Ron Collins
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

It’s not enough to just believe either; you must know, as you’ve said here.

Thanks for the upbeat reception for an intruder here.

On confidence, in my early years there was a sort of boom/bust thing going on in the industry, and I started out kind of down at the lower end of the housing spectrum, where you heard the words “quick” or “fast” a whole lot, and saw a lot of guys doing 60-70-hour weeks while high as a kite on coke or meth. There was a lot of talk about “pressure” too, as if it were a good thing. One had to be “fast”, get it done “quick” because one was under “pressure” due to low bids being the only way for the boss to get the jobs at all, or low wages added to plenty of guys to replace you if you didn’t perform for yours.

I hated it. For the first two years, I loathed, despised, dreaded, resented and abhorred everything about this life, except one thing: being hired on a handshake, asked for zero paperwork, and being paid cash. The good old days, when to be an American outlaw was a lot more ordinary than it is today. It was “off the books” and that had been the only thing I cared about.

That all changed, of course. But after the first couple of years I began to see myself differently, to feel different when I got to work or got done for the day. I had set out to be a man among men, and had discovered I could get a man’s day of work done. Then on the day I first had six other men staring at me at sunrise waiting for me to tell them what to do, I was hooked for life.

Not only can I do this, I have my ways of getting these fellas to believe that we can do this. And they believe it.

Nowadays I work mostly all by myself, not building houses but fixing them up for my neighbors, my “clients.” I’m back to being off the books, the only way of life that feels like America to me, and hardly making more than enough to pay my bills and keep up my little mobile home (which I OWN free and clear.)

It isn’t art, really. It’s just my job. But I do love it and have for a long, long time.

    Ron Collins

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    Facts don’t care about your faction