The Life and Times of the Coppersmith Cowboy. PART IV.
On out doing myself and being a Legend. Also Piss Bottles.
This is the Steeple. St Andrews Church. London Ontario.
This is my steeple . There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The evil is done. That chapter is over. Bruce is Dead.
I left Toronto for London Ontario to work on the above steeple.
The world turned and our hero learned his journey isn’t always a happy one.
I felt a triumphant surge within me though. I was with the GOOD GUYS!
They were regular people. Who weren’t criminals.
They were still hard-drinking working class bitter and sour Canadians, but when they worked they worked.
My over-the-top enthusiasm about everything was not grounds for attack.
It was just grounds for mockery but also begrudging respect.
I was one of those guys who was in Beast Mode before it was a thing.
I had so much energy and life force and was just always jacked.
It was the drug-free spiritual zap pow how ya doing man?!!
I’m Wez from New Zealand! Power of positive thought!
Let’s do 18-hour days! Who needs sleep? I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
No, I’m not on drugs I’m high on life. Have you heard of spirulina?
I’m still like that, but just on the inside, because that amount of enthusiasm causes people pain, and drives them away.
And I like to help people not fuck them up. So I’m a bit less frantic… but I flow out the happiness like healing beams of non sexual rainbow light.
Revisiting this document I wrote over 20 years ago, I see the pride I had in myself and how I wanted to be like all my tough-guy role models.
I wanted to be what was referred to in NZ and Auzzie as a “Hard Cunt.”
Something that is a bit lacking in today’s world.
It could not be faked. It was a journey and it can be created by working for a number of years in very physically demanding jobs. You must do it until you are warped and shaped by the elements.
You cannot wear gloves.
“Gloves are for people who want soft hands.” And that’s an exact quote from a Hard Cunt demolition man called Robbo, who I worked with at BAT Demolition. As detailed in the story “Peaches”.
I worked with gloveless hands till I could put cigarettes out on my calluses and grab and crush wasp nests with one fast grabsquish.. I was a true Hard Cunt.
Here’s the Proof. I took a photo to forever remind myself that I was the real deal, to possibly show a future soft self. Which I am doing now.
Please Ignore the magazine with the Dragonball Z guy on it, and gaze in wonder at hands that are all callous, even on the palms.
Sadly now at 46 … As I write this in a fancy Hotel in South Africa… eating too well, and not having worked a 16-hour day since 2018, I have become what 25-year-old me would call… a Soft Cunt.
But I’m gonna be an HC again! Don’t you worry!
Just having a wee rest for now.
So here we go. The new job.
The new job is the 250-foot high steeple of St Andrews church.
It was a harsh job.
What is HARSH.
Harsh is this … waking up at 5 am to drive an hour to London Ontario to start work at 6 am in freezing rain that alternates with freezing snow. Always there is freezing wind. It is -8 again.
Then you have to carry 14 x 30-kilo loads of tools and new copper up scaffolding steps winding up and up and up a 250-foot church steeple.
View from the Top.
Then you have to climb to the very top of the steeple a full 290 feet!!! People are ants and birds fly below you and it is swaying in the freezing wind and you wonder if it will fall down …it creaks. It is old…and you have to take off the ancient copper cladding, which weakens its structural integrity!
And why are you doing this? Why are you up at the top of the steeple while the other guys are way below working on the lower copper cladding, under cover from the sleet and out of the freezing wind which burns your face and hands like acid, and they have the radio and you can hear occasional snatches of laughter and camaraderie on the wind?
And you work from 6 am till 2 pm when you go halfway down to eat a cold hamburger one of the guys bought you … you have to piss into bottles kept just for that purpose because it takes about half an hour to climb all the way down and then about half an hour to climb back up.
The boss said we all need to piss in bottles and take our shits in the morning and night because he ain’t paying for the hour it takes to get down and up.
Only I took the piss bottle order seriously. This was to SAVE THE DAY in the later story - DAY OF THE STEEPLE SAVIOR!
Back up you go after 20 minutes at the halfway platform for your cold burger and back into: The wind, the stress, the cuts, the snow, the ice, the swaying of the steeple…
YOU ROCK ON, WORKING TILL 10:30 PM!
Why are you at the top of the steeple instead of down below?
Why are you doing the harshest most dangerous job on the site?
You are doing it because when Mike said “Who’s gonna be the Mad bastard who’s gonna work at the top of the steeple?” Everyone looked at you.
And you said, ” I will! I fucking live for this stuff” Even though you knew you would suffer every frigid moment of it and the only reprieve you would get would be the smoking of the occasional clove cigarette, daring the wind and icy rain to put it out, and the relief as you got all your piss into the piss bottle without soaking your self.
Wide-mouth Gatorade bottles for the win.
You did it for the respect and admiration of your fellows.
You did it because when they said “Did that suck? ” when you came down black with dust and shunt you just nonchalantly said, ”No It ruled”.
You did it because you are one of the very few true hard cunts out there.
The last of a dying breed in a cushy automated world ( Yip… the cushy world of 2004… if only I knew what was coming down the pipe…)
You did it so you can write about it at midnight while everyone else sleeps exhausted sleeps around you and as you type this with black sweaty hands you realize that in six hours you will be up there again doing another round of work on top of the steeple, into it … for another 16 hour day.
They would expect no less from you now.
You have set your own standard
You are a legend.
You are… THE COWBOY COPPERSMITH.
And…you seem to have lapsed fully into the third person due to exhaustion and exposure-fueled dementia and should actually just have a shower and sleep instead of writing this out on your little laptop, plugged into the hotel’s phone line…
Why aren’t I tired? Because I fought the world and I won!
The world is yours to create yourself as a legend in your own mind and that of those around you.
-
So I wrote that self-aggrandizing goodness and sent it out to my mates in an Email.
Why were we working such long days?
Because the boss was a cheap bastard. The scaffolding cost a lot of money to keep up and was rented weekly. So we had to hammer it to get through. There was no overtime… it was Salary on the Books or CASH. I was on the CASH. 25$ an hour…which in today’s money was $41.53. I was making great bucks. And saving it all up!
Here is me taking a selfie up on the steeple with my 400$ digital camera before selfies were a thing.
Blessings out there to all of yall. HCs and SCs alike.
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I like your style cuz. And I love the fact you own it. We don’t make many hard cunts these days in Oz. I remember working in Ranfurlly in 79 they were some hard cunts down there.
I do wonder when you are going to get to the tales of Glebe Point Road and your adventures with The Commander (who shamed you on the first day slate roofing through sheer guile and cunning) and his work with Pat Jarvis, the man carved from concrete, and Errol (who moved like he had been hit repeatedly with concrete)... ah, these tales need to be told.