way, but they never bet anything, they never risked themselves. Mentally, or physically. Not really. It is not about the wage. Nobody cares about the wage. It can be pretty good after two weeks of solid work. But the wage is not the reason you step out unsupported with no fall protection over a span that causes the board you’re walking on to deflect half an inch. You do it to show you aren’t a coward. To prove to yourself that you are brave. To make the job go faster. And in the accomplishment of all three of these objectives, you have overcome yourself. Standing below a spinning object that weighs a quarter ton. Imaging what it would do to you if it fell on you. Listening to the hydraulics whine. Listening to the telehandler roar. Implicitly trusting the guy running it because if you didn’t you would just have to go home. You could not stay there. Stepping up off the ladder on to a wall. Feeling those structural members on the pads of your feet. Taking that quarter ton object with the claw of your hammer and pulling it toward you. Guiding it on down. Fastening it. Putting it THERE, the place it was meant to go, the place the designer envisioned, the place the engineer approved, the place you had to build up and the place which only you and the other workers had the stones to summit and see that object arrested against wind, against physics, against the world. This is construction. This is the world. This is the making of the world. Someone has to do it. These ornaments upon the horizon do not arise of their own accord.
I used to hang sheetrock, back when we still used drywall nails and a hatchet. Sometimes I ran mud or sprayed texture. I did it for almost two years I never got very good at it, but I did get to the point where it was occasionally satisfying and well past the point where I understood what an honest day's work means.
My dad did drywall and metal stud framing for thirty years. Ran the business. Built a few of our homes, too. He woke up at 3am to beat traffic to the job site, came home and conked out on the couch in the afternoon. His back is shot, his hands are shot. But damn if that guy didn't get sh!t done.
He still does. Our basement ceiling sprung a leak from an unsealed joint. He invited himself over to rip out the wet sheetrock and then patch it back up a few days later.