Part of the destruction of the old school building where I work involves putting up sheets of plastic and carefully removing the asbestos ceilings before finally chewing it up with various impressive machines, including the Jaws of Destruction (probably not its real name).

The old building gets chewed up by the Jaws of Destruction.

This reminds me of the summers I worked for Manpower and was assigned to do various jobs, that in retrospect, seem kind of dangerous (as if sitting under a 53 year old asbestos ceiling for 14 years wasn’t dangerous…)

First, I remember being assigned to clean up a school building in Salina, Kansas after the asbestos removal teams had done their job. Our job was to tear down the plastic sheeting and then climb up on ladders and scaffolding and remove the glue that had held the plastic to the walls. Keep in mind it was Kansas in the summer, which meant it was about a 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) and we were in small, badly ventilated rooms using a fairly potent solvent to remove the glue. This, I think, counts as the first and only time I was involved with huffing chemicals. We, the clean up crew, quickly learned to take frequent breaks, which involved flying out of the room and talking with a blue bird named Patty, or was it Sandy?, whilst we took in a spot of fresh air and stared at the sun because shiny.

I’m sure I lost at least several months of life because of that (along with several of the thin cords linking me to reality).

The other job I had with Manpower was building air supported dome structures (I don’t remember the name of the company). This involved cutting and laying large pieces of plastic and then melting them together with a rolling heater that looked a lot like an old style Hoover vacuum cleaner. The process gave off a lot of smoke inside the factory (which was also an air supported dome) but we all kept working at our various projects. One day I was chatting with the foreman and he mentioned how annoying the smoke was and I, being me, suggested it was also probably toxic, as inhaling burning plastic was not known for its health benefits. He said he’d asked the boss about it and the boss had assured him there was nothing to worry about.

This means, of course, I’m probably doomed. And it didn’t even give me the ability to fly.

I also moved furniture into a university building and several other short term jobs. In many ways, it was one of the best summer jobs I ever had. I was way out of place with blue collar workers, but they were much more accepting of a university type than most university types would be of blue collar workers. (Shakespeare? F@#k that shit. John Grisham and Tom Clancy, dude.) The pay was decent and it was better than working fast food because there were no uniforms, no customers to deal with and a lot less petty bullshit to deal with than I deal with now.

I also found a lifelong friend in Patty, or was it Sandy?