This past summer I ran into a cement contracting crew doing work in my part of town, men I knew from working with them as a young man decades ago. The entire crew of workers were American, in an industry in which at least 35–50% or more of workers are immigrants.

“Jimmy, is that you?” I asked the swarthy cement finisher I’d just spoken with while passing his crew installing a new sidewalk corner in my area one sunny summer day.

“Yeah,” the guy glanced up from his work, surprised I knew his name.

I introduced myself, reminding him I had labored with him a few decades ago. We shook hands, chatted briefly about a former co-worker and friend who’d passed, and caught up.

“I’ve mentioned working with you guys a lot over the years… not all of it good,” I joked.

“HA!” shouted a familiar-looking longhaired crew member. “Yeah, he worked with us!”

“Working with you guys was the last time I was called ‘tall,’” I said. “Your dad called me Johntall because I had about an inch on your brother Johnny.”

As we chatted, Jimmy kept moving, smoothing the edge of a freshly poured curb with a trowel. Each of his five co-workers stayed on task, and like a disjointed human centipede, they worked in concert in a small area. It was sunny and 75 degrees out, with a nice breeze.

“Wait—you worked with us?” Johnny called out from across the way as he carried some tools. He looked good, still blond but with thinner hair, and smiling at my recollections.

“Wah Wah! Johnny, good to see ya!” I said, and everyone laughed.

Jimmy and Johnny would bicker while working back then, though their dad, Joe, the boss, was as direct as he was hardworking.  Jimmy called Johnny “Wah Wah” as in: “Wah Wah Johnny! You are always complaining and crying!”

I reminded Jimmy that we’d done the cement around an old elementary school in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill section. I’d recently been there and that cement still looks good, I said.

That summer was all shoveling, floating, and jackhammering ‘crete in humid 90-degree days, and being yelled at in English or Italian:

“Johntall, you’re a big, strong guy… How come-a you no can do?!” Joe barked, showing me again the nuances of using a long-handled rake to move soupy cement further into a large, formed-up hole we were standing in. Unlike my short, choppy pulls, he made long, smooth strokes and repeated plaintively: “How come-a you no can do?!”

Joe was perplexed. I realize now that he was playing cello, and I was sawing the fiddle.

This famiglia taught me how to screed, float, and finish cement, and much more. They worked me hard, and I was glad for the work. My hands were so dried and chapped from the cement that my girlfriend begged me to scratch her itchy back with my palms. Working on the cement crew was tough, body-draining work, and I’d go to bed at night sore all over.

The meeting reminded me of the reasons why some of us love construction: you get to work outside, a physically demanding job makes for a de facto fitness routine, there’s camaraderie, pride in workmanship, and more.

While working with Jimmy years ago, I asked him, “How long should a sidewalk you’ve put in last?”

“At least 25, 30 years, but we have a lot of them out there around town that are 50 years old or more and still look good. We make them to last 50 or more,” Jimmy said.

The chance meeting with my old boss and co-workers reminded me of some of the good stuff in construction, landscaping, and related trades I have worked in since I was an adolescent. It also reminded me that job opportunities granted to newcomers are opportunities denied to American workers.

Tom Homan should begin the deportation process by fining each and every construction or landscaping contractor known to employ illegals (whether they’re doing it technically legally through a registered subcontractor or not, and fine those subs, too), informing them that they’re in violation. Fine them each $100 apiece (which should amount to $100 million+ in revenues to support deportation efforts). Cut off the funds of these bloodsuckers.

I think of working cement years back and I see a chance I had that American youngsters nowadays rarely get.

Make America bountiful again. We need to give opportunities that are now reserved for foreigners in racket-type employment scenarios, back to Americans.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.