Fear & loathing in Thompson

My real apprenticeship begins here.

Let me tell you about my time in Thompson. Where do I even begin? Have you ever seen the TV show Trailer Park Boys? If you have, I think you'll find this fascinating. All the names in this story have been altered. Let's start at the beginning. I flew out to Thompson, and the superintendent, Sean, drove me to the townhouse.

As soon as I arrived, I immediately noticed the cigarette burns in the carpet and the holes in the walls. Let’s just say it was a pretty sketchy area of Thompson. When I walked in, I met a guy named Alec. And let me tell you, this guy was quite the character. He was still an active member of the Hells Angels, and the stories this guy would tell me... They were insane. He told me about cutting off a guy’s finger because he owed him $500 in drug money, getting into multiple bar brawls, he had a rumour that his fists were apparently made of steel and even things like kidnapping and drug dealing. But the first major red flag was when Alec told me he had served seven years in prison.

As I started settling, I began working on these doors with a guy named Oscar. Now, Oscar was this old guy with a hippie vibe, super nice at first. But then, out of nowhere, he would just lose his shit on me. I could tell something was off about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. As time passed, I started getting to know Oscar a little more. It turns out he was pretty cool. He used to be a stunt double in the early '80s, invented an ergonomic shovel that was supposed to be on Dragon's Den, and Manitoba Hydro even bought some to test out. He also had a Bachelor's in Science. Clearly, Oscar was a smart guy. But I also noticed something else: he was super dependent on his vape, always having it on him when we were on-site.

One of the days after work, Oscar told me we were going to pick up some weed. I thought, okay, no big deal. But when we got there, it was a specific house, not one of the five dispensaries around the area. It seemed strange. A few days later, I went with Alec to the exact same house, but the story was different. Alec said his buddy owed him a couple hundred bucks. I thought, okay. When we got there, I saw this older, decrepit, wiry woman who was shaking by the back door. Alec told me, "That's my ex-girlfriend," but I didn’t question him. I wasn’t going to call him out. Later, I found out from Geoffrey that Oscar and Alec had a crazy crack addiction. That was when the dots started connecting. It now makes sense why Oscar was always puffing on that vape.

Funny story with Oscar; we’re going through airport security. He had a pipe in his backpack with a small amount of weed still in it. I get through security and take my seat. Oscar was still at the end of the line, and everybody was through security at this point. I looked at Samantha, giving her a glance, knowing something entertaining was about to happen. Oscar proceeds to get into a full-blown argument with security. I get that we’re in Canada and weed is legalized here, but we're also traveling interprovincially. But man, use some common sense. I glanced back at the rest of the crew. I start hysterically laughing, everyone starts giggling, trying to hold back their laughter. It ended up getting settled with Oscar discarding the weed and somehow keeping the pipe in his backpack. Just wild!

I remember picking up some lumber with the boys when we were running errands. I overheard Oscar in the back saying he had a three-month parole period for smuggling contraband Indian tobacco off a reserve. Have you ever seen that Simpsons meme where Ralph says, “I’m in danger”? Well, that’s kind of how I felt about my three-month stint in Thompson.

Let's meet the next character in the story: Tanner. He was built like a grizzly bear, very charismatic and funny. He also had ADHD, but man, did this guy not shut the fuck up. He started blending into the background and became white noise for me. Every time I would try to go to bed at a reasonable time, this guy would be talking to his wife up to two in the morning while blasting music. Let’s just say my sleep schedule was fucked. A little background on Tanner: he was supposed to serve five years in prison but only served two for good behaviour. What he was in for was throwing a guy out a window, permanently disabling him, and making his next ride a wheelchair. Alec and Tanner were boys (best friends). I had to live with these characters and navigate the different social dynamics. I knew as a guy, if I'm disrespectful, there’s a really good chance I’m getting punched in the face. I definitely was not trying to cross this line in the sand. I was genuinely scared of Tanner. I know it was bad if Alec was scared of him. Remember, Alec has won fights (1 vs 5) against bigger guys. Alec’s at least predictable in his behaviour, while Tanner, on the other hand, was unpredictable.

Every time I was sound asleep crazy shit would go down. One morning, Tanner told me about this guy who tried to break into the house, accusing him of cheating with his girlfriend. As he went into more details, he said he was holding down the door while the guy tried to break in. Eventually, the guy broke through our shitty door latch mechanism. They were both squared up, ready to fight, and then Tanner uppercuts him and takes him out cold.

I’m now realizing I might have started that situation without realizing it. The day before this went down while I was watching a TV show on the main floor, this woman started banging on the back door. I opened the door, and she barged through, smiling at me. My first reaction was pure confusion. I immediately told her to get the fuck out and slammed the door, locking it behind her.

