Chapter 6

We worked our asses off that summer. I think the whole five months were just mashed together and I can't recall anything that would really separate June from September except the number of daylight hours we had to work with. By the beginning of October, we had probably done more jobs than I figured we would do in the whole year. The crews were getting worn out and I knew it was time to back off the pressure. Luckily, we weren't getting as many new jobs offered, so we could start to plan for some missing crew members.

The guys had made a lot of money in a very short period of time. The smallest take of any of the crew was over $60,000 for the five big months, and that made them pretty happy. We didn't work any Sundays and tried hard to avoid Saturday afternoons, just to keep the wives and girlfriends from rebelling. For myself, I couldn't believe how much I'd made in my first year. I was going to be able to repay Tom the money he fronted on my gambling debts and still have plenty left over. It was hard work, but we were being rewarded very well for it and we had nothing but satisfied customers.

I hadn't given much thought to Dana over that period. Since the barbeque, I'd hardly had any time for a social life and no time for a mental struggle with the lady. We saw each other regularly on the job and I have to say her attitude had changed for the better. I was trying out something new for me – patience. 'Let the lady come to me' was the strategy I employed. I was polite, complimentary and more than happy with her work. She was appearing on the site more often than I expected. I was happy to have her there since she wasn't just wandering around aimlessly. She had questions and she was providing me with some suggestions on how we might be more efficient. It didn't take me long to figure out she was really into her job and our business.

Dana was also doing work for Tom and he was really happy to have her help as well. She was super-efficient and very driven. Things we thought would take days to accomplish, she had done in a few hours. She had really helped Tom with the critical path system update that she recommended. She had implemented it on our jobs. I'll be the first to admit I didn't really understand how it worked, but it worked! It became our operating bible. Tom already had a system, but when Dana showed him ours, he switched over right away. Tom was paying her very well for her services, so she had two jobs and a very nice income.

Dana had decided to distribute the CP daily updates personally, so once again she was on the jobsites frequently. It was on one of those morning visits when disaster almost struck. It had been raining for three straight days. We were still working, but in that kind of weather, you just can't move as quickly and as safely as you can when it's warm and dry. On top of that, most of us were wearing some kind of rain gear and all that did was to slow us down and make us uncomfortably hot when we were working.

Dana arrived about nine that morning and I noticed that she was wearing what I thought were dress clothes under her raincoat. I was about to say something to her when she walked up the double-up 2 X 12 ramp to the entrance on the main floor. She was wearing some sort of low heeled leather shoes and as she got within a couple of feet of the house, her feet went out from under her and she fell heavily onto the ramp. She'd managed to catch her arm over the ramp, but it was wet and slick and she began to slip over the side. There was a drop of almost ten feet into the cavity in front of the foundation and a fall would have certainly have injured her.