Hardhat City

A lot of younger alums/those active on social media apparently have seen some pretty neat pictures of the ongoing construction of the New McCann Center. We’re all excited here about the new building, which should be open by the end of this calendar year or early January at the latest. Construction is on target. Construction is busy. We live and work among the construction site. Our team vans are parked in a gravel lot in the back of the McCann Center grounds, near the Storage Shed (what some of us old-timers still refer to as the Pole Barn). In particular, on a day like Friday, I’m really blending in with the construction site and the construction workers. I had to gas up two of the vans for our long New Paltz practices – men at 11a and women at 2p. Gas trips, filling up the coolers with water and Gatorade, and eventually coming and going to practice, twice … that is and was a lot of time spent around the guys in the hardhats.

Almost exclusively, these men are not unpleasant. Not exactly welcoming and friendly, but cordial enough to yield right of way to me in the vans, always with a friendly enough wave. Hey. You couldn’t blame them if they were ornery at the coffee slurping moron in the tube socks, going back and forth, back and forth, in white vans (sometimes empty!) among the forklift trucks, dump trucks, front loaders and every other form of heavy machinery that has to navigate through a narrow slice of real estate around and behind the McCann Center. One Hardhat Guy, I think he’s either an HVAC guy or a welder, I see all the time because he is working by the vans and the Storage Shed. We say hello to each other several times a day. Finally, one day earlier this week, he strikes up a conversation.

Hardhat Guy: Where you taking those kids in them vans every day?

Coffee Slurping Moron: Off campus to run. You know, to parks and trails, and sometimes the track.

Hardhat Guy: Track? Why! You don’t have a track here on campus? With all this building they’re doing around here? No track!

CSM: (gritting teeth, holding back) Nah … maybe someday.

How many times have we had this conversation through the years. More than we can count.