The Blue-Collar Bible

By Cameron Bird

The Blue-Collar Bible is a humorous collection of stories about pranks, mishaps and inside jokes that bring laughter to the 'smoko' breaks and much-needed comic relief to the tough workdays. It offers a captivating journey through the heart and soul of the building trade, providing readers with an intimate insight into the lives, antics, challen

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cameron Bird
• Release date: Oct 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645921212

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THE

BLUE-COLLAR

BIBLE

CAMERON BIRD

Copyright © 2023 by Cameron Bird

All rights reserved

The right of Cameron Bird to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

Printed in Australia

Editor : Pagetrim Book Edit & Design

DEDICATION

The Blue-Collar Bible is dedicated to the men and women I have worked with during my fifteen years in the construction industry. You know who you are.

It is further dedicated to all the blue-collar studs around the world, who get up every day before sunrise, work with their hands, get dirty, drink beers on Fridays, mentor apprentices, talk shit on the daily and generally do hard yakka.

To the boys and girls who wear hi-vis, steel caps and hard hats. To those who nail timber, lay steel, pull wires, bend pipe and operate machines; who lay slabs, plumb walls, build homes and erect towers; who plaster walls, weld steel and drill holes.

This book is dedicated to those who call their lunchtime ‘smoko’ and to our unions. It’s more than just an industry; it’s our way of life!

CONTENTS

DEDICATION

CONTENTS

Unhinged

Swallowing the Prevocational Pill

Get Your Papers First

Apprentice Pranks

Smoko

Pat and the Portaloo

Debbie Does No One

Blue-Collar Communication

The Three Broad Tiers

Labour Hire

Gas

The Toilet Wall

The Curtis Curse

The Wrong Attitude

Same Shit, Different Country

Shaken and a Little Stirred

Blue-Collar Currency

A Slice of Trouble

Tools Down

God’s Greatest Gift

Ladder Loco

Hats off to the Unions

Quid Pro Quo

Love Jobs

Blue-Collar Battery Kits

The Blue-Collar Ghost

A Fool from Grace

A Patch No Tool Can Fix

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1

Unhinged

I awoke in my bedroom in the Brisbane suburb of Clayfield after another undignified late-night cruising in my 1989 bright red Toyota Celica.

As my eyes fizzed open and I began to look around my bedroom, I couldn’t help but notice I had three insistent thoughts. First, about a recent milestone in my young life – attending schoolies week on the Gold Coast. It was such an epic and crazy week that I wanted to do it all again next year, despite that making me an unfortunate Toolie - an adult non-school leaver who gate crashes schoolies week.

My second thought brought me crashing back down to reality; what was I going to do with my life? I had no job; I was living at home with my parents and four siblings and had not a single cent to my name. I hadn’t applied for university, not that my grades gave me any right, and had given zero thought to my future.

These thoughts of self-satisfaction contrasted by self-doubt were replaced with a third thought that sat nicely in the middle, and that was the undeniable urge I felt to have a wank, as indicated by my severe case of morning glory. I looked at the apex in my bed sheet as if it held all life’s answers and said, ‘You and me big fella, today we are going to break the record.’

That record happened to be eight in one day which was set on a not too dissimilar Sunday morning in boarding school only a few months back. Given enough commitment I was now confident I could reach the low teens, or even higher, if undisturbed, which drew my nervous eyes to the bedroom door. If only I had a lock.

Circumstances were certainly in my favour. I had no plans, a fridge and pantry full of food and a magical clothes basket that, should my dirty clothes bother to find their way into it, would see them come back clean and folded and left long enough, returned to their hangers and drawers. Ah, the beauty of living back at home. Except for the lack of privacy when my penis was involved. I glanced nervously at the door again.

Life was good, too good, and it was my duty to make the most of it. At that point, I couldn’t think of a better way to offload the frustration and confusion my seventeen-year-old brain was feeling than by breaking my own masturbation record.

