Typical Day
The crumbling hospital sits on the edge of one of the city's oldest neighborhoods. According to local legend (and Kevin Kaboom's high school-aged younger sister), the Jefferson Davis Clinic and Psychiatric Institute is, like, way haunted. As Kevin looks over the brick edifice with its boarded-up and broken-out windows, he can easily believe that the ghosts of patients walk the hospital's halls.
His crew is clearly having similar thoughts. Several of the guys surreptitiously cross themselves, and one hefts the crowbar in his hand and mutters, "Can't we get a priest to walk through this place first?"
Kevin and his fifteen-man crew work for Kaboom Contractors, a demolition company owned and operated by Kevin's dad. Kaboom Contractors recently won a bid to pull down the Jeff Davis Institute; the Big Dough Development Company will come in after the demolition is done to erect a thirty-story luxury condominium tower.
Kevin makes decent money as the foreman of his crew, but he could never afford to live in the building that'll be standing here someday.
Not that he'd want to—Kevin had a run-in with the ghost of his kid sister's hamster when he was a teenager, and he's feared the paranormal ever since.
On the face of it, Kevin's task is simple: he and his guys will pull down the building quickly, without going over budget and without getting hurt. However, having walked through the building with his dad to perform an engineering survey, Kevin knows the Jeff Davis Institute has a few quirks his guys will need to be aware of in order to both do their jobs properly and stay safe.
Kevin describes to his guys the rickety, possibly unstable wooden floors riddled with broken glass. He mentions the walls that are buckling in some parts of the building. "Wear your safety gear at all times, and be aware of your surroundings," Kevin says.
"Why don't we just bulldoze this place and be done with it?" Raul, one of Kevin's crew, asks.
"Part of our contract with Big Dough is to extract items from the building that they want to incorporate into their condos," Kevin replies. Big Dough has asked for the marble flooring from the hospital lobby, the wall tiles from the bathrooms, and other salvageable items; these will be used in the tower's pricier units.
"And then there's the cemetery in the basement," Kevin continues. His crew looks horrified as Kevin tells them that the hospital was built on top of a nineteenth-century burial ground, filled with cholera victims and Confederate soldiers. One of his crew's tasks will be to remove the dead bodies from the basement for relocation to a nearby cemetery that's still aboveground. So to speak.
"Sure, it sounds like the setup for a horror movie," Kevin says, "but Big Dough trusts us to get the job done. Let's get started."
Kevin and his crew head into the Jeff Davis Institute at exactly 9:00AM—the city has strict noise ordinances, and demolition before breakfast isn't kosher. They spend the morning setting up shop in the hospital's old lobby, laying out tools and gear and checking the emergency aid kits.
Soon, hammers, pry bars, buckets, wheelbarrows, chisels, and nail pullers—to name a few of the items to be used in the building's demolition—are all over the lobby. The dumpsters they'll be filling with the hospital's haunted materials arrive at 9:30AM, and Kevin directs their placement on the curb, per the permit he received from the city.
By 10:00AM, the crew is hard at work. The Jeff Davis Institute is filled with the sounds of banging, smashing, and crashing, not to mention the sounds of music blasting over the radio.
At noon, Kevin and his guys break for lunch. No spirits have been spotted so far, although occasionally Kevin catches himself looking around for an apparition.
By 12:30PM, the jack-hammering in the lobby has started. Steve, one of Kevin's more experienced crew members, guides the jackhammer around the edges of each piece of marble flooring. Everyone wears protective earphones to cancel out the noise. Once Steve is finished, other crew members come in with pry bars and dollies to remove the marble.
Work stops at 5:30PM, and the crew tidies up for the day. Vandalism can be a problem at demolition sites, and especially at a building like the Jeff Davis Institute, which has seen its share of teenagers, curious ghost-hunters, and the homeless over the years.
The crew members return all of their tools to the lobby, and the marble floor tiles are stashed in a room nearby. The two security guards Kaboom Contractors hired to monitor the property overnight show up promptly at 6:00PM.
As the crew members say good night to Kevin and leave the site for the day, he hangs up a sign on the hospital's front door that reads "Days Without An Accident." With a dry erase marker, Kevin carefully writes in a "1" at the bottom of the sign.
Demolishing buildings, even when heavy machinery and explosives aren't involved, can be dangerous work. Kevin has seen guys knock themselves unconscious with crowbars and get nasty scrapes from sharp-edged debris.
He's sat through his share of safety training and, as the foreman, keeps a close eye on what his crew members are doing so no one gets hurt. The crew, too, has received training on how to be safe at demolition sites.
Kevin's job on the demolition crew didn't require a college education...which is a good thing, since he was a mediocre student (at best) in high school. He spent his summers working for his dad, and so it seemed natural for him to become a full-time demolition contractor after graduation.
Kevin likes that his job requires physical labor; he'd go crazy if he had to sit behind a desk all day. He also likes that he can put in his time and then go home to his wife and kids in the suburbs. He doesn't have to worry about spending weird hours or weekends in an office, and he doesn't have to think about his job when he isn't on site or at Kaboom Contractors headquarters.
Speaking of home, Kevin is more than ready to say goodbye to the super-creepy Jeff Davis Institute for the night. He climbs into his Ford F-150 and drives away, the hospital's façade first looming and then fading in his rear view mirror. For a moment, he thinks he sees someone standing at one of the busted-out windows—but surely that's just his imagination.