Imagine it's 6 a.m. and the day's first sunlight is filtering
through dark, blustery clouds. From your job site
high on a hill, you gaze down on the tile roofs and
palm-tree-lined streets of Santa Barbara, Calif., and
from there to
the gray, wintry
sea.
As your crew of 18 gathers, you recall the three weeks
gone by, when 15 workers formed steel and set forms for
28-foot stem walls — 12 feet in the ground and 16 feet
above. Today, 10 concrete trucks are scheduled to start
rumbling up the hill by 8 a.m.
Around 7 o'clock, the boom truck pulls up. Because
there is so little flat space to park on