One college summer long ago my "little" brother worked for a landscaping company. My Uncle Louie "The Greek" got him the job. The business was owned by an old Italian family who immigrated to Long Island, and started farming. When the farms turned into suburbs, the farmers cashed in and retired or kept some of the land and became landscapers. Hans the foreman ran the operation. He didn't pretend to be a "landscaper." "I grow. My father grow. My grandfather grow." All the workers were Puerto Rican except for Hans, my brother, the mechanic and the mechanic's assistant. Before the "Progressives" invented diversity, this was Long Island's version: an Italian farmer, Puerto Rican workers, my brother, the Irish kid whose uncle Louie "The Greek" got him the job, a German foreman, and who knows what the two mechanics were.
The Puerto Ricans -- there were a dozen of them -- worked like crazy and sent all their money home to their families in Puerto Rico. My brother couldn't keep up at first. Hans told him he had to work faster. "I'm afraid of making a mistake," was his excuse. Hans said don't worry, "If you don't make mistakes, you're not working hard enough." Hans liked my brother. Eventually he started taking him fishing.
It wasn't all grinding work. They got the contract to put in trees along some of Ocean Parkway near Jones Beach. When it didn't rain for a while, they got a big tanker truck with a water cannon and drove down the parkway firing water at the trees. They got done in time to have lunch and take a swim.
One day while manning the water cannon during a beach run, my brother sees a friend driving up the highway. He waves at him. The friend who is in a VW bug with the top down and a pretty girl beside him slows down, waves back and starts laughing. "Hi, sucker! We're on the way to the beach! And you're not!" Never mess with a man with a water cannon. Rapidly a barrage fills the VW with water.
The assistant mechanic had the job of going to the deli and buying lunch for the Puerto Ricans. This was not a hard job. The Puerto Ricans always ordered the same thing. One day the assistant mechanic missed work. My brother got sent out for the lunches in his place. When he came back with the lunches and the change, the Puerto Ricans became very animated and went into a huddle. Their representative approached my brother. "Why have you given us so much change." My brother says, "That's what the change is. You gave me X dollars. The lunches cost Y and the change is Z. So you get Z back. What's the problem?" The problem was that the assistant mechanic had been keeping most of the change without telling the Puerto Ricans and it really added up over time. The Puerto Ricans were furious. When Hans and the owner found out, they were furious, too. The only reason the assistant mechanic kept his job was he was dating the owner's daughter, but he had to pay every penny back to the Puerto Ricans.
The assistant mechanic was mad at my brother. When he finally caught my brother alone, he lit into him about turning him in. My brother replied: "Fuck you! I didn't know you were cheating the Puerto Ricans. Blame yourself, Asshole. If I knew you were cheating the Puerto Ricans, I'd have told Hans right away. If you want to go [fight], let's go right now!" The mechanic thought better of that and demurred. Don't mess with The Dragon!
