By the time Earl was ready to train me to take over his shop, he was too old to do it the right way.
- Earl was never good with knowing how long things took, and for some reason he thought that my training could wait until a few weeks before his 70th birthday.
At this point in his life Earl was less than spry. He had a hard time getting around a work site, so he had to train me verbally. I had a great deal of construction experience already, which is the only way this was able to work. Earl would sit in a folding chair near the edge of the work site and shout instructions at me, trying to impart to me some of the wisdom he had about properly using rebar rods and double loop wire ties. At his age, Earl was definitely not capable of lifting a rebar rod into place, nor strong enough to properly secure the necessary double loop wire ties. All he could do was sit and watch and point me in the right direction, which actually wasn’t as helpful as he thought it was. He was capable of explaining to me the various tools he used for the handling and manipulation of the rebar rods, which was very helpful. Earl had a few tricks he showed me about using forming wire, and told me that I would be better off never working with ironworker wire. Hopefully when he finally stops coming to work I will have learned enough about working with rebar rods and wire ties to handle things going forward.