I�ve been working since I was 15 years old.

When I was 15, and enrolled in a pretty good private school, the Head Custodian approached me one day and asked if I�d be interested in an after school job. One that paid, that is. Other than wondering why in the hell he�d plucked me out of the seething mob (all 200 of us) for such a thing is a mystery to this very day, but I wasn�t complaining. Getting paid for working came as natural to me as breathing.

All through high school I toted trash, I swabbed floors, cleaned toilets and basically picked up after everybody else. I got a check every two weeks, and this was in the day when $2 an hour hadn�t been invented yet. It was a society type of school, where my colleagues were born of privilege and drove Trans-Ams and late model Chevrolets to school. Quite the image thing. It was quite a while before Dad let me take the old Chrysler in and even then it was only because I had to stay late and work.

I�ve worked fast food, and attended at paid / controlled parking lots (which is where I met Ally, but that�s wholly another tale), I�ve painted houses, built houses and worked construction during summers. It�s what I�m still into now, long past the day when college faded into the dust and making a living for a family took hold and didn�t let go.

Short story? There hasn�t been more than two weeks in the past 30 years that I didn�t have an income, or a boss, or have at the very least been the boss of myself. For those of you who�ve never had a company and made out a check to yourself, and signed it yourself, and then endorsed it yourself, you�ve missed one of life�s great thrills. I�ve been doing that for the last 8 years.

Stu and I have sat on our collective if ample asses for 3 weeks now. I have to believe that 3 weeks is a record for the both of us, and he�s had better than 30 years under his belt as well. Although he got to be a paper boy at 15. Which is nothing but clean work, noble work, when you�re scrubbing out some lone toilet in a high school at the end of the day.

You go through these thoughts when you're sitting in your house day after day, as I�ve done for the past 3 weeks. It�s been a surprise, and not an unpleasant one, to find out that I don�t really mind unemployment. Especially when I keep telling myself that I�m not unemployed, I�m still the President of a respected, if tiny construction company. I mean it has no backlog and no current contracts but hey. I�m still in charge, you know? And Stu is too. We�ve never been too hung up on titles or assigned parking spaces.

I don�t mind unemployment primarily because that whole thing about not having any money hasn�t smacked me in the ear just yet. That would be a reasonable wake up. But reading all the stuff that I read, taking leisurely trips to the store or the Watering Hole or actually writing once in a while is a pleasant alternative to sitting in the dark and waiting for the phone to ring with news of a new project or a new opportunity.

I updated my resume which was basically non-existent, I kept it simple and topical. It listed employers for the past 25 years and they were all local ones. I did a summary which was almost curt in its� brevity, something along the lines of �I�ve worked these here parts for 25 damn years now, and if you don�t know me I can steer you to a whole bunch of folks that do� type of brevity. I�m not sure why I even messed with a resume, I can�t stand the thought of working for someone else, and having some else�s name on a paycheck. I did a lot of years of that in my life, some good and some not.

But I did it anyway, just to amuse myself, and checked out some local online job offers. I checked once too many times, really. Because the third time I checked it there was a posting for a job that I know all too well how to do, it was with a reputable firm (it�s a commercial woodworking plant) that I�ve dealt with in the past, it was a specialized enough job to guarantee a very narrow application window and so forth.

I looked at the ad, and my resume, you could�ve overlaid the qualifications from the two of them and had the same treatise.

Then I stalled for a couple of days. Until I made the mistake of telling Ally about it over a steaming plate of enchiladas and fajitas at the local Mexican joint and she looked at me with this �Why the hell didn�t you send something to them� look and . . . well, that was the end of the stalling. Ally has a habit of economics about her that doesn't stand for much nonsense on the subject of stalling.

So I looked it back up yesterday and got to the page where you�ve got that little �Send!� button. I toyed with it. I drew circles around it with my finger. I checked my e-mail for a while.

Oh hell, I hit send. I was giggling when I did it, and wishing for a beer. But I hit it.

It took them almost, almost 24 hours to reply via e-mail. Which was sort of like the proverbial �Getting the return phone call from the girl you gave your number to in the bar who doesn�t want to let on how hot she thinks you are so she�s gonna wait a whole day� mode of thinking.

Funny thing was, they used proper corporate language, telling me that the resume was under review. That they wanted to contact my former employer, and was that all right with me?

