A tribute to Bud Moore

Bud was an alcoholic from Tennessee. And he worked with me for only three years but had a profound impact beyond those few years, but I overlooked what he gave me and never thanked him.

The first time I talked to Bud was when he answered a classified ad for skilled repairmen. Three guys had called earlier and the job was already filled, but Bud didn’t sound upset and instead, came back and said, ‘if the other guys don’t work out, then I’m your man.’

I liked his attitude. I thought it over for two minutes and called Bud back and we started working together the next day.

The day always found me at McDonald’s for lunch, and so Bud came along. We hadn’t worked together more than a week, but he had taken note of my bad knee and gimped-up walk. Out in the parking lot that day we saw a woman limping to her car, so Bud pointed at her and looked at me and asked, ‘is that a relative of yours?’

I rolled back and laughed at what most would consider a crass statement because it was funny. And it was a smart thing because I hadn’t spoken of my arthritis, and that comment allowed us to become more open. Bud later confided that my laugh at that moment convinced him to stay on with me. Personal sharing turned the key to Bud, and he would have quit if that bond wasn’t there.

Bud had skills to do anything mechanical, and for the first time I had a worker who knew more and could work faster than me on every project. Of course it turned into a competition to see who would come up for air first and each of us was determined to outmatch the other. It was a fun competition that he always seemed to win, and that I always recognized in him.

My business was a tiny one-truck operation that offered customers any kind of repair and remodeling on their homes. We replaced siding, fixed plumbing, painted, and did whatever general maintenance was needed. I hustled work during off hours and passed flyers whenever things got a bit slow, but come daylight, every day, seven days a week, Bud and I hit the job hard.

There were some days that Bud didn’t show up, and I’d wait and worry if the run was over, but next day, that noisy orange truck would drive up and Bud would pop out with nary an excuse. He’d say, ‘if I wasn’t here, then there was a reason.’ I knew not to inquire. And by adapting to Bud I became aware that some people are alive just for that day.

Lunchtime was probably the closest that we came to being friends. There was always a class distinction I felt with Bud. He was from a poor rural background and wasn’t totally comfortable away from his people. Part of the reason might be that he lost his front teeth in a bar fight and he used a long mustache to hide the fact. But it was more than that because his demeanor changed abruptly when his family was around, and he didn’t want me a part of that, so I avoided the topic unless he offered first. There was always a distance between us. We just worked together, and Bud wanted to keep the balance right there.

We read the newspaper at lunch, and our daily conversation usually centered on the articles and revealed that Bud was amazingly bright and that our views were similar on political issues. Both of us imagined that the rich take all and the working people are left with crumbs.

Bud let me know he was a die-hard racist and claimed to have been robbed twice by Black people. He certainly had some interesting stories to tell.

One time he was stopped at a traffic light and a young black kid jumped out of the car behind him and put a gun in the window demanding money. Bud was incredulous. He was driving a beat up car and obviously had little money, but he was drunk and here comes a robber. Bud said he looked the guy straight in the eye and said, ‘fuck you nigger,’ and then gunned the car to run the light. But the car stalled.

The gunman shot Bud three times with a small 22 caliber; once each in the leg and chest and one through the hand. He showed me the bullet scars and said he made his way home and laid in the garage bleeding until life-flight took him to the hospital. Bud was pissed that the police said it was ‘drug related’ and they never investigated.

The second robbery came when he was rummaging through his car looking for cigarettes. Three black guys jumped him, but Bud fought back and bit a piece of finger off before the attackers ran away with nothing.

Bud was a fighter. He was reckless but he played the game hard and had some of the best stories, and we used to laugh.

The power company was constantly shutting off his electricity for non-payment. He had money to pay the bill unless it was frittered away on drinking. Bud got paid at the end of every day because he wanted it that way. It was necessary for his sense of freedom. And Bud lived free, so when the electric company shut him off, he simply went outside and reversed the meter-head and voila, the power came back on.

Finally the power company put a lock on his meter. Undeterred, Bud got a big screwdriver and started prying on the box. It was nighttime so he was depending on the neighbor’s porch light to see what he was doing, but he was drunk and the screwdriver slipped deep into the box and shorted out in a bright arc of light.  Bud fell to the ground and when he stood up, the whole neighborhood was dark. He thought he shorted out everybody’s lights, but he was just drunk and temporarily blinded by the arc, and a moment later when his vision returned he realized what happened.

The funny thing was that we worked on electric circuits frequently, and he knew there was no way to short out his neighborhood power grid. It was just the drinking, and because of that we shared a laugh, and it made a funny story that I repeated many times.

I learned a lot from Bud. Maybe it seems trivial to some people, but I always thought police investigated every shooting. Neither did I know the power company turned off power by reversing the meter. But more than that, I never pulled a meter head until Bud showed me how.

It was Bud who told me about nail guns. I hammered nails for years and never considered pneumatic power, but when Bud came aboard, we could do so much more work that it became a necessity to do it faster. This was back before the days when Home Depot carried air tools, so Bud was the one who told me where to go and what to buy.

It was Bud who told me about paint sprayers too. He and I painted all our work but we used brush and roller. His hard work allowed the jobs to get bigger and we needed a faster way to lay down paint. So I bought a paint sprayer and wow, did that ever put out paint! We could do in two hours what it used to take all day. Bang, the room was painted.

I made money because of Bud, and had money to buy better tools because of his work. Bud lifted me from a slow-moving antiquated contractor into a streamlined production factory that started churning out professional work.

