Why once when we were working on this old nasty coal tar pitch roof an the heat was getting so bad that when we tried to cut it up with axes the axe just sunk seven an' half inches into a pool of black gum & it took 4 men to move the handles back & forth, the axe handles they just broke. We was sweatin so bad that around the holes cut by the axes ponding water was starting to build up. After a while we was standing ankle deep in salt sweat, the water cooler was dry for all of us soaking our T-shirts in it an wrapping our heads with them just to keep from burning up & with us soaking our eyes. Coal tar pitch gives off sulfur fumes & burns your eyes bad. Now it always been an unwritten rule that once you open up a roof nobody goes home until the roofs finished & tight. Well we were threaten mutiny & murder our aces were getting redder than the sun & twice as hot but rules were rules besides walking off the roof once opened could get you blackballed. Meanwhile, guys were still working in the middle of that sweat puddle trying to pull the axe heads out when suddenly with a woash & a suck the axe heads pooped out. Well the the coal tar pitch was so soft with the heat, (we'd normally heat it up in a kettle to 450 degrees, regular tar 525 to work it) that the holes caused by he axes just filled back in on themselves with running pitch & we noticed that none of the sweat water was leaking into the building. Like a flash we all looked at each other with the same light bulbs going on over all our heads. The roof wasn't open & was tight after all. Yup, we all quit work for the day, it was 102 on the gound but the temp on the roof we never did know cause the roof thermometer only went as high as 120 (it's always beeen a known fact that the temp on the roof is usually a min of 15 degrees higher than on the ground). Anyway, when I got home my wife asked me if we'd take the kids to the beach & lay about in the sand.

Always have lots of water & gator-aide, (leck-er-lites or some such things). Have an aloe plant handy for the burns, an keep your head covered, cold & wet with a soaked T-shirt, preferably someone else's.

Barry