That was my first big construction job ever. I didn’t even know that when huge excavators swing, they got a counterweight that’s wider than the tracks. So these guys would grab me and be like, “Yo, motherfucker,” when this thing would swing around. I came off a fucking ranch into that. I didn’t think about this much at the time, but it’s with me now still after working in all these different places: we all made the same money on the check, every one of us. Our straw boss made an hour a day or two hours a day more, maybe, but not much. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. They pushed me, probed me, gave me shit, busted my balls, taught me shit. But none of those guys ever bitched about making the same money that I made. One way the work crew would bring everybody on board was by getting a 12-pack for the drive back to the yard (remembering it’s a hundred-mile job). We’d be drinking in this company rig, and they’d make everyone split the empties and put them in their lunchboxes. Nobody’s snitching and getting out. Everybody’s disposing of the evidence together.