Osler's Razor

My hero of music procurement, Dr. Blaine McCormick, delivered a special goody this week: Some songs by Andrew Peterson, a singer-songwriter who has many songs about being the father to unruly boys. I recommend them, particularly if you are in that class of people; you can check them out here.

One of the songs really struck me, though. It's called "Mohawks on a Scaffold," though it is really about church politics. The title draws from the fact that much of the "high steel" construction work in New York has long been done by Mohawks. In fact, they built much of the World Trade Center, and I thought of them when the towers were destroyed. Peterson uses the image of a Mohawk on a high beam to symbolize our tenuous but oddly confident walks of faith.

Which brought back a memory for me. My second summer of law school, I worked at the firm of Mayer, Brown and Platt in Chicago. Their offices were high in a tower in the center of the Loop. One day, I was at a meeting with two partners and a client in a meeting room. The meeting involved the financing for a construction project. Out the window, perhaps 30 yards away, workers were building an office tower and walking on beams 50 stories in the sky. One man was placing a bolt while another stood next to him on the beam with the wrench. The beam was at most a foot wide, and there was literally nothing else besides a few other beam between them and the street so far below. I was in awe. For a moment, we stared at them out the window, and then the older men broke the silence:

Senior Partner 1: Look at that-- what do those guys get paid?
Senior Partner 2: Pretty good job; they make about $25 per hour.
Senior Partner 1: [reflectively] I make ten times that.
Then they all laughed, awkwardly.

I never was cut out for big firm work.