The Proudest Moment, Part two

“Ready for another?” boomer asked.

“Waiting on you, Boomer.” Cube said.

It was Friday afternoon. Boomer and Cube had just finished the longest hottest gruelingest work week of their lives. They were beat. They were sunburned from the waist up. In fact, cube was now so dark that were it not for his fine brown hair that the sun had bleached nearly blonde, he might have been mistaken for someone other than “the whitest guy ever”. After sweating it out all week, swinging a sledge hammer 40 hours in the blistering sun, they wanted nothing more than the relief that only an ice cold American lager could provide. But not yet.

Boomer filled cube’s empty cup and then his own.

“Cream? Sugar?”

“What’s the score?” Cube Asked.

“3-2, you.”

“Bullshit. I totally won that last one.”

“You only say that because the speed of sound, proximity of your cup, etc.”

“Fine, 3-2” Cube was worried. He took the first 3. Boomer, the next 2. Boomer was catching cube and cube was losing confidence. The first one to 5 wins. However Cube felt a forfeit coming on. He really did not want to slam any more coffee. His forehead was drenched with dirty sweat. Strangely, the nice cool air-conditioned Village Inn didn’t seem to help.

“Can’t we finish this with beer?”

“So you want to quit? I understand if you do.” Boomer was bluffing his ass off. He felt if he had to drink one more cup of coffee, his already bleeding throat was going to send it all back up, still scalding hot, onto the table.

“Fuck it,” Cube said, digging a dime (the wager) out of his pocket, sliding it to Boomer. It all started with some sort of “Dime fawa cup of coffee” joke neither one of them understood. “You win Daniel,” Boomer’s real name. “Let’s get over to “Louis’”



Louis’ (pronounced Louie’s) was not a person. It was a bar. It was well-known in town as the primer bar. If you were young and didn’t have a lot of cash, you started at Louis’. You could get good and “started” for about 3 or 4 bucks. Then you could milk it at the highfalutin places like the Dundee Dell or Trovato’s or whatever.

The boys worked as “Instrument men” at a local architectural firm. It was summer work. An instrument man was the second best of 3 jobs on a surveying crew. Rodman was a distant third. First place was for the guy who went to school. He carried around and interpreted the blueprints. He got to drive the vehicle. His title was “Prick”.

Normally, the work is not bad. Normally, boomer and cube didn’t work together. They were on separate crews. But this week, everybody (except Prick) was pounding in property pins.

A property pin is a steel rod about an inch and a half in diameter and 2 feet long. It is placed gently in the ground via sledge hammer, to mark the corner of a property line.

The problem with the ground where new construction is happening is that it tends to get packed down by all the big heavy yellow machinery driving around, moving dirt, etc.



On the previous Monday morning, Boomer and Cube reported to work only to be told they needed to put in all the property pins for Oak Street between 165th and 168th by Friday. At this point, Oak Street was just a well-worn dirt trail. It had recently been wilderness. The earth movers were done grading the street. The property lines had been drawn. All that remained was to have a couple of dummies with a sledge hammer and a shitload of steel pins pound them into the ground on the hottest driest week of the summer. Some college boy had already gone by and tapped some 16 penny nails (with bright orange plastic ribbon tied around their necks) into the location for each pin. Thanks dude, we owe you. Don’t get me wrong. The nails could not be pushed into the ground. It was too hard. A hammer (lighter than a sledge) was required for even this job.

Boomer proudly pockets the dime, grabs his pack out of a small pool of coffee spilled on the table, wipes it dry, and shakes a Kool from it. He offers one to Cube, who respectfully declines. Cube has his own smokes, but Boomer is trying to convert him over to the dark side (menthol).

Boomer had a new trick he was working on. If he ever mastered it, he was sure to get a tumor. He would lay the unlit cigarette in his hand, cradling it in the crease between his middle and third finger. By slapping the wrist of the hand holding the cigarette, Boomer could nearly always catapult the cigarette directly to the right of his open mouth, sending it neatly into the Cobb salad of the person in the booth behind him. This time, by some miracle, it actually landed in his mouth. It was almost as amazing as his reaction, “What? I never miss. What?”

“So, you want to head over to Louis’ then? I need a shower first,” Boomer exhaled, minty fresh smoke escaping from his tar filled lungs.

“Yeah, I’m going to head home. Pick me up in an hour,” Cube, working on his own trick, lighting the match from the book with one hand, and burning the tip of his thumb in the process.

Then Boomer had an idea, “You wanna catch Rocky Horror tonight?”

“Naaw, it’s at the 6-west now. I heard it really sucks. They don’t let anybody dress up or throw anything. All you can do is yell,” Cube informed.

“That’s all we ever did anyway.”

“Yeah, but I liked watching the freak-show too.”



“True. I say we clean up, head over to Louis’, then to The Homy for a while (you can’t finish at Louis’), Then I’ll ask you about it again. Deal?”

To be um, yeah, I’m not writing any more tonight, so …