A New Life Begins Now

The Building Futures Program said it could change my life, and it did.

The Rooster will be taking the rest of the week off. Normal service resumes Monday, June 7th.

It’s crazy how much your life can change in a year. One year ago this month, I awoke in Grant Hospital’s trauma bay with a nine broken ribs, a broken ankle, and a lower jaw missing three teeth and shattered in three places from a single-car accident. I spent the month of July on my couch nursing my wounds while watching Breaking Bad and my younger brother carry jugs of my urine upstairs to the bathroom.

I returned to working as a bartender at The Patio while still wearing a walking boot and resigned to catching COVID before realizing I like alcohol way too much to work in a bar. I retired from that gig and, wanting to do more with my hands, started working with my friend Shawn Dailey, who taught me the basics in the art of building decks and remodeling bathrooms. Unfortunately that apprenticeship got caught short when he suffered a fatal heart attack at age 35. I still miss him, but I take solace in knowing he saved four lives—from a teenager to a senior citizen—through being an organ donor.

Come January, I had no idea what I was going to do. The Rooster pays my bills and allows me to live a humble lifestyle in The Bottoms; however, I need two years of orthodontics work to repair my jaw, which while wired shut I thought would be as simple as replacing the three teeth I lost in the wreck when my airbag apparently hit me like a right-hand from Mike Tyson.

I’m also going to be 35 in December, have a wonderful girlfriend who is an amazing lawyer despite graduating from the prestigious Twitter Law University like myself, and it’s time to start thinking about funding my retirement on Titty Island rather than working for the rest of my life like a lot of my generational colleagues will unfortunately be forced to do.

I wanted to do more with my time, I just wasn’t sure what that would be. But God works in mysterious ways, and KGB’s friend told her about the Building Futures Program.

The Building Futures Program, for the uninitiated, is financed by Franklin County and run by the Columbus Building Trades Council and Columbus Urban League. Its goal is to find Columbus residents from disadvantaged neighborhoods and give them some hands-on skills before placing them in a union working in Columbus’ booming construction industry.

It’s a 12-week program that runs for three hours a night, four days a week. They pay you a $250 stipend per week for attending, buy all your tools upon completion and pay your first year of union dues.

Just hearing about the program, I knew this was the best chance I’ve had of realizing a dream of entering a unionized, blue collar trade. The waiting list to this program is roughly 600 people deep, but I managed to harass the program director enough to prove to him how hungry I was for the opportunity and I got placed into the first post-COVID cohort at the end of March. I am not ashamed to say I cried when I heard the news while enjoying my traditional Friday night beers at Little Palace with my buddy Irish Pete.

I entered the program wanting to be an electrician. In a past life I sold life insurance in Kentucky to union members of all stripes, and I knew the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) took care of their people. However, I knew it was a tough union to place into and as such I was open to pursuing anything from ironwork to sheet metal to general laborer. Any of them would offer a path to my ultimate goal of becoming a union organizer.

When Building Futures says you don’t need any mechanical knowledge to join the program, that is not a lie. I am a prime example of that core belief. Outside of screwing screws, hammering nails or hanging a picture, I knew jack shit about the world of construction.

But they tell you the two big things to start is showing up on time (that means 30 minutes early) every day and carrying a good attitude with an eagerness to learn. I was the only one in the 18-person cohort that finished with perfect attendance and zero tardies. We learned basic skills in everything from concrete masonry and bricklaying to roofing and ironworking. We spoke with people from every walk of life in construction that painted a picture of the highs and lows that come with life in the trades.

Near the end of the class, I had been resigned to the IBEW not hiring. Some of the trades, like plumbing and pipefitting, weren’t hiring until January. Personally I didn’t want to wait; I was eager to get to work. So I made up my mind that I would take the first opportunity presented to me by the program, which I figured would be sheet metal or ironworking.

However, our case manager sent a group message on Friday. “Anyone with interest to be an electrician?” I responded instantaneously, which I think was the first time in my life I was thankful for being one of those freaks who is consistently tethered to my phone. My manager, Money Makin’ Mitch, asked if I could interview within the hour, I said that wouldn’t be a problem.

A local contractor interviewed 10 of us, and I was one of two selected from the class to start work TODAY at the New Crew Stadium, which is all-hands-on-deck with mandatory overtime while they rush to finish the project before the July 3rd deadline when the stadium opens. I will have been in “the field” as the pros call it for a couple hours before many of you read this humble dispatch.

It’s going to be surreal signing papers to join the IBEW. I probably would have thought you were trying to play some sick joke on me if you had told me where I would be a year ago. But here I am, starting a new career path as an apprentice.

Make no mistake, The Rooster will continue. Typing words on the internet for the entertainment of strangers is what I do, and building this humble venture has been one of the proudest things in my life.

However, I will be working more this month than I have maybe in my entire life as the schedule is six ten-hour days a week. I know the first couple days I’m just going to want to come home, eat and go to bed so I have the energy to get back on the grind the following day.

As such, I am taking the rest of the week off from my literary affairs, barring the FBI arresting Columbus mayor Andy Ginther or State Senator Niraj Antani. If that happens, the only way you won’t get an emergency dispatch is if I accidentally electrocuted myself at New Crew Stadium while celebrating the news.

Thanks to everybody who reads The Rooster, and especially to those of you who have thrown some money into my pocket for the efforts. I am happier than I have been since campaigning for the Statehouse in 2018, and I’m excited to see how this mindset elevates my writing. I also have some cool things to announce within the month, so stay tuned and stay frosty.

See y’all next week!

The Rooster will be taking the rest of the week off and resuming normal service on Monday, June 7th.

THOSE WMDs. What it’s like to solo cycle through rural China… A journey into the animal mind… The women who preserved the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre… Recipe: Spinach artichoke dip that’s so much better than store-bought… Chicago’s predictive policing program told a man he would be involved in a shooting.