CHARLES LEVINSOHN

Excerpt from one of my favorite essays:

So time marches on and one thing leads to another. With a useless degree in philosophy tucked away for safe keeping, the trenches of manual labor were calling to me. The bottom of the food chain seemed like a reasonable starting point and that meant only one thing—mason’s laborer.

Every day as a mason’s laborer is like an Olympic event. Pushing wheelbarrows filled with concrete, lugging cinder blocks and bricks, and being screamed at by irritable bricklayers took some getting used to. The brief respite provided by the morning coffee break felt like a scene right out of Cool Hand Luke.

I did this work in New Jersey and then again in Western Kentucky where the atmosphere was even rougher. With the hot sun beating down and redneck bosses shouting orders, I knew how the Egyptian slaves must’ve felt while building the Pyramids.