Occupational hazard
Just setting here reading, listening to some tunes and manning the phone. Kind of resting up and recovering from a tough week last week. I've got to go look at some jobs and collect some money later on but me and my guys are resting today. My thoughts are with Matt.
I don't want to muddy up his name on a thread that is there to remember and memorialize him. And I didn't really want to start a new thread for this subject since most of the guys that I like to communicate with read and post on this thread anyway.
I have known many who have died in this industry and most were not taken out by the job hazards but by their own personal ills. And it's easy to do when you have the ways and means to self destruct. I mean really, I don't have to tell any of the seasoned guys here what kind of money is out there to be made when you do the work we do... People taking pictures and videos while you are working... It's like being a rock star sometimes. I have had to wrestle my own demons before. Thank God I survived those periods in my life. I think of those that I know now that are making the big money and I know for a fact that they have big problems in their life. It worries me sometimes but it's all I can do to just take care of myself.
One of my first groundies came to work with me when he was 16. He was an orphan who's mother and father both drank themselves to death by the time he was 14. He lived in a trailer park with his drunk aunt. Other than a sister, that is all the people he had in the whole world. He came to work for us (I was working for the original climber that I started out with) when he was 16. He came to live with us in an old farmhouse where we all lived and worked together. The owner of that tree service had a pretty bad accident where he couldn't work for awhile. I had been going in my own direction at that time. I helped the guy as much as I could but I was finding my own ground then and was working my own jobs. When we split ways I kind of inherited the groundy. My old boss told me to take the kid and work him. And work him I did. We lived together through hard times... I'm talking about camped out on the river hard times. He worked for me off and on till he was 24. He celebrated his 21st Birthday with me. In the end he had found an older woman and shacked up with her. He was 24, she was 40 and had a problem with pills. Nobody twists anyone's arm into anything out there in this world but I know that had my groundy not hooked up with this woman he would have not been on the heavy pain killers that ended up taking him out. He passed out one night due to the combination of pain killers and alcohol and drowned in his own vomit at the age of 24. I still think about that kid all the time and wonder what might have been had he not hooked up with that chick. And he is not the only one I have seen take themselves out, there have been many. One ate a bullet at 35.
Anyway, I guess all I'm trying to say is take care of yourselves out there.