I’m Goin’ Home, I’m Smokin’ My Last Cigarette

Special thanks go out to my wife Sara and son Joe for their patience as I produced each column. Writing does not come naturally to me, and stringing these words together took an inordinate amount of time. Although some columns were better than others, I never ‘phoned one in’- and I think they understood the effort.

Thanks go out to my Dad as well. I didn’t mention him a lot, but as my business partner he sold most of the jobs pictured in the columns. He understood the value of photo templating immediately, and was the one who figured out how to bring the plotter to the jobsite to create full-sized templates. He also brought a lot of enthusiasm to what can be a pretty bruising business.

Click to enlarge Thanks as well to the companies who provided me with photographs and technical product data – in particular, ETemplate System, Green Mesa Inc./Fabricator’s Choice (PhotoTop®), Laser Products Industries Inc., InnoDraw Inc., Prodim USA LLC and Omni Cubed Inc.

Lastly, thanks to the two guys who taught me the most about countertops. Andy Scheiderer gave me my first opportunity to work in a granite shop. From him I learned a great deal about stone selection, templating, and fabrication.

Andy paid for my learning curve, and to that end I owe him thanks. Most importantly, he taught me how to deal with the Ms. Jones of the world and turn every challenge into a customer-service opportunity. And to have a good laugh about it later on.

My friend and teacher Reuben, like so many other stone workers, had no legal status to be in this country. He moved here for a job that was little more than a scam and, after overstaying his visa, became a countertop installer as a way to feed his family.

The trade fit him perfectly and he mastered it. The beauty of his limited English was that he had to show me everything he wanted me to see; there was no describing it. If I’ve done anything perfectly during an installation it was because Reuben showed me how to do it.

Technology has improved to the point that what he showed me has become easier to accomplish,  but all of the basics remain the same. If you’ve learned anything from one of my columns, you too learned from Reuben.

On the way home from a successful install one night we each smoked one of Reuben’s cigarettes as a minor act of celebration and tried to make jokes in a broken dialogue of each other’s language. His family would soon leave out of immigration fears, and he would follow them into an unknown future. When the time came to go, he’d be too sad to even say goodbye.