One Day I went to Work with Nick and Nirmegh

One day I went to work with Nick and Nirmegh. Nirmegh was our high school ski coach, and is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, for example I bought my firewood from him this past year. He and Nick were working on the foundation of a house out by Red Rocks Park. I guess there was some water damage and the owner was looking to fix it, most likely on the cheap. One day that summer, I went with Nick and helped out.

They had dug a trench around the house to get at the foundation. The house was supported with wooden beams in the basement. They had also dug a trench from the house down the backyard to allow water to drain away. The trenches were maybe five feet deep, and were dug by hand, either because it was more cost-effective that way, or because they're just wasn't room for excavation equipment. It may have been the latter; it was a small area back there. The ground was almost entirely clay. I can’t imagine how much effort it had taken to dig all that clay.

Our job that day was to mix concrete for the foundation and to fill the drainage ditch with crushed stone. We transported the stone from Nirmegh’s truck bed with a wheelbarrow and shoveled and dumped it in the drainage trench. Let me tell you, a wheelbarrow full of stone is a heavy item. I'm not sure how many truck-beds full there were, at least two.

And then we mixed concrete. I carried bags of concrete mix over my shoulder and mixed them with hose-water. Again, I'm not sure how many bags there were, I can only say that there was always one more.

After a few hours of hauling, shoveling, and jumping in and out of truck beds and ditches, I was spent. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that I was out of shape, lazy, or weak-willed; it was that Nick did not stop. When we finished unloading a truck-bed of stone, Nick quickly told Nirmegh to go get more. I wanted to slap him. Isn’t that enough?

I don't remember every detail about that day; we must have taken a break for lunch at some point but I don't remember. What I do remember is that we never stopped, we didn't take breaks. That sort of work requires breaks; it's exhausting. When I got home I felt like I’d been continually beaten for hours. I was more physically exhausted than I could remember.

I can still picture that drainage ditch. I remember putting a shovel to the clay and thinking “Holy hell I can't believe this was hand-dug by two people. Jesus.”

I never went back to work with Nick and Nirmegh after that day. I got paid cash, probably more than I made at the restaurant, but I never did it again. I'm not sure how long they worked on that house, or even what other work they did that summer, but if the rest of it was anything like that day, wow. Somehow Nick would find, this almost makes me laugh, the energy to run when he wasn't working. Maybe he only ran on days off. I can't imagine coming home from a day like that and going for a run. I can picture him crashing on the couch, with or without the TV on.