When I was going to college my father got me a job with a painting crew that was working at the TRW plant on Euclid ave.
Outside the factory painting the factory window frames off a 40' wooden extension ladder on a scaffold. The first day my knees were shaking like leaves in the wind.
I was working with an old timer who walked on the scaffold like he was in a living room. The scaffold was like 18". The boss man said either get used to it quick or go home. I could not go home because my father got me the job. After two days I got my heart rate down. In a week I was ok but it was never a good feeling.
Wood ladders bow especially in wind. Scary as hell. Not iron worker height but 40' up is no joke standing on an 18 inch scaffold.
Back in the early ‘90’s.. my very first job. I was in high school and had to scrub stucco off the windows off a newly built medical building. About 4 stories high. However, this was on Waco scaffolding, 2x8 boards going across the scoffolding 4’ total as floors, braces on the side also acted as rails. 24” platforms or “picks” to stand on as I scrubbed the windows. Not too scary. Eventually I was building the scaffolding itself during ensuing jobs.
Why was there stucco on the windows you ask? Because the morons that I was working for didn’t want to prep the windows with masking material. Instead choosing to finesse their trowels around the windows. -They didn’t realize that as the were troweling, all of their excess stucco was falling and sticking to the windows and window frames on the lower floors of the exterior of the building. - Hire a 15 year old moron - me, to fix it. 😆.
We were luck because we weren’t there the day that OSHA showed up. Apparently rang up a bunch of guys for not wearing hard hats and other safety gear at various parts of the job site.
Funny (if not scary) story. We were there during an extreme heat wave, it was threatening to storm. The top floor is amazing... you can go outside on the roof and there are super-thick glass barriers all around.
This storm is coming. There was trash from street level rising to the top of the building and the tamp up there was plummeting. They were calling people back inside. My son and I were (purposely) last moving toward the door. A bolt of lightning flashed and the energy pulled our hair from our scalp. Absolutely surreal experience. As we're running inside, the rain started pouring down and and was already coming over the threshold before the doors were shut.
One of the craziest, scariest and coolest things I've ever experienced.
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Absolutely surreal experience. As we're running inside, the rain started pouring down and and was already coming over the threshold before the doors were shut.