Best Dirty Trick Ever
Or, How Digging Ditch Changed my Life
January of ‘93 I boarded a plane to Denver and the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) to begin the process of joining the United States Navy. It was part of the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) as I was still completing my senior year of high school. At the time I was on track to be the only member of my family to have graduated from highschool. I write all of this by way of context for what comes next.
April 16th of that year, I met and fell in love with the prettiest girl in the world, possibly the entire universe. When I say fell in love, that is really much too mundane a description for what happened. I can remember exactly how her face looked in the firelight. What song was playing on the tape deck in my old Dodge pickup that night. I was in L-O-V-E.
So, being 18 and a certified genius, I moved in with my new girlfriend, finished high school, and set about the business of working a job until it was time to head off to the navy. That job was essentially mechanic’s helper/apprentice for a local construction company. I swept the shop, cleaned things, and along the way began to learn the ins and outs of being a mechanic on excavators, dump trucks, and the like. Made damned good money too. So good, in fact, that I foolishly told my dad that I probably wasn’t going to go to the navy after all. I was going to stay put with my girlfriend and be a mechanic.
This, as you might imagine, did not sit well with dad. Not that he said much of anything to me. He knew better. Dad understood, even then, just how irrationally stubborn I’d likely be on the subject. Instead, as he related to me several years later, he picked up the phone and called the owner of the construction company. Turns out Dad and Mr. Utley were well acquainted.
I don’t really know how the conversation transpired but I imagine it went something like this.
Dad: “You have my boy working in your shop.”
Mr. Utley: “Sure do. He’s a hard worker. Shaping up to be a decent mechanic.”
Dad: “Right, I need you to move him to the dirtiest job you have.”
Mr. Utley: “We’re putting an irrigation pipeline in down near the Navajo reservation.”
Dad: “That’ll do just fine.”
Mr. Utley: “That’s a rough crew. Lots of ex-convicts and such.”
Dad: “Perfect.”
I rolled in to work on a Monday and the boss handed me my marching orders first thing. Told me I’d better get moving if I didn’t want to be late since it was another thirty or forty minute drive out to the jobsite.
Putting in irrigation pipeline is a slightly complicated way of saying digging ditch. I went from mechanic’s apprentice to ditch digger. And on that crew, despite my size and youth, or maybe because of it, I was handed a shovel and into the ditch I went. No jack-hammers for hard ground or big rocks, no excavators. Just me, a shovel, a pickaxe, and a long steel rock rod for company. And a bunch of dudes who scared the shit out of 18 year old me. Not that I’d have admitted it back then. It was back breaking labor from not long after the sun was up until around five in the evening. And, being spitting distance from the Four Corners National Monument—figuratively speaking—it was H-O-T.
I dug ditch for the better part of two weeks. Getting up in the dark, packing my lunch, filling a thermos with coffee and a canteen with water, driving most of an hour to get to the jobsite. I returned home to my little slice of paradise with my then-girlfriend-now-wife (did I mention an irrationally stubborn streak) bone tired, covered in dirt, desiring little beyond a hot shower and sleep.
During that two weeks I visited my grandma Fern (dad’s mom) several times—she lived less than a half-mile from my girlfriend’s trailer. Granny commented little on my sorry and bedraggled state. I don’t really remember what we talked about. The weather I suppose, my job of course, certainly whether or not I was going to go to the navy. What I do remember is coming to the conclusion, sitting at Grandma Fern’s table drinking iced tea, that I was definitely going to the service. No more ditch digging for me.
What I found out, years later, was that both my Grandma Fern and my mom were furious with dad. To hear dad tell it, neither Grandma nor mom talked much to him for several weeks. Not until I started proclaiming the manifold benefits of joining the Navy over digging ditch.
My dad, making that phone call, most certainly altered the course of my life for the better. I proposed to that cute girl I was shacked up with in July. August 16th, 1993 I boarded a plane for Denver and entrance into the United States Navy. Nichole, the beautiful girl I fell in love with, married me on Christmas Eve that same year. We’ve been inseparable ever since.
Best dirty trick ever.