Details about why they call me Iceman:

Translation

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“They call me in when everyone else is afraid to do the job.”

I am just like any other average construction hand except I do demolition. I get to tear up stuff instead of putting it up. A construction hand may take several years to put up a chemical plant, a building, a power house, and it takes me a few weeks to take it down to the ground.

Demo is an unmiracleful craft, because it doesn’t allow you to make mistakes. One mistake in demo can mean you or someone else is dead. Most of the time I work around live equipment with hot products running through them and most of the products will explode with just one little spark. They usually call me to a plant to demo a section of the plant, because that section of the plant is too old to produce product anymore or if they ran it too long and it blew up. For the most part this means someone got hurt, killed or both.

I have told you all this so that you can understand what type of pressure I work under each day. I have been doing this type work for over 30 years and to me it is just like putting your shoes on each day. Just another day at the office for me.

Just recently I was sent out of town to do a cut and dry simple job. All I had to do is take a gas plant down to the ground. Only one section of the plant was to stay in operation. I should have been in and out of the plant in 6 to 8 weeks. What we call a sweet little job. So much for sweet, I was doomed from the very first day when I went to the job site for a job walk and the project manager came unprepared to do his job. The first thing he did wrong was sign a contract without reading it carefully, if he read it at all. Then he made the contractor and the client mad for coming to the job site unprepared to show them the paperwork he needed to show them the schedules on how and when we were going to do each section of this job. Then the next thing out his mouth was "this is a simple job so don’t worry about it, besides I’m fixing to retire". All I could do is sit there and not say anything. That is one of those times I wanted to find a rock to crawl under.

From that day forth the contractor and the client made my life, a life of torment from hell. They wanted a procedure for everything I was going to do from the beginning to the end of the job. The bad part to this was that I couldn’t change anything once it was written. If I needed to do something different to make sure no one would get hurt I had to have another one written before I started doing the work. This would cause one delay after another. The worse part about the whole thing is that the representatives for the contractor and the client were both engineers and had no idea what I was doing and if it was right or wrong. So they tried to micro manage everything on the job. Top it off, they sent me off to another job for 2 weeks, but I still had to manage this job and keep it going while I was running another job 75 miles away. This made the contractor and the client even madder than they already were.

While I was on the other job, there were 2 men killed on another job with the company I worked for now. To top it off, while I was on the other job, one of my supervisors on this job got in a hurry and made a mistake and cut an oil storage tank in the wrong place causing an oil spill. Luckily it was not a bad spill, but he didn’t have his procedure signed and in place. So by the time I got back on the job site they were ready to shut the job down. The only reason they gave our company for keeping the job going was that I couldn’t leave the job till the job was finished. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong!

For over 6 months I had made plans to go on vacation to be with my granddaughter on her second birthday. Keep in mind I hadn’t seen her since she was 4 months old. That is when my problems started physically as well as spiritually. The emotions started to run in every direction. I had to make up my mind if I was going to quit my job [that was the easy way out] or not. I had to threaten to quit my job with the client before they would let me have 2 days off to see my granddaughter. Then the emotion really started to run wild, to go back to work or just quit. All the way back to the job site I had to fight the emotions to go to work or turn back and go home. Afterward I started to question God. WHY???? WHY ME???? I’m too old to have to put up with this; I’m 59 years old and have been doing this kind of work for over 30 years. I can go to work for just about anyone with just one phone call. However I knew deep down I wasn’t a quitter and I had to finish the job I started. After that day each day seemed like a week long with no end in sight.

That is when God stepped in just in His time. He had one of my Christian friends call me while I was on the road driving back to work from home one weekend. God had put me on her heart that day and had her call my house trying to find me. My wife gave her my phone number and she made the phone call that God gave her that I needed so badly. The message was of hope and God's love for me. I had taken my eyes off God and all I could see was myself. If she had not made that call when God told her to, I don’t know what would have happened that day, but I do know because of the phone call I was given a renewal of Gods grace, love and hope. So many times we lose our focus on God, but thank God He doesn't lost His focus on us!

There are so many of you that are in impossible positions, or feel like giving up, or just flat feel hopeless. Remember this one thought, don't give up, or lose your hope, keep you eyes on God and realize that God is your personal hope no matter the circumstance!

The Iceman