Back in the early Eighties I mainly earned my keep as a gas-fitter. I remember coming to Vancouver after a long trek all the way from North Vancouver to Tangiers, in the Kingdom of Morocco and back again via Texas. I spent the night on someone's couch and went to the Canada Manpower Office early the next morning. I was feeling good and had on a brand new white tee-shirt and my cleanest jeans. I had no more money, no where to live, a guitar and a red tool box.
I saw an ad for a gas-fitter placed by a local North Vancouver firm and I decided to pay them a visit. I found the office with some difficulty, although it was hidden in plain sight. I walked in and asked the willowy young gal at the front desk if I could speak with the owner. She twirled around and padded into the back of the small home-handyman styled workspace and spoke in low tones to a hidden voice.
There were B vents, hot water tanks, gas fireplaces and a few furnaces on display in the cedar shake decorated front room. A CB radio stood dusty and coffee stained on the counter just above the secretary's desk. She had an old Rolodex file, a typewriter, a phone, a microphone, a souvenir cactus ashtray from Arizona and a large mug of coffee.
She floated back into the room and told me to go right to the back of the office and the boss would see me. I wandered back through a cluttered hallway, stacked with machine parts, tools and bags of various things that someone surely intended to use someday. At the end of the hall was a small office. A man that looked like a younger version of my father rose up from an open ledger on an old oak desk and heartily shook my hand.
He introduced himself and I reciprocated. He asked a few questions about my previous experience with gas furnace installation and servicing. I answered all his questions truthfully but without selling myself short. I didn't write any cheques with my mouth that my Stillson wrenches couldn't cash. I told him about my time working at a local Vancouver shipyard, where I had hooked up the air-conditioning piping systems for an ocean going vessel, from blueprints. I also told him of my very limited experience with gas appliances and my lack of experience with new construction.
As I spoke, an ever-growing grin inched across his face like a man who'd been playing a fish for hours and had finally caught a glimpse of it. He tilted his head to one side the way a dog does when it decides it likes you. After a few moments, he curtly cut off my dialogue.
“Take-sas? You're from Texas? Well, I'll be dipped in dog-shit! Tex, I mean Mike, look here, do you like coffee? You-all want some?” he said, in a hearty Cortes Islander’s attempt to mimic my accent.
I smiled back and answered in the affirmative.
“Well, the dang pot is over yonder, out front by Katrina, so go get it your own damn-self. We don't play no favourites or do any hand-holding around here. Then, you-all come on back here.”
I poured myself a dusty mug full of scorched bilge, inoculated it with sooty sugar from a jam jar, stirred it with a dirty spoon and headed back into the bull-pen.
“Look, kid. I like you, eh? You're frikkin’ honest and I can tell from what you said that you know how to cut, thread and fit pipe. Otherwise that oil-rig supply ship you worked on would have sunk on its way to Venezuela, but she didn't, eh? Now, part of the year, we do a lot of servicing. I savvy that you don't know diddly-squat about that, eh? The good news is, I’m willing to show you how. I'll send you out with my old Limey serviceman for a month and he'll show you some more. We are strictly non-union, eh? Everybody starts at ten bucks an hour. Later, if you figure you're worth more and you have the balls to ask for it, I might consider giving you a raise.”
“Each morning, Katy out front, will give you some coveralls and the job addresses for the day. Me and a partner have a warehouse down by the Wheat Pool on Esplanade. We share the sheet-metal fabricating machinery and the storage space. He's got a Kraut gas-fitter. That's where you get all your parts and fittings, eh? Right now we are doing oil to gas conversions. You load up the furnaces and water heaters from that warehouse and take all the thermostats, fittings, pipe and everything else you need. I'll assign you a truck and you'll be M-7 on the radio, eh? If you get up a stump over some electrical wiring, call me up on the radio and I'll walk you through it. I'm M-8. Katy is Base. Did you ever use a CB? No. We'll just remember to say “over” when you're done squawking. Nothing to it.”
“Work starts here at 7 A. M. sharp. When Katy gives you your assignments, you hit the warehouse and load up. I'll come around to the jobs to measure up the plenum transitions and ducts, once you tear the old shit out. Then I'll go back to the warehouse, fabricate that stuff and come back to install it. I'll show you how to wire the furnaces and switches, the first couple of times, eh? You should have the gas pipe all done by the time I'm back with the sheet metal. There’s a big fellow called Paul who comes around all my jobs to take the scrap metal. You stop and help him load his truck, eh?”
“I don't really like saying the word 'Mike', so I'm gonna call you Mick, OK? Mick, we put cardboard down on all the floors wherever we walk in these houses and we leave our jobs spotless when we go, eh?, OK. Oh, yeah, you can park the work truck behind the shop here. I live across the alley in the yellow house and I like to keep an eye on my fleet.”
“See you in the morning Boss. Thanks.”
Thus began several years of interesting employ with a North Vancouver heating legend. Boss was a good man. We enjoyed a bumper year of three jobs a day and then he kept me in his employ for another year after the bottom fell out of the B. C. economy and work was so scarce that PhD s were washing dishes.
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