Terrance sat on the stone
arc at the northeast entrance to Rittenhouse Square. He swung his heavy-duty,
green-booted feet and pulled a paper box out of a McDonalds bag. The second
box. “It’s some fast-break special, so I got two,” he said. Two f
The second sandwich goes
quick, but he doesn’t seem rushed. His lunch break is normally a half hour, but
lately it’s been 45 minutes. “We’ve been skipping our first break because it’s
hard to come down just for 15 minutes,” he said.
Terrance spent the morning
in the brisk air 40 stories above Market Street. He sits on a swing – “The
technical term is suspended scaffolding, I guess,” – that’s hung from cables
attached to two beams at the top of the building. The platform spans the width
of four to five windows and can be raised and lowered along the building. He
and another guy sit on opposite sides of the platform, working simultaneously.
He’s working on the façade
of the Beneficial Bank building, removing chunks of material that are starting
to fall apart. “At that height, it’s pretty dangerous,” he said. To have pieces
of concrete falling to the sidewalk below? I’d agree.
Terrance wore a black cap
stretched tight to hi ear buds. Just before I interrupted his lunch, he had
been watching a video he’s pretty excited about. The Cypher with Eminem, Mos
Def and Black Thought. “It’s nuts,” he said, smiling and shaking his head.
“It’s bonkers.”
He listens to hip hop on
his way to and from work. Top three? Nas (“Like God”), Killah Priest
(“Offspring of Wu Tang,”) and Black Thought (just squeezing in above J
Electronica). “My wife would know all of those answers,” he said proudly.
Sometimes they do how-well-do-you-know-each-other quizzes; she always gets that
one right.
Terrance works for the Masonry
Preservation Group (MPG) out of New Jersey. They do restoration on all types of
buildings, from parking garages to historic churches. Before the Beneficial project, Terrance spent
two years at the Belgravia on 18th and Chestnut, restoring 300
hand-cut stones. The high-rise condo building (a two bedroom runs around $3,000
per month) has one of the most intricate facades in Center City.
They’ll be working on the
job at Beneficial sometime into next year, Terrance suspects. If the weather
gets bad – too windy or snowy – they’ll have to shut it down. The crew has
access to the 7th floor of the building for the duration of the job.
Some of the guys have lunch in the break room when it’s chilly, but Terrance
prefers to eat outside.
He often packs a lunch of
leftovers – spaghetti, chicken, meatloaf – whatever he cooked up the night
before. He has four kids – two boys and two girls – at home. “They’d rather buy
pretzels all day than take leftovers for lunch,” he said. It’s just not
cool.
On days he doesn’t feel like
carrying his huge lunchbox, Terrance gets a custom wrap from Maria at his go-to
cart on 16th between Ranstead and Market. “She has a really good
chicken Caesar wrap I’ve turnt into something delicious,” he said. And the fish
fillets today? He’d do it again; “It was good.
Very good,” he said. “Both of ‘em.
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