I’m not sure if those two things were correlated, but now that I’m thinking about it, it’s kind of a funny coincidence.

Another night, while I was sound asleep, Oscar supposedly heard gunshots two doors down and was paranoid out of his mind. I’m not sure if it was his crack addiction or what, but the very next day, on the last day of the rotation, he packed all his shit, all his tools and equipment, and booked the next flight out. I never saw the guy again. I’m not sure what happened there.

Now let’s move on to Wally World, also known as the local Thompson Walmart. I’m not even kidding, there was a daily brawl outside the Walmart entrance. One day, me and Alec are making our rounds to Wally World, buying some groceries. This guy with a ponytail and sunglasses starts banging on the window of the pickup truck, chatting with Alec, offering to sell some steaks that had clearly been stolen from Wally World. You have to understand, Alec has this very charismatic, almost Brad Pitt charm to him. He would literally socialize with everyone and flirt with every girl we passed. He once told me a story about flirting with a female cop and actually getting her number. She clearly knew he'd been in jail before, which I thought was absurd.

Anyway, back to the steaks: we end up walking to the ATM to pick up some cash. As we walked, we started talking and realized this guy was an alcoholic. The one thing I liked about this group of guys is that they had absolutely no judgment toward people. Sometimes you have to dig beneath the surface before you can really make a judgment call on someone. We ended up picking up some McDonald’s ice cream, with the guy cracking jokes along the way, and we paid him for the delicious steaks. Better yet, Alec cooks a mean steak.

Oh, the next character: the beloved Geoffrey, favoured by the devil. Geoffrey was your lovable idiot, kinda like myself. How would I describe this guy… mid 30s, looks like a Newfie version of Homer Simpson with glasses. This guy and his dog would absolutely drive me crazy. Almost every day or every other day, his dog would escape from his steel-linked collar and chain he set up in the backyard. I would be driving around helping Geoffrey try to find his dog; usually, it would be caught by a dogcatcher with animal control services. This one time, I was driving back to his house to help him with some errands. His dog just bolts past us at the stop sign, I immediately turn the truck around, chasing it down and following it across the street towards the hospital. Luckily, it ran towards the two people at the bench, and we snatched it back into the truck.

I remember running errands one day with Geoffrey, we arrive at his house and there's a full-blown party going in the middle of the day, he proceeds to kick everyone out of the house in his humorous Newfie accent. One of Geoffrey's buddies ended up staying at the house on his couch for a few days after the party, so he could find his footing again. A few days later, I ended up seeing that same guy from the party doing some asbestos removal at our job site, I guess Geoffrey got him a job.

You know how the hinges pivot on a garage door when you open it and there's a small crack in between? Geoffrey's buddy’s fingers got caught in that crack and were sliced off as he was manually pulling the garage door down. If you ever find yourself in this situation, get a bucket of ice, put the finger tips in the bucket, and wrap the hand in gauze to stop the bleeding so they can be reattached. They ended up having to helicopter him to a surgical hospital. I thought that was wild when I heard it.

There was another time I was trying to fix his phone. Unfortunately, it was iCloud locked. I had to go to his email to try to reset it, and all I could see was a wall of payday loan emails for overdue payments. I absolutely love Geoffrey, he's the embodiment of everything I don't wanna be. Even just his girlfriend... I don't know how else to say it, she was basically a crack whore. When his girlfriend didn’t return home one night, he was freaking out, paranoid out of his mind. He made me drive all over the city looking for her. We found her at this construction site, cheating on him with a contractor. His intuition was actually right. My advice, cut off the girlfriend and get rid of the dog; it’s causing absolute misery to your life.

He wouldn’t do it. I’ve come to the realization that you just need to let some people fail. The thing that I admired about Geoffrey was his humour and kindness. I was proud of him, he stopped his cocaine addiction that he had for several years, and he was a phenomenal cook. He should have done something in culinary. I can see the good in somebody regardless of the situation. I try not to make a judgment call on somebody’s experience. I haven’t lived a day in their shoes. That was my time with Geoffrey.

I’m going to briefly go over Sean for a second. He was the site superintendent. Imagine, a mid 50s bald guy, with some muscle and a beer belly, who was on the shorter side. I felt like a prisoner and he was my warden. Even with his very fucked up sense of humour, I didn't mind working with the guy. He was chill until something actually needed to get done, then he would become a bit of a hot head in the moment. The funny part was he knew all the fucked up shit going on and would just sweep it under the rug like nothing ever happened. Honestly, I wasn’t even surprised when Geoffrey told me that Sean was hounding his door at 3:00am in the morning asking for a hookup on cocaine… just another day in Thompson.

