Chris goes to the hood!

Being that I am the luckiest man alive, I got stuck steering the ship at work, all by myself this year, for that wonderful gap in between Christmas, and New Years. Everyone else has taken vacation days to pretty much make it a two-week holiday. Not me. Yeah, I took a few extra vacation, sick, and personal days this year. For things like, trips to the ocean, opening day for the Reds, watching a sick child, and Boomer Esiaison’s Birthday (the holiest of days). This means I am pretty much all by myself, manning the retards at work. I was looking forward to it, since the two holidays landing right in the middle of the week, it really only meant about 6 days of work, over two weeks. Then the news arrived, that we would be starting a new project, in a less than ideal neighborhood, at a H.U.D. project, doing things our crew had never done before. This pretty much meant I had to clear an entire day to not only supervise, but pretty much teach as well. I was to find the materials we would need, research the methods we would be using, find out the various codes we had to follow, and then find a way to put it into action. All while trying to keep an unhappy clan of laborers from spending their Christmas bonus on a crack whore down the alley from where we would be working. I was told the house itself was pretty scary, and the neighborhood more so. I had heard rumors about the family living there, and secretly prayed they were exagerated. Then I got to the job. I was a block or two away when I started to regret the fact that I was un-armed. Most of the houses were sporting the newest fad in window technology. Rotted plywood. I saw a lot of busted forties, some aboandoned vehicles, maybe a dead guy, and some stray dogs. Yeah! The house next door had at least 12 dogs in the backyard. Most of which seemed to be some type of pitbull mix, and had either just had puppies, or were about to have more. I arrived at the house and discovered my resourceful crew had taken advantage of the playwood window thing, by kicking it out, and loading tools into the basement that way. This was a wise move, because once I went inside the house, I was certain there was no way the flooring would support the weight of our tools. I began to wonder if breakfast from Sonic was a good idea this morning. I was greeted by the soon to be owner. He was a mix between Andy Dick, and one of the bad gremlins. His wife was super hot also. She was a mix between a young Roseanne bar, and a John Belushi’s corpse. I was super glad to be there. On one trip out to my truck, one of the neighbors dogs had gotten out, and was walking my way. I debated sprinting for my truck, and slamming the door, but opted for the “play it cool” approach. This kind of worked, as the dog did not attack me, but was still getting closer. It had that confused look evil dogs get, when they can’t decide whether or not to bite a chunk out of your fat ass. I was at my truck, door open, and the dog was right behind me, sniffing my leg. Maybe the Sonic from earlier in the morning would help after all. My tire iron was on the other side of the back seat of my truck, all I had to fight back with was a Lowes sack with several boxes of nails in it. I was ready to strike the first blow, when somewhere down the way, either a car backfired, or someone was shot, and the dog scattered. Threat was over. I went back in, and got my crew back on track to get the job finished. Before I could flee, I got stuck talking to the people who lived there. It kinda broke my heart seeing little kids live like that. Their baby was roughly my kids age. They were nice folks though. They were doing the best they could, had just bought there first house, and were trying to fix it up. It was a shithole though. If you took a crayola 64 pack, you could match each color up with a stain on the carpet, and not have any crayons un-used. You could bring in a team of scientists, who even if they stayed there a month, doing every study known to man, could never, guess what the original color of the carpet was. There is no way in hell, that I would spend one night in that house. Even if you promised me a Billion dollars (Billion with a B), and showed me a signed contract, where my wife had agreed to a three-way with myself, her, and Tom Brady’s girlfriend, there’s no way I would ever find myself in that area after dark. In the end, we got all the work done, had provided much needed improvements, and did it all for a good cause. Money from the real estate company.