There were other factors. The Houston economy was coming back from the recession it faced in the early eighties. I was becoming better known too and was maturing in my sales presentation, but the nuts and bolts of any operation is the work you can put out and that was where Bud helped me the most.

About this time I started building a house. I had never built a house and had no idea what to do, but I just started making plans. And now that I look back, I realize the project wouldn’t have succeeded without Bud’s help.

I was limited with arthritis and couldn’t climb into the rafters, but Bud had been a framer at one time and he knew everything. Between him suspended in the air overhead and me cutting wood and passing up the lumber, we had the house ‘dried-in’ within two weeks.

Bud helped build the cabinets and lay the tile and solder the plumbing but all he got was a regular work-a-day paycheck while I gained an asset worth thousands.

The house was the breaking point. Bud realized that I now owned tools and a house largely because of his work, and he came right out and said it. He threatened to quit and I said that was too bad because I was just getting ready to promote him … and with that we laughed. I started paying two dollars an hour more but the relationship was broken.

Other problems emerged in Bud’s life about this time. He was in the garage fixing the truck starter, but had gotten lazy and didn’t disconnect the battery cable so when his screwdriver went to ground, the starter cranked just enough to knock the truck off the jack and pin him against the floor. He said his wife was inside the house and he was yelling for her to come out and help, but she ignored him and he was losing breath until a neighbor two doors down came over to see what was going on. I guess she was tired of listening to his yelling.

His wife decided to leave him, and he was distraught beyond words and crying at work. I tried to comfort him by putting an optimistic face on her going, but he was coming apart tried to commit suicide a few nights later.

Bud always told amazing stories and the suicide attempt was no exception. He showed me the bandaged cuts on his wrist four days later when he returned to work. I was already privy to part of the story because his wife called me two days later and told me how he cut himself while they were on the phone together.

Back at work, Bud filled in the details how his wife called the paramedics and somehow the police got involved when Bud refused to answer the front door. Evidently the police broke down the door and Bud went out the back window and was climbing fences and running from the police like Rambo. They finally corralled him when he walked back to the house, and they wanted to send him off to the psyche-ward but he refused commitment and they had to let him go. Of course by that time his wife and relatives were at the house so everything was okay since his people were there to take care of him.

I guess he lost a lot of blood since they had to hire a cleaning service to come in and do the carpet. Bud was laughing about the whole thing, especially the rent-house carpet since his pit bull had torn big holes out of the floor in between eating holes in the doors and walls. I never visited his home, but I guess he and the dog pretty well wrecked that house.

The real problem was drinking, and Bud was never going to stop. Unfortunately it cost him a marriage, but worse yet, the people surrounding his life were members of her family. Bud’s family was back in Tennessee and they were scattered around and didn’t want anything to do with him, according to what he said. So when he lost his wife, he lost his people.

His father-in-law stepped in and took Bud under his wing which effectively allowed the wife to move out. It was about this time that I changed business plans and decided to do everything by subcontracting the work. I told Bud that he could continue working for me but it would have to be on a bid basis, and I argued that he could make more money that way.

I lied to Bud to get rid of him. I planned to change businesses alright, but I was going to specialize in painting houses and knew a couple guys who were ready to come on board and could paint. It took a lot less skill to paint than it did to remodel. My new guys didn’t need craftsmanship to spray paint a house.

Bud and his father-in-law did a couple jobs for me, and the work was acceptable, but Bud laid it on the line and said they were too busy to help me any more. He was smart and said what I didn’t have courage to say.

It was over and Bud disappeared. I still got up every day and went to work using the nail guns and paint sprayer, and over the years many workers came and went. None of them were as capable as Bud, although some worked nearly as hard. Some of them stole tools from me and told me lies to cover their shortcomings, but Bud never did that. He was a stand-up guy who gave me a boost in life, and he was aware of that long before I was. He told me that he’d been offered a scholarship to West Point but turned it down, and I believe it was true because of the man he was.

It was maybe six years later that the phone rang one night, and guess who was calling? It was Bud. And he had more stories to tell.

His wife and her family were long gone and he was living with a man and his wife who owned rental property along Martin Luther King Boulevard. Bud was working for the guy doing maintenance work on the property and still drinking heavy every night.

Bud revealed that he had changed his mind about Black people after working in their homes. I really felt he was telling me to make amends for the harsh words he said before. Again it was his integrity showing through.

He also revealed that he was dying. He told me that cirrhosis of the liver had taken his health and they told him he needed a transplant, but that alcoholic carpenters were not high on the waiting list. It was hepatitis combined with alcohol consumption that put him at death’s door. I asked where we should meet, but he declined, saying he’d lost 40 pounds and looked bad, so I didn’t push the issue.

Then it was a month later when he called from his girlfriend’s apartment. They were laying about the bed while talking to me, saying she was just using him for the sex and they were planning to have sex as he died so she would get the ‘death quiver.’ Lordy, it is morbid thinking back about it, but he was in good spirits and living for the moment. He was saying goodbye.

Six months later I called the man he was working for and heard that Bud was forced to return to his family in Tennessee. That must have been hard for him to go home. I never heard him say anything about those people and understood the silence shielded a great hurt suffered at their hands, but in the end, they accepted his return. The fellow Bud worked for also told me that the doctors said he had a chance to survive if he stopped drinking when the diagnosis was made, but that Bud couldn’t stop.

He couldn’t stop drinking. It’s why he never went to West Point. It’s why he was stuck working for a guy like me. It’s why this likable charming man didn’t use his honesty and work ethic to make greater things than he did.

I owe Bud Moore this tribute.

Gene Haynes