07/10/2025
I have been working as long as I can remember. From riding my bicycle and throwing newspapers, taking a push mower while strapped to the back of my bike and cutting yards for $5.00 each, to finding old bicycle frames and fixing them up and reselling them to the neighborhood kids for $15.
I got my real first job working at Arby's when I was 16 years old, making $5.25 an hour, thinking I was someone...lol
It's been nearly 40 years now and I am still working and continue to have the same work ethics and work values that was instilled into me, at a young age.
Here I am 52 years old and I still crawl under houses, turn wrenches, dig up water and sewer lines (with a shovel), I get down under cabinets and tight spots, and I'm in the elements every single day, all the while dealing with the most unpleasant things that, we as humans, don't want to talk about.
The irony about what I do is that I love my profession and more especially, the people I am around daily. With coming of the new day comes a new physical challenge, for myself. My body is wearing, my bones are worn, the joints are drying out, and the strength is loosing its luster. The realism of not being invincible is setting in. We all, especially men, feel as though we are ten foot tall and bulletproof while able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Construction trades has become a very high demanding profession and even more lucrative for the one's who know what they are doing and how to perform their job accordingly. Of course, being in Union, our demographic is always at the bottom of the charts when it comes to any surveys or records. We just happen to be a small town with small growth with very little ambitions to excell with the rest of the state's economic growth, for numerous reasons.
Doing some research, being an electrician, plumber, HVAC, and a welder are typically the highest paid trades that DOES NOT require a high school diploma nor a college education to work, in these feilds. However, in order to obtain your license or certification you will have to take a written test and pass it, by the State's LLR board.
No matter what you want to do with your life you will learn very quickly that you will have to earn a living, in order to maintain the lifestyle that you want. Computers and technology has come so far and advanced in so many ways and helped so many. However, computers and technology can't replace plumbing pipes, or repair something that was there since 1963, or dig under a house to access the line that's two feet deep, or smell the natural gas leaking from a rusted pipe, under the house, or be agile enough to climb over and under air ducts and pillars to get to the plumbing issue while crawling through raw sewage without damaging anything, in the process.
To get to a stable situation, in any career, you have to start from the bottom and work your way up. You can have all the education and training in the world but still have no idea about nothing. But if you are willing to show up daily, invest into what you want out of that profession, then you will succeed at it and excel greatly.
Being a plumber is one of the most essential professions that is out there. A plumber works on your drinking water, your waste water, and your natural gas. In any given circumstance a plumber will be one of the most important tradesman that can ever be needed, due to the level of expertise that they could possess. Without water, after 72 hours, we as humans will die. If our raw sewer backed up and didn't get disposed of properly we could get sick and die, if the natural gas leaked and did not get repaired properly it would explode. Plumber's are not a want, but a necessity of our modern everyday lives.
Once you obtain your license, you can easily make your own paycheck...but to get there it takes hard work, perseverance, dedication, determination, time, and a few other things.
The market is wide open for this next generation to take it over...because once me and my generation are gone there are not going to be very many new young tradesman out there for you to call upon when you need a plumber, electrician, or an Hvac guy...and if you can get him you better have some deep pockets to afford them, because they will be in higher demand, then now.
So if you are reading this and know someone who is not sure about their future, they probably need to research into one of these feilds soon, because time is ticking.
Thank you all for always supporting me and my company, over the years, many blessings to you all 🤙
Also if anyone has any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me at any time. Thanks.