This left me with only one more thing to think about – which was ideal, as I needed to conserve all my available energy for my big day. How far into the double digits am I willing to go? Should I aim high, or should I be content with ten leaving some room for further growth? I pondered for a second and decided that, until my cock gets as red and sore as the inner thighs of a biggest loser contestant, I’m just going to go for broke. Besides, I reasoned, a mammoth effort today is surely going to help me get better at sex in the long run.

Whole heartedly agreeing with my own justifications, I reached under my bed and grabbed my porn magazines – the ones that hadn’t been found and confiscated by my father, that is. He was a real card, my dad. He was a mechanical engineer by profession, and obviously a clever dude. He was also an amateur detective with a sixth sense for tracking down any contraband that happened to reside under what he referred to as ‘his roof’. It was challenging to get anything past my father without him eventually finding out. Hence my eyes constantly darting towards the door, fearing an ambush.

It also meant I was always busy conjuring up ways to outwit him. A few years earlier, when I was in high school, I used to get invited to parties. Instead of asking for permission, which would invariably be denied, I would just sneak out. I learnt this skill from my older twin sisters, who had experienced similar scrutiny when they were the same age. It was a simple but clever scheme that ensured an outcome in my favour.

At least, this was the theory. Dad soon figured out what I was up to and began to lay traps to catch me in the act. At first, he would sneak quietly down the stairs and sprinkle talcum powder across the tiled floor between my bedroom and the front door so he could identify my footprints the next day. Another trick was to secure the front door with sticky tape, making it easy to see if the door had been opened. He tried other stratagems too, but these are the ones that stick in my mind. Sometimes, I think he watched too many cop shows on TV.

In retrospect, he could have saved the countless tins of talcum powder and rolls of sticky tape had he just opened my bedroom door and seen with his own eyes that I was not there. I guess he enjoyed the thrill of the chase.

For reasons I never understood, the fact I was growing up alongside three sisters led my father to impose a strict ‘no-female’ sleepover policy. The policy seemed to forbid any friend of the opposite sex coming round at all. I learnt this the hard way when dad walked in on me shagging my girlfriend at the ripe old age of sixteen.

I could have gotten away with it if Dad, like most people, knocked first and then waited to be invited in, which would have given me a few precious seconds to hide my girlfriend under my bed where my porno mags now lived. But no, when Dad was motivated, he was a knock-and-open kind of guy, with barely anytime lapsed between the two. His philosophy was simple: we were all in his house, residing under his roof, so if he wanted to come in uninvited and catch his son doing his proudest work, he was damn well going to.

Being very much a passive-aggressive, polite sort of man, Dad didn’t make a fuss there and then. He could obviously see the looks on our juvenile faces and realised that Stacey and I were somewhat surprised by his intrusion. And maybe he understood that we were only trying to navigate our way through the still novel and complex world of dating, albeit not very innocently. So, instead of blowing his top, he merely froze for a second and, in a deep, authoritative tone, said, ‘Stacey, I think you should leave. Cameron, come and see me after she has gone.’

I knew at that point it was all over for me. By which I mean my hedonistic lifestyle was about to end. Everyone I cared about – only Stacey at that point as she was giving me sex – was going to fade into the abyss while I was going to have to serve whatever sentence my father ordained. I had no doubt whatsoever he would concoct the punishment of all punishments, dished out on a silver platter as he delighted in watching me eat. The rule I’d broken was only one of many, but it was certainly a biggie.

I was angry at myself and feared the worst as I walked back to the house after walking Stacey to the train station. This was uncharted territory for me. I had never been caught in the act before and I really didn’t know what to expect.

Bizarrely, upon approaching my father I could see that he wasn’t mad. In fact, he was actually quite chirpy and had a slight grin on his face when he said in a I-don’t-want-to-talk-to-you-right-now-because-I-am-very-disappointed manner, ‘Just go to your room. I’ll deal with you later!’

He didn’t have to tell me twice. Faster than a dog leaving a vet’s surgery, I spun on my heels and fled. Perhaps he’s proud of me, I thought as I practically sprinted to my room. His son getting laid, slaying a bird, spreading my seeds of glory – as far as a condom allowed. He was a man, after all. He must have understood these things. Perhaps, we’d have a man-to-man chat later, exchange war stories – preferably not ones involving my mother, but if it got me off the hook, I’d listen to anything. Perhaps he’d high-five me for my efforts, saying he was finally proud.

