A remembrance by John Turngren
I didn’t know Bob at Carleton. Instead, I got to know him at the unlikely location of a shopping-center construction site somewhere near Minneapolis in the summer after our sophomore year. Both of us had been hired as laborers for the summer by a big construction company. Setting aside academics for several months, we learned how to use shovels, wheelbarrows, and brooms. We dug holes and shoveled sand, wheeled cement, and swept. Boy, did we sweep.
Needless to say, distractions were needed to counteract the daily eight hours of drudgery and potential boredom. We shared Carleton stories, and I recall that Bob was very witty and had a clever imagination. He made up jokes about the passing scene that helped the work time go by more quickly.
His on-the-spot creativity was especially important during one three-week stretch. The construction work was at a lull between phases, and there really wasn’t anything for us laborers to do; yet, they didn’t want to lay us off because they’d need our grunt labor in the next phase. So each morning, Bob and I were instructed to “grab a broom” and start sweeping. For three weeks straight, we went from building to building, sweeping every floor whether it needed it or not. When we got to the last building, we reversed course and started sweeping again. Bob’s seemingly endless stream of entertaining creativity kept the monotony from becoming overwhelming.
Add a comment