my first day as a tree dude
When I first met Bob Bandit in 1992, I was working as a bus boy and I didn't have a car and I didn't have a girlfriend. One of my few sexual experiences of that year (besides beating off constantly) was sleeping with a husky married woman. But I couldn't get any girls that I wanted to get because I was too much of a loser.
But when Bob Bandit saw me working hard as a bus boy I guess he figured I could help make him money at his tree trimming business. I remember taking a ride in his cherry red porsche 928 down the Pier and Bob said in a drunken slur, "come with work with me and yullmake two-hundredand fortyseventhousundollarsa year." I was pretty skeptical about making that figure, but still I was intrigued.
A few days later I had my dad drop me off at Bob's place so I could start work at his tree business. I was kind of shocked when I discovered that besides me and Bob, there was only one other worker. That other worker was Bo. Bo was a Pinellas Park red neck that owned the truck and chain saw, and a few other simple tools to do the work. The truck we drove around in was just a rusty, yellow '74 Chevy with wooden sidewalls. Bo and Bob called the truck "the mustard".
My vision of earning $247,000 dollars a year started to fade when I realized that Bob and Bo didn't actually have any work lined up that day. First we had to drive around and find the work. To make matters worse, Bob and Bo seemed like they were both terribly sick from drinking. They were all bleary eyed and coughing. At every other stop light Bob had to open his door and wretch some sort of green bile onto the asphalt. I started to think this whole tree thing was a waste of time. Or maybe it was some sort of drug front? Luckily I still had my bus boy job to rely on.
Before long we found our neighborhood for selling, and Bob started getting out and knocking on doors. Bob had this really rehearsed sounding spiel he would repeat. "I've got a situation that can probably help us both out," he would begin, "my guys are just finishing up a job around the corner..." After three of four times of knocking on doors, I thought the situation seemed silly and hopeless. Nobody was going to hire a tree trimming crew that just came up and knocked on your door.
But then after one of his sales spiels, Bob came back and said it was time to get started.
"How much?" Bo asked.
"Thirteen hundred," Bob said.
Thirteen hundred dollars! I couldn't belive it! Somebody just agreed to pay us thirteen hundred dollars to trim their trees! I went up and outstretched my hand to Bob.
"Good job!" I said. Bob just kind of looked at me funny.
Well, now that we had work, I was eager to get going. First, I had to wait for Bo to start cutting the branches on the trees, then it was my job to pick up the branches and put them in the mustard. That was pretty much my whole job, picking up branches and putting them in the mustard. Plus, every now and then I would have to get in the back of the mustard and stomp the branches down to make more room.
I really wanted to make a good impression on my first day, so when Bo first cut some branches and got them on the ground, I literally started running back and forth to the mustard to throw them in. I think this kind of shocked Bob and Bo at first. I don't think they had ever seen a laborer run. But then Bob said, "that's exactly the speed at which you should keep working."
After a while of running back and forth with branches, I began to realize that Bob really didn't do anything. He just stood around and smoked cigarettes and watched us work. This kind of offended my sense of fairness at first. But then I figured he was probably thinking about where to sell next or something.
Anyway, the whole concept of tree trimming was strange and new to me. I guess the idea was to trim away the fuzzy little branches that grow out of the big limbs. Bob called these little branches, "sucker branches." And for some reason it was really important to trim them out of the tree. It was kind of like giving your tree a clean shave.
Here and there we zipped off a branch that was too close to the roof or something, but none of the work was too hard.
After a while the mustard was totally filled up with branches, and I couldn't stamp it down any further.
"What do we do now?" I said.
"It's time to dump the truck," Bo said. With that we all got in the mustard and took off. I figured we were going to the city dump or something and we would be gone a good hour or so. But all we did was drive behind the nearest shopping center. Bo left the truck in idle and we all got out and went behind the truck. "Grab ahold," Bo said, as he and Bob grabbed branches on either side of me.
"It's not just a job," Bob said. "It's an adventure." With that, we all pulled on the big pile of branches and dropped them in the parking lot. Then we jumped back in the mustard and peeled off.
It only took us a couple of hours to do the thirteen hundred dollar tree job. When we finished, it was only about 1 pm. Bob got the check from the old couple and we took off.
I figured we would sell another job and keep working until five like normal people. But I was shocked to find out that we were done for the day. We just took the check to the bank and cashed it and divided up the money.
It wasn't exactly an even three way split. I got ten percent for loading the branches. Bo got forty percent for cutting. The remaining fifty percent went to Bob. I didn't know what to be more amazed at: the fact that I was getting $130 for a couple hours of work, or the fact that Bob was getting $650 dollars for knocking on a few doors. I mean, I had never made $130 in a day in my whole life. It was some sort of miracle. But at the same time I didn't know how anyone could make $650 in a day. And Bob was only 24 years old.
Before we dropped off the mustard at Bo's place, Bo made a little notch on one of the wooden sidewalls with a knife.
"What's that for?" I said.
"We make a mark every time we do at least a thousand dollars," he said. I looked down the sidewall and saw dozens of little knife marks.
"Wow," I said. With all this time left in the work day, I wondered what everyone was going to do. I figured everyone would go home and watch tv and relax.
"What now?" I said.
"It's time to go to the Dollhouse," Bob said with a happy gleam in his eye.
"The what?" I said.
11:07:50 PM 
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![A picture named 200[1].jpg](http://blogs.salon.com/0002916/images/2003/12/22/200[1].jpg)
I started my period today. Some asshole called while I was watching Sex in the City.![A picture named BRCD01[1].jpg](http://blogs.salon.com/0002916/images/2003/12/22/BRCD01[1].jpg)
I like Britney Spears. She's great.