It was 1990 and I was working as a young project engineer for a general contractor that was building a maximum-security prison in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Locals know it as the U.P. and call themselves “You-pers.” It’s a part of the country where the big red lines on the maps are the snowmobile trails and the highways are skinny black lines.
As you can imagine, when you build a prison you need a lot of doors, and in order to install doors you need door frames. We sent a contract to a company in Cleveland to supply our doors and frames. The plan was to have a subcontractor install them and the masons would build the walls to the frames.
As the project progressed, we were ready to build walls, but we had no door frames. That’s when phone calls, letters and faxes started going back and forth between my company and the door supplier. Email was not really used back then, but we had a facsimile machine to quickly send paper threats. We intended to sue the supplier if it did not ship the frames ASAP. The mason was losing money, we were losing money and everyone was losing patience.
It was at this time we received a phone call from Yonkers, just outside of New York City. Well, that was weird. We’d been communicating with a firm in Cleveland for months and now someone from New York said they would like to visit our project in the far north reaches of America. Odd, but we said OK. I’m thinking, we really panicked that company. They’ll be looking for forgiveness.
The day of the visit came. It was early spring. The Upper Peninsula receives up to 300 inches of snow per year. It’s a destination retreat for snowmobilers. The streets are never plowed to pavement, but instead a layer of snow is left for the snowmobiles. Now, however, it was a mess with leftover spots of snow, puddles warming up during the day and icing over at night. It was muddy rubber-boot country, and just plain sloppy on the construction site.
It was in this setting that a large black car arrived at our job office trailer. From the front doors stepped two sizable, well-tailored men sporting sunglasses. One of them went to a back door and opened it. Out stepped a short, middle-aged gentleman in a three-piece suit. He placed a fedora over his well-groomed cut. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses, but his shoes reflected across the puddles. This was our door supplier? Nah! Hmm, well. Something wasn’t right. I was kind of laughing inside, kind of not.
The men came into our job trailer. The mason was waiting in our project manager’s office while the project manager stepped out to greet the visitors. The two very large escorts said nothing. The older gentleman said one word: “Hello.” Italian accent? Not sure.
They proceeded into the office and the door closed. There were four of us in the outer office, all looking at each other, all thinking the same thing: Is this for real? Who would spend the good part of a day flying from New York to Michigan and then make the long drive to our site?
Then the meeting was over. That was it — a 10-minute meeting. No eyes met as the visitors exited our small job trailer without a word, stepped into their special car and took off.
We all wanted to know: What did they say, what did our subcontractor say? We were like meddlesome adolescents. We wanted to know what happened and wanted to know now.
This is what happened. Our visitors entered the project manager’s office. The two authoritative companions of the boss, as I liked to call him, stood like pillars on each side of the door. They never took their sunglasses off. They never spoke. The boss stood in the middle after declining an offer to sit.
Mason: We need door frames right away. We’re behind schedule and losing money.
Mafia Man: You will get frames on this date.
Mason: I need the frames sooner.
Mafia Man: You will get frames on this date.
And on it went for several minutes. Few words. No compromise. And then our visitors left.
That left me feeling a little uneasy. Now what? I knew a message had been delivered. Our masonry subcontractor could have sued for lost money and the extra work because of the late delivery, but did not. Maybe they felt a little uneasy.
At a gathering sometime later, commiserating with other project team members, I was still questioning who our visitors really were. Was that really the New York mafia? Would they go through that much effort to visit our job site in the U.P.? Was it a costume prank? Most importantly, would they come back? The uneasiness tingled up my spine.
In the end, I was left with a sense of irony, envisioning that we may have been building the house that our unidentified traveling visitors would one day occupy.
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