Shucks, some of my former employers are dead from old age. I told them so, in my reply. Some of my former employers closed up shop. One employer is me, for heavens sake. But there is one still out there, and he�s one of their biggest rivals, and I worked for him for a long time. He and I have an uneasy sort of relationship, he knows what I can do and what I�ve been doing for the past 10 years, and I don�t know. He might give a glowing recommendation, he might not. He might tell them that I�m a cad and too interested in my own freedom from corporate work to be of much use to anyone else. He might blow them off, then call me up and ask if I�m still interested in working with him for all I know. It�s that sort of thing. He�s honest about such stuff, and I respect him. I told them to go ahead and check on me if they really needed to.

I could go to work there tomorrow and do this job standing on my head. If I want to. I could demand an eye raising salary for such ability. I know this. I could, if I want to. And that, dear friends, is the crux of the matter.

I don�t want to leave what I�m doing (which, at this quasi-unemployed moment, is very satisfying indeed). Stu and I feed off each other quite well, there will be other work, I could go hunt down other projects for us like the rabid dog that I am about such things. Or, If Stu ever stuck his resume out there he could write his own ticket in this area, he�s that good.

It was in that sort of moody free-time bliss that Stu called me yesterday and arraigned a visit to a possible slack time project. One of those, �Let�s go up to the Hole and have a beer and ride by and see this guy� sort of adventures.

This guy being the lead electrician from the City by the Sea job. Helluva good guy, somebody we�ve known for years. Also happens to be way in the middle of building a fishing boat.

We had our beer and chatted with Chief Mo and drove out to the electricians joint, a house in the middle of a modest neighborhood. Now, I�m familiar with this area. His neighborhood had little 1,500 sq. ft. houses on big lots in an older area of the city. Stu grew up not three blocks from there, and was musing all the way over about how �This can�t be much of a boat he�s building, the backyards aren�t that big. Probably won�t amount to much but hell, Ken�s been bugging me for days about going over there.�

We pulled up to the house and two things became clear. One, this couldn�t be Ken�s house. And two, it had one helluva garage out back.

Ken was out front and literally panting to see us, I dunno, it was like royalty had dained to sully their shoes on the mud of the front yard or something. He all but threw his jacket over the puddles and led us to the backyard, where an enormous three story, 60 foot long garage appeared, bigger than any two of the houses in the neighborhood. Electric doors, steel siding, air conditioning sort of garage.

Ken had a chuckle as I craned my neck back to take it all in. �Nice, huh? This is my friends house but it�s starting to feel like mine. We�ve been over here screwing around with this boat for two years now. Come on in.�

I took two steps inside and fell in love.

There was a 36 foot Bay Cruiser in there, a boat built for the business end of fishing for tuna and striper and dolphin. Hand built, twin engine fishing machine sort of boat. Big platform in the back, engine room, berthing room below decks sort of boat.

�Jeez, Ken. This is one big bastard ain�t it,� I breathed. It towered over my head a good 20 feet, which boats often do when they�re out of the water and on chocks. �Let me ask you which came first, the boat or the garage it�s in?�

He gave us the nickel tour but kept scuttling toward the below decks area with a sideways sort of crawl. And once there it became pretty clear why he wanted us there in the first place.

�This is it. I need you guys to make this living space work. I need a head and a bed and a cabinet . . .� and he went on, running a hand over a bare primed hull wall and painting a vision of what he wanted. Partitions here, couch and bed, teak all over the place. Wood. Much and muchly wood he wanted.

I asked questions, I did off-hand layouts, Stu measured and poked and murmured about high dollar hand fitting and tooling coordinates. It was familiar and comfortable for us and Ken was fawning as though two high priests of the boat building world had just landed amidships (I really wished that he�d had a fo�c�sle, it would have been such better literature on here, but hell it was a power boat after all).

�I mean, you guys could do all this stuff or I could get the guy from Maryland down here but he takes so awful long . . . � and Ken was throwing the hook out there to see if the fish were biting.

I thought about it for a minute, and tried to get a vibe from Stu. This is usually the point of negotiation where he lets me do my thing, and we either suffer or advance for months dependant on the next minute or two of conversation.

I felt the vibe. �Order us some 1� core stock and some epoxy and let us know when you got it. We�ll be back.� And that was it, no pricing or any other indignity, it�s the sort of way we work with others in the trades. They know what we�re worth, and to talk of it would cheapen the work. It�s the old way, and I like it that way.

Ken was positively beaming. �Really? You mean it? Oh I�ll get the stuff first thing. Can you start soon, I mean real soon? I want to have this sucker in the water by spring.�

�Yep. Real soon,� I said.

So now, and for a little while at least, we�re boat builders. Again. Ships carpenters. Grouchy workers of the water vessel.

Hope those folks at the woodworking plant are real understanding sort of people.

Ahoy the Guestbook.

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