Sure, I've got a few.
I'm 18 years old, 132 lbs dripping wet and about to start what has been a very interesting 35 year career in signmaking. Second day on the job for Foster & Kleiser, Jan 2nd, 1980, Chicago, IL. a town not exactly known for balmy winter weather.
The first job they send me out on is the J&B (scotch whiskey) wall, which at the time was the Guinness World Book of Records holder for world's largest single outdoor advertisement. 90' h x 200' w. It was redone three times a year and would take a couple two person crews almost a month to complete.
I get a very short, crash course on safety, ropes, swing stages, etc. in the shop the day before and told to dress warm the next day.
We get out to the job site and I'm instructed to go up the freight elevator with all the ropes, wall hooks, etc. with the other helpers and apprentices. I step out onto the roof of this 12 or 13 story industrial warehouse into about 20 degree weather and do my best to watch the others do the rigging and help. I assume they are going to have me just be their gopher and stay on either the roof or the ground all day. Silly me!
My journeyman takes me down the elevator one floor and we walk towards these enormous old fashioned swing out windows. I see the other crews climbing out the windows and just dropping out of sight. I'm still assuming that they aren't going to make to do much on my second freakin' day for safety reasons alone. My journeyman points me to a window and says "Now, just reach out, grab the ropes and once out the window, shimmy down to the scaffold. Oh, and try not to look down too much."
The coping of the building was so long and the bulletin started just below the windows so it would be a 30' shimmy down the ropes if you did it from the roof. This way it was only about 10'. Once on the scaffold, I'm frozen like a statue. I get handed a five gallon bucket full of primer and told to start painting. I'm like freakin' paralyzed. And I'm freezing my *** off. They are all laughing at me and my journeyman is yelling at me about how there is only way off the wall, down. The roller felt like it weighed 50 lbs.
To this day, I can still remember the horrible feeling of the tightness and burning in every muscle in my body as I freed the safety knot holding my end of the scaffold in the stirrup and lowered it hand over hand knowing my little scrawny arms were not going to hold up. I could easily have dumped myself and my journeyman, but I made it. After about an hour or two, I gained some composure and we made it down far enough to swing the stages to the end of the wall where the fire escape was. We tied off, got down and ate our lunches. I swore I wasn't going back up, but I did anyway and at the end of the day, my journeyman told me how proud he was of me. The others just cracked jokes at my expense and laughed it off. He became like a father figure to me and taught me as much as anyone I've worked with in the craft.
I could have quit, nobody would have questioned it, but I stuck with it and have ever since.
These guys had this mano a mano attitude and at first glance, acted like they didn't care if I lived or died. After a few years and gaining their respect for being as tenacious as they were, they accepted me as one of the crew. Now I laugh over some of the hair raising stuff we did on the end of a 1" thick manila rope 100' up in the air. I developed such an enhanced sense of balance that I could walk a 4" x 4" beam 60' across the top of a billboard with no hands.
Another nightmare job early in my career that almost cost me my job.
We were working on a billboard that was situated right over the main parking lot for UPS. At the time, Carlton cigarettes were popular and they had this metallic silver logo and other elements. The silver metallic paint we used was unusually light for some reason compared to regular bulletin enamel and in about a 40 mph windstorm, I accidentally knocked a full gallon of it over off the scaffold from about 80 feet up. It was like a giant airbrush had coated hundreds of cars parked below. At least a dozen cars were permanently damaged and had to have new paint jobs. The corporation's insurance paid for it I'm sure, but I heard about it for months. Stuff happened like that all the time. so it wasn't that big of deal for very long. I was a very valuable asset to the company due to the aging workforce in the pictorial end of the industry, so nobody rode me too hard about it.
