Did irrigation installations, the residential jobs weren't bad but some of the commercial ones were BRUTAL. Like go home and die brutal. Then there was custom-cutting in the Triangle. 16 hour days for a month straight, we were fed well, but not paid well. The experience was good.
By far the worst was day labor through the state employment office, all sorts of filthy bonehead jobs, but the killer was being on a Christmas-tree crew during an early fall, I'd taken a semester off because the class I needed to graduate wasn't being offered. So rather than just go to school from my summer job on the RR, I had to tide myself over three months. I was working with the 1980s equivalent of meth heads, if they weren't dopers, they were just dumb. Started out with five days of pleasant weather.
So one night it snows and freezes to the cut trees, which are now frozen to the ground and the loose needles are frozen to the trees. There were "shakers" that would grab the butt of the tree, right. And again, the tree is wet ice, and as it shakes, there's a harmonic spot where you could hold the tree. Most of the time, however, you missed that spot and shook like he// with the tree for the triple-time it took to get the facking dead needles loose.
Well, it kept snowing and freezing.
The last two days, I just staggered out of the car, straight into the shower, then had to dry and clean all my gear before O dark the next snowy morning. Well, I couldn't tie my boots. My hands were so wrecked I think it was at least four months before I had full grip strength again and a year before the pain fully went away. Trust me, I aced all my classes that winter.
