Pool Boys

The summer of 2019 was a great summer with one of my now really close friends. Him and I were together all day, everyday this summer, but not like you’d think. Him and I were working for New England Pools all summer long. This day, was a very bad day, that could been a lot worse, without each others help we made it out of the day alive.

This was the last pool we were working on this summer before both of us had to go back to school. It was just over the bridge in Gardiner, going into Randolph, at a place called Statewide Towing. Today was supposed to be a very easy day at work, all we were doing was digging the whole where the pool was going to go. And our job that day was to just do a bunch of little task to stay busy. So when I got to work that morning, I started loading pool braces into the back of our work truck because I was going to assemble them while our boss was using the excavator. I always use gloves when moving these braces because they are super sharp steel and can cut you so easily. I had found out earlier this summer when I cut my thumb wide open. Fast forward to when we get to the job site, we get there and I immediately got a weird feeling about the day.

First we started setting up to get excavated, we start measuring out where the pool is going to go and painting lines, and were off. Once I am no longer needed in the excavation process, I tell my friend Warren to start grabbing the pool braces so we can get to work. Warren reaches over the side of the truck and grabs 3 at a time, with no gloves on. He lifts the braces out of the truck, and once it got over the edge, the third brace fell and slide down the side of his leg. At first, it looked like a little cut. As I got closer, I started to see how bad it got, and we very quickly realized that he was going to need stitches. My boss and the foreman decided it would be best for me to bring him to Urgent care to get stitches. The closest urgent care was about 20-25 minute drive. So we both got in the work truck and we were off. We got to urgent care around 11, and my boss called and told me to comeback, and have Warren call me once he is all set. I had just gotten back to the work site around 11:30 when Warren called me and said he was all set and I could come grab him. What I didn’t know was there was a Burger King across the street from Urgent care, so to thank me, Warren bought me lunch which we ate on the way back to work.

After all of that happened, we finally got back to work around 12:30. Thinking that our bad luck for the day is done. But around 3, we are still digging, and a telephone line is hanging above our excavator arm, it was connected to the house, from the garage. And our excavator arms hits it, and knocks it off. The telephone line isn’t active so my boss tells me to go move the line out of the way. As I am about to go and grab this line, Warren yells my name and tells me to duck. So I ducked, and right after I duck, the telephone line rips off the side of the garage, and I look over towards the road and see a dump truck with a telephone line draped across the front of it. If Warren wouldn’t have yelled for me to duck, my head would have been ripped clean off. The wire had sliced a bunch of mailbox posts clean in half. These post were wooden, and about 12 inches thick, sliced clean in half. I was shock for a while after this because that was the probably the closest to death I had ever been. About 15 minutes later State Troopers showed up and started questioning us about everything that happened and that mess wrapped up around 4 and we could finally finish excavating.

After work, Warren and I and even our foreman sometimes would go to Chipotle. This day I forced Warren to come with me so I could buy him a burrito for saving me. A burrito wasn’t really enough to thank him but he appreciated the gesture and we called it even at this point. Warren and I had a very good friendship throughout the summer. I called him before I wrote this and he said this was most definitely the most significant time we have helped each other out in a major way, and it happened to be on the same day.

Photo by alobos life on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND