A Work Life Composition – Saga 9(b).

…

The ADA Ramp Compliance Inspector

(2015)

For one year, I held a role as an ADA Ramp inspector. ⁽¹⁾ I worked for an engineering firm as part of a joint venture in restoration inspection for Chicago Department of Water Management.

Every morning I’d search a backlog of thousands of ramps that needed to be inspected city-wide. Since our office was in Lincoln Park, I’d generally start with ramps that were located as far south as I could find. Beverly or Hegewisch, and work my way back, targeting the end of my day at a series of ramps that was close to my home.

Ramps located in West Englewood, or West Garfield Park I would only visit between 7 AM and 10 AM. If I couldn’t finish my inspections in those areas within a few hours, I’d just come back another morning. If I stayed too late, people are waking up. If I showed up too early, people haven’t gone to bed yet. Anywhere outside of my established timeframe, some shit was bound to pop off. ⁽²⁾

There is nuance in the concrete jungle in terms of occurrences: are the ramps off an arterial street like Ashland or Western – lots of witnesses around with a potentially quick getaway? Or is it the hard stuff – pure residential with burnt-out abandoned homes, cul de sacs overgrown with weeds, cracked sidewalk and chain link? Nowhere to run.

ADA inspection consisted of just me alone, standing in the middle of Grand Crossing smoking a cigar, kicking around a smart level and tryna watch my own back.

I always had my car close by and I never wore my OSHA compliant steel toe boots. If you’re going to stave off a jack move, you’re going to need to at least have the option of running based on the scenario. No one is getting away anchored to the ground in steel toe boots.

A lot goes in to inspecting those ramps after construction. ⁽³⁾ If you’re not careful, focus might be taken off who is approaching you in any given City neighborhood while you are busy calculating percent pitch.

My story begins the day I had to train a new hire. I chose a set of newly constructed ramps in a residential area of West Pullman at Union and 117^th Street and I had the recent college grad meet me down there in late morning. Starry eyed and ready to take on the City the poor kid was all in for measuring some drainage structures. Though she probably didn’t have flying bullets in mind, I told her not to wear her steel toe boots. I always had flying bullets in mind.

I didn’t think that area was necessarily that rough. Either way it was approaching 10 AM which was verging on the edge of my law of averages window theory where the odds of catching a stray were the lowest.

No sooner had I begun showing the young roustabout the specifics of the smart level in the schematics of building a corner when six caps were busted off right behind us. Squealing tires and the sounds of tattered debris and shell casings clinking to the ground. We stood frozen as someone fucked around and got caught up in a 187.

I looked back and all I remember seeing was gun smoke rising toward the blue sky above the sound of a rickety car screeching away. I can’t even remember who was sitting on the front porch as an intended target. Probably a chump ass busta. It was all a blur.

We started swiftly walking.

“Should we run?!”, asked the youngster, in a frantic tone.

I mean…we were already wearing neon vests. Look, if you’ve heard gunshots from a drive-by, it’s too late to run. The key is to see whether you are bleeding or not bleeding. This will be the definitive answer to whether you’ve been shot or not. Then you can then decide if you might want to run at that point just to get to a hospital quicker.

I didn’t think we needed to run, because it would have drawn more attention to ourselves. But she really wanted to run, so we ran a bit. Sometimes I have to actively avoid showcasing just how nonchalant I can be if I don’t actually feel danger in a given moment. I put up a front as though it might make a difference and we jogged a few blocks, mainly so I wouldn’t seem like a psycho.

In the commotion as we approached our vehicles, the trainee informed me that she was going to jaunt over to the Wendy’s nearby. Confused, I asked her if I should wait for her to come back out, wondering if she had some sudden urge for a frosty.

“No!! Just go!!”, she shouted in a panicked tone.

The very moment I was yelled at I caught a pungent aroma from the galloping newbie. I then understood. It was true. The person was so shocked and alarmed at our proximity to the drive-by gunshots that she accidentally defecated in her pants. ⁽⁴⁾

I mean, after running, that person was pooped. Look there wasn’t even so much as a warning shart fired. I get it.

I can’t say I blame her. It’s terrifying to be that close to death and losing one’s bowels in an adrenaline laced event can be a potential side effect. Though, it was quite a frightening discharge after that frightening discharge.

I clocked out for the day after that and drove straight to Local Option for a Zombie Dust and some blue crab quesadillas.

One lesson for the newcomers in ADA Ramp compliance inspection: Any time you get shot at, whether you get shot or not – you get to take the rest of the day off.

…

The Nuclear Density Tester

(2008)

I once held a role as a construction materials technician, testing road compaction for asphalt density all over the City.

This story both begins and ends with me walking across an intersection and getting plowed in to by a car.

It wasn’t a busy intersection by any stretch of the imagination, and I can’t remember what neighborhood it was in. It’s not like I didn’t look both ways first.

In the words of Bob Nanna – “That Car Came out of Nowhere”.

I noticed the car in my periphery at the very last second I could notice the car in my periphery. I jumped directly upward as high as I could muster. Nothing but pure reflex and some sort of animal instinct. This took me at least to the hood of the car, which was only going probably twelve miles per hour. Not very fast, but I don’t care what speed a car is going, as long as it’s not zero miles per hour, if I don’t jump I’m getting crushed beneath it.

I bounced off the hood and subsequently slipped upward off the windshield. Gymnast formation re-creating a fucking Olympian style aerial somersault I sailed through the stratosphere.

With a hard splat shoulder landing directly on the pavement, my Nextel phone went skidding.

I sheepishly stoop up and brushed myself off, fulling expecting some sort of broken bones or bodily damage. I immediately understood that I’d be sore later…but I felt okay. I looked over and somehow none of the paving crew seemed to have noticed the incident. Whew. I was graciously saved some embarrassment there. Who knows what sort of nickname I would have been imprinted with if any of the laborers or operators had witnessed that slow motion barrel roll through space.

My nuclear density gauge was not run over. No need to mark off a perimeter or call the NRC.

An old lady stepped out of the vehicle. She fully, 100% assumed I was going to call the police and press immediate charges. But I didn’t have the heart. She was petrified at the idea of getting in trouble (way more than any concern leveraged toward the idea that I might be injured).

I told her I was fine and that I didn’t need to call anyone.

“Oh….! Well!”, she stammered in relief.

“God bless yyyyyy…both of us!”, and she gave me a hug.

Yeah.

God bless both of us, lady.

I might have been smashed beneath your one ton rusty bucket, due to nothing but your own negligence, my broken body smeared on the newly paved street. You might have gotten your license revoked.

God bless both of us.

…

1. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires every street corner where pedestrians might cross live traffic, to be pitched only up to certain maximum percentages, and equipped with bumpy tiles so the blind can detect the end of the sidewalk with their feet. The spec parameters are extremely tight, and I would argue that Chicago has even stricter requirements than general State or even Federal regulations.

2. Foreshadowing.

3. Curb height, radius, angle and percent pitch, sidewalk panel width and length, flairs, pie pieces, adjacent panels, the landing, gap height between every single piece, tile size and producer, the list goes on. I’ve had to design full street corners because if there is an existing door entry at a corner and the public sidewalk is pitched too heavily, then the entire corner needs to be reconstructed and raised so the ramp isn’t slanted too much for wheelchairs.

When you raise a corner it typically changes the direction of flow of rainwater collected in the gutter, so sometimes you have to have a new catch basin installed. You have to dig through ancient archives of Chicago street drainage plans and see where you can tie it in to existing sewer main – sometimes over one-hundred years old. One time the original pipe we dug up was made of wood.

4. As opposed to purposefully defecating in her pants.