Okay, back to Tanner. He was a drywaller by trade and got promoted to a foreman position, for which he was clearly not qualified. He was boys with Sean and got the position out of nepotism. One time, he was running the site and Sean was off his rotation. This welder had to weld this big piece of metal at the top of the steel rafters, near the ceiling. I remember setting up a narrow scaffolding system, it was sketchy so I added extra braces. It still wobbled at the top. It probably broke multiple safety infractions. Now imagine, a crew of guys feeding this heavy piece of steel up the scaffolding to the welder at the top. In my head, I'm thinking something seriously bad is about to happen. Honestly, the way the situation played out was the best outcome. The sparks or heat from the welder set off the fire alarm. Now remember, we're in an actively used building at the time. Everyone had to evacuate the building and get off the premises. Now imagine, stupid ridiculous shit happening like this all the time with Tanner in charge.

Oh shit, I remember the time Tanner ran over his own foot with a scissor lift. If anyone's ever used a scissor lift, you know there's a control box to move it around. You can actually take the remote control out of the lift, controlling it from the outside. But instead Tanner didn’t remove the remote control and ended up running over his foot after losing control. I can't even make this shit up and people may think I'm lying, but these crazy stories were actually happening.

The highlight of my time in Thompson was this girl, Samantha. My first impression was an adorable midget; she was only 5 feet tall. I was surprised to see a relatively attractive girl on a construction site. We worked on different sites, but every time I would fly out, we would always have the same flight schedule. Whenever I saw her, I would give a glance, and immediately notice the tension building in the air.

Eventually on one of the flights back, I said, Fuck it, and decided to sit directly beside her. Sparks started flying, it felt like we had instant chemistry. I’m not even kidding; our 6 hour flight felt like 6 minutes. I talked about all the wild adventures, and I thought it was hilarious when she told me she was an all star basketball player, knowing her height. I ended up showing her how to play chess, breaking the touch barrier right away. I asked for her number, and put her as “that girl” under my contacts. I kept forgetting her name and kept calling her “that girl” over and over again.

The following week, I decided to set up a date with her at the local Thompson fair. This is my perspective; I was having a fun time with all the different crazy rides. While driving her home, I decided I would just go in for the kiss. She hesitated, and I ended up getting rejected and felt like crap after that. I was thinking, “Oh, fuck, I probably did something really stupid without realizing it.” The very next day, I quit. For me, that was the final straw that broke the camel’s back.

But, I had to work the remainder of the rotation. This crazy fucking Russian guy from the other site had to stay with us because there wasn’t enough housing booked in advance. Their crew ended up dropping off all their suitcases on the main floor of our townhouse. I always left my purple suitcase there, thinking nothing of it. The Russian guy got totally wasted on vodka. I did have an enjoyable time chatting with him. The very next day, my suitcase disappears. I panicked, it wasn’t my suitcase and my mom would kill me if I didn’t get it back. This being the last flight out, I needed that damn suitcase back. At this point, I'm just blowing up Samantha's phone, trying to track down this crazy Russian, she's definitely getting pissed off at me. I end up driving to their site picking up the house keys. Once I arrive at the other townhouse, I find my suitcase in some random spot of the house. I left the keys in the mailbox. Work out the rest of my shift. I’m happy to pack all my shit in this glorious damn suitcase.

I head to the airport. At this point I'm just done. I end up finding a table, passing out on top of my pillow. When I woke up, I saw Samantha near the right side of the airport. I go talk to her and get ghosted in real time. Honestly, I can't even blame her at that point. I don't know if she knew at that moment, that was the last time I would ever see her again. I haven't contacted her since. Nothing like a little heartbreak to motivate a guy.

Well, anyways, I end up talking to the main foreman of her site who’s on the same flight as me. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but let’s call him Sal. I love those conversations where you consciously know you’ll never see someone again. You can be totally open knowing there’s no consequences. Sal was this ginger guy with freckles, probably around his early 30s. I ended up talking to him on the flight "back to Winnipeg".

I genuinely respected the guy. He was a couple of years older than me running all the concrete forming on this massive project. I've come to the realization that people don't really take you seriously until around age 35. Clearly, the guy was smart to be in that position at his age. We start talking about interests, aspirations, things we wanted to accomplish. He wanted to buy a piece of land and build this crazy massive house. I'm the type of person if someone's trying to accomplish something great, I'm not going to put them down. I knew he had the skill set to build it, why not encourage him. The capital will come with time, like anything else that's built brick-by-brick. I get talking about my interests, my apprenticeship, financial goals and stuff like that. I remember at one point of the conversation, he tells me how he puts his ex-girlfriend through college and they end up breaking up. I told him "don’t worry about the temporary loss of the Queen, you only lose a game of chess when the King is knocked over". Back at the airport waiting for our luggage, he looks at me and says: Maybe, I'll bump into you in 10 years and see how everything turns out. I looked back at him in the eyes, nodded, smiled and walked out the door.