It’s hard to pick out the women and even when you do you’re not sure it’s a woman under the hardhat. I’m pretty sure I saw two. The only Black man I saw was servicing the portable toilets, but that is not to say there aren’t other people of color working on the construction site that spans at least two large blocks and goes deep into the Saint Thomas campus. I just don’t see them. The guys on the periphery are white, like the three guys standing on the sidewalk outside of the morning huddle. With that beard the redhead in the middle looks like he could be a member of ZZ Top, except I can’t picture any of them vaping. If anything they would smoke. A photographer with privileges would be in heaven. Everywhere I look there is a picture.

Of course there is old fashioned smoking too, so much that I wonder if there shouldn’t be a quit smoking campaign directed at construction workers (and bartenders and cosmetologists and rock stars). What is it about operating a backhoe that makes a person crave nicotine? Like a mother hen, I wish they wouldn’t. It doesn’t match their strong young bodies. I wish the old timers would give it up too.

I pass a flag man who has a small cooler sitting next to him and think it’s sweet that he didn’t want to be separated from his lunch. On the lid of the cooler there are four empty cup holders molded into the plastic. On the return there is a bottle of water, half full, in of the the holders. Close by three men are having a smoke on a retaining wall in front of an apartment building. I overhear part of a story… “…and then he pulls out in front of me like this…” I imagine that it is a story like the ones my brother-in-law might tell about the guy you should never take on a hunting trip. He’s an idiot and he might kill you.

I imagine living across from the construction site that wakes up by seven o’clock. It’s fun to see whenever I take a walk in that direction. But it would drive me nutty to live with it for an extended period of time. The rest of the summer for sure and maybe into next year?

I stop to watch a man in a bobcat remove part of a sidewalk, while another man on a big hill of recently excavated dirt oversees the operation. A few other men are on the ground watching too. It’s not clear what their roles are, but I assume they will help, point, assist or signal as needed. Before sliding the bucket under a slab of concrete, the machine scrapes the gravel toward itself as if trying to level the ground a bit. Scratching like an animal might. Then it lifts up a piece of cement and if it is too big or awkward to lift, will drop it several times until it breaks. A smart animal, with problem solving skills. And we thought it was just a machine! To be efficient, slabs are neatly stacked before lifted and placed into a larger front end loader that waits there like a hungry chick begging for a worm. At first I am reminded of Edward Scissorhands trying to eat a pea but then come to appreciate that these birds really have the dexterity of a surgeon. Amazing!

Suddenly all of the machinery seems to be animated and it makes me recall how my bicycle feels like a restless horse underneath me. The backhoe is a cat coughing up a hairball. It scoops up the ground in one spot and empties the bucket in another. Because the dirt sticks – like the way the snow sticks to my shovel – it shakes it off with these quick backward jolts that would be unnatural for a person to mimic and hell on the neck. Bam! Bam! Bam! Just like my cat, Ehgh! Ehgh! Ehgh!

And now…

For the next thing on the list!

More work in the kitchen. A few things in the stairway. When Brian comes home, he’ll help me with the ladder so that I can reach up to wipe down the walls.