Boot Scuff Goatee

Sometimes even cousins get into minor scuffles with each other when they spend 12 hours a day working together during summer vacation. The money was good and helped tremendously with our college educations but we worked hard and sometimes got on each other’s nerves a little. Here’s the story

 

Boot Scuff Goatee

 

When my cousin Rick and I were 19 years old, my Uncle Harold got us jobs as electricians helpers. The electricians we were helping were part of the Phillips General Services Group based in Phillips,Texas. Phillips Petroleum Company was building pipeline pumping stations for a new product line from Borger, Texas, to Denver, Colorado. We started out building a pumping station near Campo. Colorado. We stayed in a motel Boise City, Oklahoma, and drove out to the pump station construction site every day. Rick and I dug ditches for all the conduit. We cut, bent, threaded, and beveled all the conduit and installed it as per the design drawings. The electricians selected the wire colors and got them ready to pull. Rick and I ran the fish tape, the electricians hooked it up and we pulled it through. We pretty much did anything they wanted us to do. We were working 12 hours a day so the pay was great. We also had an expense account.

 

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Hurry up Rick, this thing is getting very heavy.  ……Don’t get your bowels in an uproar, I’m just about done here.

 

 

The electricians trucks had doors on the side that laid down horizontally when they were opened. This gave the electricians a sort of work bench to work on when they were in the field. We were with an electrician named Jack one day, and he had been working around his truck all morning. We noticed that he had packed up and left us there, so we asked the other electrician where he went. He told us Jack was working with the side panel down horizontally and was kind of in a hurry. He had turned the corner too sharp and the point on the panel corner had caught him in the groin area and ripped a 1/2 inch tear in his scrotum. He had headed for the ER to get his scrotum sewed up. The next day a new electrician named Slim came up and we rode with him for a while. Rick and I were extremely careful around those trucks with open panels the rest of the summer.

 

 

That top side panel on the truck drops down horizontally to make a work area table. If you cut that corner to sharp when you’re coming around the end of the truck with it down, you can do some serious scrotum damage on that sharp corner. We were very careful around that corner the rest of the summer.

 

 

 

We moved up to Denver when we finished that station and moved into a motel there and we worked on a pump station site just south of Denver. One morning after Rick and I had breakfast, we went back to the room and got into a scuffle about something. Rick hit me something when I was lying on the bed that hurt like hell and I saw a little red and rocked back and kicked out at him. My right toe boot just scraped the middle of his chin as it went by and scraped a little hide off. He saw big time red and I headed out the door so he wouldn’t kick my butt. He locked me out and I couldn’t get in until we had to load up with the electrician and head out to the job. We didn’t say a word to each other all the way out to the job. We had to communicate to function on the job, so we cooled down during the day. I apologized for giving Rick the boot scuff to the chin, and it was over. Rick looked like he had a cute little goatee for about a week.

 

 

I tried to recreate that boot scuff goatee I so rudely gave my cousin Rick so long ago in that Denver motel. I can see that it must have really hurt bad, so I want to apologize again. I believe Rick was a little thinner in those days.

 

 

 

When we finished at Denver, they sent us to La Junta,, Colorado, to finish up the summer at the existing Pipe Line Station there. We worked hard as laborers for a few weeks until I dropped a 120 pound Jackhammer on the top of my foot and had a serious case of fat blue foot for a while. We only had about a week to go before the summer was over, so we drug up and headed for Texas. I guess I got my payback due for the boot scuff goatee.

The 120 pound air driven jackhammer I was using that day. I was breaking out concrete foundations and the point had got stuck deep in the concrete. I had kind of relaxed my grip and the concrete suddenly broke loose and the jackhammer slipped out of my hands and the end of one of those handles hit me right square on the top of my foot. It felt like my whole body exploded and I saw blinding stars for a couple of minutes. I was done for the summer.

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Thanks for reading Boot Scuff Goatee,
Bill