When I reached my room, I stopped and stared at the big rectangular opening where my bedroom door used to be. ‘Where the fuck is my door?’ I said aloud. It took me a moment to grasp what had happened. My father, in the short time I’d been away, had taken the door off its hinges and hidden it somewhere. I was left scratching my head. No wonder he was smiling. How would I ever sneak Stacey back into my bed? And how did he do that so quickly? At the time I didn’t understand how easy it was to take a door off its hinges.

Anyway, those delinquent days felt well behind me. Dad replaced the door after what he deemed a suitable period. Now, one year later, the only decision I faced, was what magazine I should pick. Hustler, Nuts, maybe a bit of Playboy? I decided to start with Nuts. It had the least number of pages stuck together. I settled into position, carefully flicking through the magazine to pick a page to superglue. With one final glance at my bedroom door, nicely secured on its hinges, I grabbed my lever, ready to put it into gear when I received an unexpected knock on the door. Bolting upright, I quickly tossed the magazine under my bed. I quietly waited, half expecting my father to barge in.

Instead, the soft knock-knock was repeated, accompanied by a feminine voice. ‘Cameron, may I come in?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ I said equally gently, drawing the sheets over my rapidly receding penis.

The door opened and she walked in. She came right in and sat on the end of my bed giving me an obvious concerned motherly look. Then never one for much small talk she said straight out, ‘I’m worried about you.’ Here we go I thought. ‘You don’t seem to have a plan for your future. Nor do you have a job or anything positive going on in your life. Your father and I are becoming concerned and thought we had better act before you end up digging ditches for a living. So, I’ve booked you into a pre-vocational course at TAFE. You start tomorrow.’

For the first fleeting moment in my short life, I was completely lost for words. ‘What do you mean, I start tomorrow?’ I finally roared, ‘And what the fuck is a pre-vocational course?’

‘A pre-vocational course for electrical,’ she said, trying to sound convincing.

‘For electrical?’ I asked. ‘What does that even mean?’

‘It’s a course, a starting course, for people to take before getting apprenticeships and becoming electricians.’

‘Who says I want to be an electrician?’ I asked defiantly.

‘Look, your cousin Ryan is an electrician, and he loves it,’ she said, adopting a more pacifying tone. ‘Besides, it’s not like you have a whole lot of options at this point. Why don’t you give it a go and see if you like it?’

I looked into her eyes and saw this wasn’t a trap. I could tell she was genuinely concerned. If I did this, I reasoned, it might make her happy and counteract all the disappointment and heartache I had caused her over the past few years. All the bad report cards, wagging school, smoking, drinking, the girls in my room, the mystery footprints in the talcum powder, the tantrums and tears and the overwhelming amount of untapped potential.

‘OK, Mum, I’ll do it, on one condition,’ I said, cracking a slight smile.

‘What’s that?’ she said, smiling back with relief in her eyes.

‘You’ll lend me some money?’

CHAPTER 2

Swallowing the Prevocational Pill

I climbed into my car and slung my bag onto the passenger seat, reluctantly turning over the engine. How my circumstances had changed. And not for the better. Normally I loved jumping in my red Toyota Celica, with its too-cool-for-school, pop-up bonnet lights. I had saved $750 dollars from working as a burger flipper at McDonalds during high school to buy this hunk of junk. You couldn’t take it to either coast, an hour’s drive north or south of the city, without having to pull over at least once to give the engine time to cool from overheating, but I loved my car dearly. Adding further sentimental value, she was born in 1989 - the same year I was.

A few weeks ago, on the road to Coolum a surf town on Brisbane north coast, the old thing popped its top. Even before we clambered out, not wanting to waste an opportunity to get a laugh, we all insisted on dropping our dacks – both pants and underpants. This made the waiting time a hell of a lot more interesting for